Steve Schuller is a shareholder at GableGotwals. For more than 45 years, he has represented developers, investors and entrepreneurs in all aspects of the acquisition and sale of real estate, oil and gas properties and investments, and other major business assets. Steve has handled complex financing transactions associated with such acquisitions, leasing (both documentation and enforcement), the planning and zoning process (both the administrative/regulatory level and in judicial and appellate proceedings), and recovery and work-out situations (including disposition of assets in foreclosures and bankruptcies). He regularly appears before local planning commissions and municipal governments, and he has successfully obtained the approval of a variety of commercial and mixed-used real estate developments. Our clients regularly consult with Steve on real estate acquisition and development issues, as well as specialized topics such as easements and rights of way and municipal utility franchises. In addition, Steve has represented international business organizations and individuals establishing operations in Oklahoma, as well as assisting domestic firms in trans-national transactions.
Moreover, Steve has served as outside general counsel to a municipal governmental trust for more than twelve years, focusing a significant portion of his practice on municipal government functions and affairs.
Steve was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Oklahoma State University Medical Center Trust, serving on its Long Range Planning Committee, until the Trust was dissolved and the Medical Center transferred to a state agency. He also was a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Employees’ Retirement System of Tulsa County, Oklahoma, from 1990-2020. He served as one of the Trustees of the Tulsa Authority for the Recovery of Energy, a public trust authority established by the City of Tulsa, from 2002 to 2011, and was its Chairman in 2006-2007. In 2006, then-Mayor Bill LaFortune selected Steve to serve on the Citizens’ Commission on City Government, an advisory board examining the City of Tulsa’s governmental structure. In addition, Steve served as a Member of the City of Tulsa’s Sales Tax Overview Committee from 1991 to 1994.
He is conversationally fluent in German.
Steve’s representative experience includes:
- General counsel to the trustees of a public trust administering a municipal solid waste system, as to legal and contract issues pertaining to collection, recycling, and disposal processes, as well as public governmental meeting and records regulations, strategic planning, and public contract awards.
- Organization of a group of property owners for the development of their property in Downtown Tulsa for the construction of a national-franchise hotel, including the organization of the development company, and the negotiation of all development contracts and ancillary arrangements.
- Negotiation of a sanitary sewer construction and development agreement between an international service company (the client) and a local municipality, and the preparation of the pertinent documents, with the contemporaneous negotiation of the de-annexation of the client’s property from one neighboring municipality as a prerequisite to the annexation of the client’s property into the other municipality, and the preparation of all annexation/de-annexation agreements.
- Securing for an entire local university campus the requisite municipal governmental approvals of a new “Master Planned Development Zoning District” adopted by the City of Tulsa, including the preparation of the pertinent documentation for development standards and restrictions, thereby implementing a uniform, comprehensive zoning structure and providing relief from repetitive zoning and permitting approvals otherwise required under existing Zoning Code provisions.