Michelle R. Yarbrough Korb

Michelle is a Director in the Affordable Housing and Business Groups.  

Experience   

Michelle maintains a transactional practice that involves drafting and negotiating financing documents, site control and access documents, master development agreements governing long-term relationships between parties, agreements governing regulations associated with the use of public funds, procurement documents, and energy performance contracts.  She regularly advises clients from concept to closing on multi-million dollar development projects, including the formation and use of new entities, working with state and federal governmental agencies, and addressing compliance issues.

Michelle has extensive experience in affordable housing matters with an emphasis on mixed-finance project development, including the utilization of low-income housing tax credits, Federal programs including the Capital Fund Financing Program, Tax Credit Assistance Program and Section 1602 Exchange Program and programs offered by individual states as well as the Federal Home Loan Bank.  She has provided comments on proposed Federal and Pennsylvania affordable housing program regulations and guidance including active participation in HUD's process to issue PIH-2007-15, a notice regarding Applicability of Public Housing Development Requirements to Transactions between Public Housing Agencies and their Related Affiliates and Instrumentalities, including participating in a PHA Affiliates Roundtable discussion at HUD Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

Michelle joined Cohen & Grigsby in 2002 after serving as a summer associate at the firm in 2001.  Prior to joining Cohen & Grigsby, she was a legal writing teaching assistant in 2001-2002, legal writing research assistant in 2000-2001 and an extern to Judge Donald Ziegler in the U.S. District Court for the Third Circuit in the summer of 2002.

Prior to law school, she served as a member of the analytical chemistry support staff for the R.J. Lee Group Inc. in Monroeville in 1998-1999.

While studying at the University of Notre Dame, Michelle spent three semesters performing undergraduate research in the bioorganic chemistry laboratory of Dr. Bradley D. Smith.

Additional Roles

Michelle is a member of the Allegheny County Bar Association, the Pennsylvania Bar Association and the National Association of Housing & Redevelopment Organizations.

She is a graduate of Leadership Pittsburgh, Inc.'s Leadership Development Initiative (Class XVI) and Leadership On Board with the Allegheny County Bar Foundation.

She continues to serve the University of Pittsburgh School of Law by annually serving as a judge for first-year oral arguments.  She was the 2008 and 2009 Cohen & Grigsby associate representative for the Pitt Law Challenge.

She is a member of Cohen & Grigsby's Art Committee and Recruiting Committee.

Michelle is also a member of the Notre Dame Club of Pittsburgh.

Representative Presentations

• Presenter, "Rethinking our Neighborhood Structure and Implementing Revitalization," NAHRO Summer Conference

• Presenter, "Affiliated Entities - Fiduciary Liability Pitfalls," NAHRO Summer Conference

• Presenter, "Housing Authority Affiliates – Traps for the Unwary," Pennsylvania Association of Housing Redevelopment Agencies

• Presenter, "Structuring Effective Partnerships," Residential Initiatives for Maine and Local Initiatives Support Corp.

• Presenter, "Pledging Replacement Housing Factor Funds as Collateral for a Capital Fund Financing Loan," Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Fifth Maximizing Leverage Conference

• Presenter, "Making It Work:  Affordable Housing," Landlord-Tenant Law Seminar