About me
Andy’s 42-year career in private law practice as a transactional attorney, together with his personal experience as a real estate entrepreneur and as CEO of his mid-sized law firm enabled Andy to deeply understand and internalize the needs of and difficulties faced by his clients. Andy considers himself fortunate to have been involved in a wide variety (and on all sides) of numerous significant commercial real estate and business transactions, including such trophy projects as development of the Warner Theatre Project in Washington, DC, development of Round Hill, VA (both relatively early in his career), and the recently completed 700k sf “Armature” mixed-use development in NOMA.
As his practice grew, Andy concentrated primarily on representing credit unions and other institutional lenders in upper mid-market commercial real estate and C & I lending transactions. Andy was heavily involved in workouts, special assets, and REO’s, especially during the financial crises of 1990 - 1995 and 2007 - 2008 (primarily on the lender side). That said, Andy derived particular fulfillment from occasionally using his lender/institutional side knowledge to help land rich-cash poor clients to reposition, develop or dispose of their real estate – an undertaking that inevitably requires empathy, strategic vision, intellectual curiosity, “out of the box” thinking, patience, and grit to produce successful outcomes. For many years, Andy ran a title company that handled complex commercial real estate transactions. Andy also represented one of the nation’s largest food brokers in a series of business acquisitions and two large private equity investment transactions.
Between 2016 and 2023 Andy divided his time between practicing law, law firm management (which, needless to say, was extremely challenging during the Covid-19 pandemic) and developing and leasing for his own account a prime tract of 11.5 acres of commercial zoned property on Route 1 in Beltsville, Maryland as a regional sales facility for Ryder, a 7-Eleven convenience store with gas pumps and a parking facility.
Although Andy regularly represented several credit unions and CUSO’s over the course of his career, his relationship with Lafayette Federal Credit Union (LFCU) has been unique. He started representing LFCU in 1989 - when LFCU was approximately 1/25th of its current asset size - and was LFCU’s outside General Counsel from 2008 until he retired as Managing Shareholder of Selzer, Gurvitch, Rabin, Wertheimer & Polott, PC (SGRW) at the end of 2023. Andy now serves as LFCU’s Senior Vice President/General Counsel, with special focus on succession planning for LFCU’s legal and risk management functions.
Andy holds an “AV” rating from Martindale-Hubbell. He is admitted to practice in Maryland and the District of Columbia. Although no longer a shareholder, Andy remains affiliated with SGRW as its General Counsel.
