In Memoriam - David Madway
It is with great sadness that I bring you the news of the passing of David Madway, an attorney with a distinguished career and a former LAI Member of the Year. We will miss him. Our own Jesse Smith has prepared the tribute to David below.
David passed away peacefully on June 27, 2021 after a short illness. He was 81 years old.
David was a true mensch. Some of his fellow LAI members reflected on what he meant to them and the community. “David was one of the most decent, intelligent, humane, and incorruptible people I ever met, a model for all of us,” wrote Mike Wilmar. “It was a pleasure to have been able to practice with him and to share the Lambda Alpha [Member of the Year] award with him and Bob, one of the highlights of my life.”
Pam Duffy remarked, “I was just thinking what I would say if someone asked me why he meant so much—it comes out stilted. I think that’s perhaps because his reach was so broad and he was so interested and interesting.”
Jesse Smith wrote, “David was a giant in every sense. He was more than I could ever ask for in a mentor, colleague and dear friend. He had an indomitable spirit, terrific judgment and smarts, wide-ranging knowledge and inquisitiveness, a command of literature and language, a great sense of humor, and a kind and generous heart. What you saw was what you got—he was always authentic and spoke his mind. Independent, self-assured and courageous and at the same time modest, self-aware and highly principled. The world is much diminished without David in it.” And Amy Neches added, “David was an amazing human—so smart, kind, funny, creative, warm—yes giant is the right word...He did so much for so many—his family, so many friends, and his community.”
Neil Sekhri commented, “He was such a remarkable attorney and interesting guy. I used to see him at almost every classical concert I attended (which was a lot) and his knowledge of classical music was encyclopedic.”
David was formerly Senior Counsel with the law firm Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton. In recognition of his considerable accomplishments, David, along with colleagues Bob Thompson and Mike Wilmar, received the coveted LAI Golden Gate Member of Year award in 2009. At Sheppard Mullin David handled public/private real estate, real estate financing and development entitlement matters. His practice emphasized development transactions with a significant public component, such as transactions with redevelopment agencies, government ownership or assembly of development parcels, public financing of infrastructure components of projects, military base closure and redevelopment projects, transit oriented development projects, mixed public/private development, cross subsidies and related matters. David had extensive experience in transactions involving affordable housing, and also represented units of local government and developers of electric generating facilities on local land use and related issues.
Before joining Sheppard, Mullin, Richter and Hampton, David spent nearly ten years as the general counsel of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency. He advised the Agency and helped structure and lead negotiations in complex transactions involving disposition and development agreements, owner participation agreements, ground leases and public financing for retail, commercial, office, entertainment and residential development, and affordable housing. Those transactions included the San Francisco Giants' baseball stadium at China Basin, the public and cultural facilities in Yerba Buena Gardens and a new headquarters office building for The Gap, Inc. He also managed the legal aspects of establishing development entitlements—in the form of redevelopment plans—for major projects in San Francisco. Some of David’s more significant public/private partnership projects include Mission Bay, the Westfield/Bloomingdale's shopping center, and the redevelopment of the Hunters Point Shipyard.
His professional accomplishments in real estate locally, state-wide and even globally were impressive. In addition to being selected as an LAI Member of the Year, David was an appointee of the California Governor to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, where he was active in the drafting of the Uniform Land Transactions Act and the Uniform Condominium Act, and a faculty member of the ALI-ABA Condominium Conversion Program. He was a consultant to California's Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, where he helped draft legislation establishing the California Housing Finance Agency.
David also served as a consultant to the World Bank and the U.S. Agency for International Development, where he advised the governments of India and Pakistan on establishing a legal framework for modern mortgage lending, on the development of a mortgage insurance program, and on the creation of a secondary mortgage market. He advised the Government of Mongolia on the conversion of its state-owned stock of apartments to tenant ownership, and the governments of six Russian cities on the disposition of publicly-owned land for private development.
Earlier in his career David served as a director at the National Housing and Economic Development Law Project, Earl Warren Legal Institute at U.C. Berkeley.
David received a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1964 and a B.A. from Earlham College in 1961. He was born on July 23, 1939 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
David was incredibly well-read. His favorite poem was Of Mere Being, by Wallace Stevens. That poem, which seems fitting here, reads:
The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor,
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.
You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.
The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.