213-741-1500, ext. 430
Tina specializes in government and entitlement advocacy and consulting, guiding and counseling clients through the convoluted development and entitlement approval processes. Tina acts as the interface with political entities, development and construction related agencies and community organizations. Current and prior clients include Westfield Shopping Center Development, Vulcan Paul Allen, McDonalds, CVS, Crescent Heights Development, Century Plaza Hotel Development, Gilmore Development, La Terra Development, TAO entertainment Group, Umami Burgers, Marriott Hotels, Capitol Records/EMI, SBE Hotel/Nightlife/Restaurant Group, Gerding Edlen/South Group Development, Equinox Fitness, NASCAR/Turner Sports Interactive, EA Electronic Arts, Mani Brothers, Famima Convenience Stores, Chick-Fil-A Restaurants, Maguire Properties, CIM Development Group, Sushi Roku/Innovative dining group, Lennar, Warmington Homes, Gerding/Edlen Development, SBE/Phillipe Starck Development, Shinyong, Conquest Student Housing Development and Accord Interests. Project profiles include high rise mixed-use residential, hotels and restaurants and industrial park developments.
Tina served as a senior economic development deputy and Director of International Trade where she succeeded in achieving important retention and attraction of significant businesses for the City of LA, including the retention of Toyota Motor Sales, Viking Office Products, Steelcase Office and Belken Computers in the City of Los Angeles.
In addition to her professional career, Tina served as either board member or advisor to a diverse group of nonprofit, community and trade associations. Current and past affiliations include the Ketchum Downtown YMCA, Jr Achievements, USC IBEAR, Korean American Coalition, Trade Advisory Committee to the City of Los Angeles, World Trade Center Association, Foreign Trade Association and the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, Equality CA and has served as an Area Planning Commissioner in an appointed capacity for Mayor James Hahn. She currently serves as the Vice-Chair of Sister City of Los Angeles, the largest Sister City diplomatic organization in the Country.
Tina is a decorated search and rescue Ski Patroller as part of National Ski Patrol, received her degree in political economics from the University of California at Berkeley. She’s an immigrant from South Korea and a long-time resident of Los Angeles.
LaTerra Development is a leading real estate investment management and development company with a portfolio value at completion estimated to exceed $3 billion and overseeing more than $1.5 billion in committed equity throughout the United States, Canada and Australia. Our success in the Los Angeles and Southern California region in part is due to our strong working relationship with Tina Choi, Partner at EKA. LaTerra specifically sought out Tina for her extensive experience in navigating the myriad of permitting, plan check and inspection requirements one must manage, to be successful.
Tina’s 30+ years of working closely with development and regulatory agencies, enabled her to leverage the valuable long term relationships with senior staff of these regulatory agencies, in securing agency permitting and code determinations on an expedited timeline, but also enabled us to secure various discretionary approvals which would not have been possible without her skillset and networking resources.
Working closely with our technical team of architects, engineers, and general contractors, Tina has played a significant role in proactively identifying and solving important ongoing issues with Building and Safety, Public Works, Transportation, Water and Power as well as other regulatory agencies. This unique quality has been critical to the success of many of our projects; saving time and millions in cost.
Tina is also unique in other skillsets allowing her to actively contribute from the earliest stages of a project’s timeline. This includes the due diligence, entitlements, plan check, permitting and inspection phases of our projects, thus providing true A-Z comprehensive concierge services. This type of comprehensive and consistent service ensures that we meet our project completion and occupancy dates on a reliable and predictable timeframe.
We know of no other consultant who provides this level of service – from the beginning of our entitlement phase to the final inspection phase. Her tenacity and ingenuity in finding solutions to significant regulatory challenges consistently encountered in our various projects, is extraordinary.
She moves between plan check issues with engineers,including onsite visits with our General Contractors and Subcontractors while negotiating solutions with City inspectors to move us through rough and final inspections , troubleshooting as needed to get us to our Occupancy approval expeditiously. She is adept in intervening with any and all agencies imposing regulatory requirements and is adaptive , creative and effective in efficient solutions to get us to our opening date. In short, Tina is the “fixer.”
I can genuinely recommend Tina. Her ingenuity, tenacity, vast network of contacts in the regulatory agencies and a consistent commitment to keep projects on schedule, has been invaluable to the LaTerra Team.
Charles Tourtellotte
CEO
LaTerra Development, LLC
Sarah Kim is a Project Manager managing a high-volume workload of land use clients to consistently deliver projects and approvals on schedule in fast-moving, highly regulated, and politically complex environments. She works closely with Tina Choi to execute multi-regulatory agency strategy, permit coordination and approvals, and government and community advocacy for a diverse portfolio of projects across Los Angeles and Los Angeles County. Sarah’s effectiveness in this role is reinforced by more than 15 years of senior leadership experience in the hospitality industry, where she planned, opened, and operated large-scale, high-volume venues and productions in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
At the core of Sarah’s work is rigorous advance preparation, thorough investigative research, and strategic planning with Tina tailored to each project’s objectives. She conducts deep analysis of building permits and plans, entitlement histories, enforcement records, code requirements, and agency jurisdictional overlap to anticipate challenges, mitigate risk, and position projects for success. This research-driven approach enables her to serve as the central point of integration for all project information, ensuring alignment across permitting, task management, and consultant and multi-agency coordination, develop impactful presentations to strengthen advocacy efforts, and move projects efficiently through approval processes under tight timelines—skills directly informed by years of managing complex openings, large staffs, and real-time operational decision-making in high pressure environments.
Sarah supports projects ranging from small businesses to major developments across a multitude of disciplines, including family-owned and multi-unit corporate hospitality ventures, high-rises, mixed-use developments, large-scale residential projects, and multi-tenant retail developments. Her experience includes high-profile work for clients such as La Terra Development, Westfield, In-N-Out, Hilton Hotels, Equinox, AMAN, and Chick-fil-A, coordinating closely with Tina Choi, regulatory and political agencies to deliver approvals from entitlement through construction and Certificate of Occupancy. In Las Vegas and Los Angeles, she played integral roles in hospitality, hotel and nightlife operations such as The Cosmopolitan, TAO Group and sbe supporting large convention-driven attendance and peak-demand events, managing environments with tens of thousands of concurrent visitors, high-density crowd flow, complex staffing logistics, and heightened public safety considerations.
In high-pressure and politically sensitive situations, Sarah serves as a trusted Project Manager to clients navigating uncertainty and operational challenges. Working in close partnership with Tina Choi, she brings a steady, strategic perspective—assessing risk, anticipating regulatory and political dynamics, and collaborating in thoughtful positioning to support long-term project objectives. By translating complex regulatory and operational landscapes into clear, actionable guidance, Sarah helps clients make informed decisions, maintain momentum, and achieve timely, durable outcomes. Her combined background in hospitality operations, large-scale event execution and land use related projects uniquely positions her to support complex, high-profile projects and productions operating at regional, national, and global scale.