The Team

Principal & Founder

Lena Mik

Practice Focus: Comprehensive Policy · Zoning & Regulatory Systems · Hillside & Environmental Planning

Lena Mik is an urban planner with over a decade of experience in land use policy, regulatory planning, and comprehensive plan development. At the City of Los Angeles Department of City Planning, she helped lead the development of the general plan update, growth strategy the Open Space, Conservation, Mobility and Safety Elements. She also played a central role in the City's multi-year zoning code modernization, developing form-based and district-based standards for multiple community plan areas.

Her work spans the full arc of the regulatory process, from citywide policy frameworks and general plan elements to the development standards and environmental review processes that translate those policies into implementable regulation. She has particular expertise in hillside and terrain-responsive development standards, including slope-based density controls, ridgeline protection, and the integration of habitat and fire safety requirements into zoning frameworks.

Master of Urban Planning, New York University

Principal

Alex Heath

Practice Focus: Housing Policy · Urban Districts · Growth & Implementation Strategy

Alex Heath is an urban planner with extensive experience in district-scale planning, zoning implementation, and housing policy. At the City of Los Angeles, Alex served as a lead code writer for the city's multi-year zoning code modernization, contributing to new form-based, district-based standards for residential, mixed-use, commercial, and industrial contexts. Alex brings demonstrated technical expertise in translating planning vision into regulatory frameworks that can actually be implemented, codes that are legible to residents, workable for staff, and grounded in how places actually function.

Master of Science, Regional and Urban Planning, London School of Economics

Principal

Maxfield Vermy

Practice Focus: Zoning Implementation · Development Feasibility · Regulatory Compliance

Maxfield Vermy is a planner with broad experience in zoning code implementation, project entitlement, and development feasibility. He brings a project-level understanding of how regulatory frameworks function in practice, including where standards create unintended barriers and where they can be refined to produce better outcomes. His entitlements background makes him particularly effective for clients navigating complex permitting processes or evaluating project viability under existing or proposed regulations.

Maxfield has worked closely with city attorneys on finalizing zoning code language for regulatory compliance, giving him a precise understanding of how policy intent translates into enforceable standards and where ambiguity in code language creates legal exposure. That experience informs both his analytical work and his approach to drafting regulatory documents that are legally sound, internally consistent, and implementable by staff.

Master of Urban Planning, California State Northridge

Architect

Dan Carlson

Practice Focus: Urban Design · Form-Based Standards · Complex & Hillside Sites

Dan Carlson is an architect and urban designer with broad experience spanning hillside development, urban infill, and complex specialty projects, including resort and destination-scale development. His practice bridges architectural design, urban form, and regulatory frameworks , bringing a designer's eye to the problem of how regulation shapes the built environment.

Dan's focus is the translation layer: ensuring that regulatory standards don't just describe what can be built, but that they produce built environments that actually work for the people who inhabit them.

Master of Architecture, Harvard University

Principal

Brittany Arceneaux

Practice Focus: Community Plans · General Plans · CEQA Strategy · Development Feasibility · Public–Private Interface

Brittany Arceneaux is an urban planner and real estate professional with over a decade of public sector planning experience. At the City of Los Angeles Department of City Planning, she led the preparation and adoption of the Downtown Community Plan (DTLA 2040), a comprehensive update integrating land use, housing, mobility, and urban design policy across one of the city's most active urban districts. The effort involved the rezoning of more than 17,000 parcels, oversight of more than $2 million in consultant contracts spanning environmental review, economic analysis, urban design, and transportation, and a public engagement program that reached over 10,000 stakeholders. The plan received unanimous approval from the City Planning Commission and City Council, and was recognized with an APA Award of Excellence.

A significant component of that work was the industrial land transition strategy she developed for Downtown's historic Fashion District and Arts District, areas navigating the same tension between legacy industrial use and evolving mixed-use demand that characterizes many of today's most complex general plan update contexts. She designed hybrid Industrial Mixed-Use zone classifications and Industrial Transition overlays that gave property owners, existing businesses, and prospective developers a clear and equitable framework for managing change over time, balancing continued industrial operations with the phased introduction of residential, creative, live/work, and retail uses. She also developed the City's first incentive zoning program, including a Transfer of Development Rights system and Development Trust Fund.

She built and directed an in-house planning team across the full project lifecycle, from early policy development through public hearings, commission review, and council adoption, giving her a practitioner's understanding of what it takes to move a complex plan from inception to implementation.

Brittany now works at the intersection of public planning and private development. As lead project manager for the Los Angeles County General Hospital Campus Master Plan and Subsequent Environmental Impact Report at Primestor, she is directing a large-scale, multi-decade programmatic redevelopment effort, managing multidisciplinary consultant teams across CEQA, transportation, infrastructure, and economics, and integrating land use, environmental review, and financing strategy into a single planning framework.

She holds a Master in Real Estate from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, a Bachelor of Science in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of New Orleans, and a Geographic Information Systems Professional (GISP) certification. She is a co-author of Advancing Equity Planning Now (Cornell University Press), a member of the Urban Land Institute's Mobility Council, a Goldie Initiative Scholar, and an Advisor to CityBldr AI.

Master's Degree in Real Estate, Harvard University