The Firm

Established in 1990, Trish Cooper & Associates LLC provides a broad range of consulting services related to construction permitting and the acquisition of other approvals, permits and waivers in the District of Columbia (and is now positioned to expand its offerings into Maryland). The Firm’s founder, Trish Cooper, has an extensive background in environmental affairs, as well as land use and planning in both the private and public sectors. 

Under Trish’s stewardship, for nearly two decades the Firm has provided its services to a variety of developers, architects, construction companies and other building industry professionals, and has directly contributed to the development of several million square feet of commercial real estate in D.C.  The Firm’s client roster includes the Archstone-Smith Trust, Bovis Lend Lease, Broadcast Residential Partners, LLC, Clark Construction Group, LLC, Clark/Smoot J.V., Devereaux & Purnell Architects, Esocoff & Associates|architects, Einhorn Yaffee Prescott Architecture & Engineering, P.C., Gilbane Inc., Hitt Contracting, Inc., The JBG Companies, MRP Realty, Penzance Companies and Zuckerman Gravely Management, Inc.

Trish Cooper

Trish Cooper founded the Firm nearly twenty years ago to leverage her vast experience in both the public and private sectors through providing high quality service to her architectural, engineering and construction customers. During that time her work has included the facilitation of  construction permits for renovation and new construction projects, securing sidewalk café, occupancy and business licenses for restaurants and other commercial facilities, functioning as owners’ liaison between all agencies tasked with approving plans for public and private space permits in D.C., and coordinating the planning and assessment process between D.C. government reviewers and private development teams.

In building the Firm, Trish has utilized her significant experience as Program Manager and Chief of the Permit Processing Division in the Washington, D.C. Department of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs, where, for more than five years, her staff of forty engineers, architects and technicians reviewed and approved commercial and residential projects built on private property within D.C. Trish also has built on her work consulting for the Land Use Section/Real Estate Division of a large national law firm. She was responsible for development plan/review permit matters and real estate transactions for the firm. Trish also directed and monitored building code interpretations, historic preservation reviews, occupancy certificates, zoning plan reviews and issuance of all construction permits for that law firm’s clients.

Cecil McCarthy

Cecil McCarthy has an extensive financial and accounting background, including demonstrated accomplishments in risk mitigation and compliance efforts, strong cost containment discipline, and a lengthy track record of successfully managing vendor relationships.

Cecil has been charged with expanding the reach of the Firm’s offerings into Maryland, emphasizing energy auditing and remediation in the commercial, public and residential sectors, as well as the Firm’s business offerings in the area of sustainable design consulting services. He is currently studying to sit his accreditation examination sponsored by the U.S. Green Building Council, at the conclusion of which he will obtain his LEED AP credential. At that point he will be qualified to participate on design/build teams and guide project compliance with the Council’s site development and building performance standards referred to under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards.

Prior to joining the Firm, Cecil was a 19-year veteran of a large secondary mortgage market company, during which time he was responsible for managing budgets, calculating and placing funds to make billions of dollars in monthly payments on mortgage backed securities, reconciling monthly cash receipts from lenders, acquiring data to build and fine-tune credit models, and overseeing document custodian compliance with policies and procedures of this Fortune 100 company.

John Richards

John Richards is also charged with expanding the Firm’s offerings into the Maryland marketplace, and with broadening those offerings to include sustainable design consulting services. He has more than 15 years of transactional experience as an in-house attorney with a large, Washington, D.C.-based diversified financial services company, where his practice focused on information technology, electronic commerce and electronic transactions matters. He was recently accredited by the U.S. Green Building Council as a LEED AP, which qualifies him to participate on design/build teams primarily to guide project compliance with the Council’s site development and building performance standards referred to under the general rubric of LEED. He is one of only 300 or so U.S. attorneys to have been awarded this prized credential.

John is a member of the District of Columbia Bar, including its Computer and Telecommunications Law, Intellectual Property Law, and Real Estate, Housing and Land Use Sections, as well as the American Bar Association, including its Business Law, Environment, Energy and Resources, Real Property, Trust and Estate Law and Science and Technology Sections. He also sits on the Science & Technology Section’s Clean Technology and Climate Change Committee, and the Business Law Section's Cyberspace Law Committee, where he has participated in that committee's Working Group on Transferability of Electronic Financial Assets.

Additionally, John is currently a member of the National Capital Region Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council and the Green Building Institute. He also sits on the board of directors of the Fannie Mae Federal Credit Union, and is a member of the Renewable Energy Committee of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Sustainability Working Group.