Assembling the Pieces

As a college student, Yareni “Yari” Sanchez had no desire to dabble in politics—she still doesn’t—but, little by little, her parents’ former life in the Dominican Republic began to pique her interest in public service. “They were coming from a dictatorial form of government, so there was distrust,” says Sanchez, now a real estate attorney at Goulston & Storrs in Boston. “That actually made me more interested in being civically engaged. I saw local government as intrinsically connected to resources, to how the built environment gets shaped.”

So in 2007, while living in Harlem and studying history at Columbia University, Sanchez blindly reached out to her local New York City Council member and talked her way into an internship. Attending community meetings, she heard firsthand what residents thought of the impending expansion of her own college into their neighborhood. “It was a complicated position to be in,” she says, “because I was sort of in both worlds.”

After graduating college in 2009, she volunteered to keep taking on council assignments. That led to a paid job as legislative aide to Council Speaker Christine Quinn, where Sanchez got a taste of everything from pothole repair to housing and education policy. In contrast to her Harlem-based internship, the new gig encompassed some of the highest-profile commercial sites in Midtown Manhattan, such as Times Square and Madison Square Garden. 

When a developer proposed demolishing the dilapidated Hotel Pennsylvania and erecting a high-rise in its place, Sanchez found herself thrust into a real estate tug-of-war. 

“That project fundamentally changed the trajectory of my career,” says Sanchez. “People were up in arms about the project because of its height. And the particular thing that people latched onto, or felt emotional about, was that from certain angles, it would block the view of the Empire State Building. I wasn’t just getting calls from the local constituent base, which was business owners and residents around that area. I was getting calls from across the country. I became enthralled with all of the different perspectives.”

Building consensus posed a steep challenge, but it was also the part that Sanchez liked best. “There were pluses and minuses,” she says of the project. “Blocking a certain iconic view of a cultural landmark had to be weighed against the potential benefits of job creation and impacts to the commercial tax base.”

Although the skyscraper didn’t materialize, Sanchez came away with a love for all the commotion, the late-night meetings and the “craziness of development.” Watching the developer’s attorney in action, she says, “I really wanted to do that, too.”

Sanchez now draws on that experience to bring opposing parties to the table to work out their differences in large-scale construction plans in Massachusetts. In one, she worked on the redevelopment of a public housing project in Somerville, a joint venture between a nonprofit and a for-profit developer that, she says, “has been very transformative for the tenants.”

In another, she handled an approximately 45-acre, 20-building project known as Cambridge Crossing, spanning three jurisdictions in a “difficult-to-develop” former railyard. When she started working on it in 2015—the same year she graduated from Boston University School of Law and joined Goulston—it “was really just a pile of dirt.” Today, most of Cambridge Crossing is built out. 

Sanchez thrives on the complexity of real estate development law. “It’s not just the fancy building that goes up. It involves everything: How does our client get site control of the property? How do we help them finance it? How do we then help put their vision on paper and convince a governing body to allow it?” she says. “It’s like working on a jigsaw puzzle, where all the pieces are jumbled. And I get to help put the pieces together.”

Balancing different perspectives is essential. “Because I was in the public sector prior to my job representing developers, I oftentimes feel like I have a unique understanding for what the issues on the other side are, being able to place myself in the other person’s shoes.

“I am lucky to do a lot of the work that initially piqued my interest in real estate at the council. I’m not so sure that I would have found real estate if I hadn’t been pushed to really be creative.”