Eric Ruby joined Ascent in 2019 as a Southern California Senior Director based in the firm’s San Diego office. He specializes in land use entitlement and regulatory compliance and has more than 39 years of project experience in California and the western United States. Eric oversees the preparation of integrated entitlement strategies and planning/environmental documents for a variety of project types throughout Southern California.
Always looking for ways to increase efficiency and streamline the planning and environmental process, Eric develops approaches to guide clients and their projects through the complexities of California Planning and Zoning Law and CEQA to achieve project approval and environmental document certification. Recent long-running and challenging projects he managed include the World Logistics Center Master Plan EIR in Riverside County and the Saddleback Meadows Area Plan and EIR in Orange County. His repeat clients—the Counties of San Diego and Riverside, the City of Temecula, and private sector clients, among others—frequently convey praise and gratitude for Eric’s assistance with their projects.
His previous experience includes working for large and small planning and environmental consulting firms, as well as public developers. He seeks to balance his work among public and private sector clients so as to gain insight into what drives the local environment. Eric combines his long-standing ability to manage multidisciplinary project teams with an in-depth understanding of technical disciplines, including air quality, biological resources, cultural resources, noise, hydrology/water quality, traffic, and wildfire, to deliver easy-to-understand high-value project solutions and deliverables.
When not devoting his attentions to work-related activity, Eric enjoys spending time with his family, including his grandson, and purports to be a slightly better than average amateur photographer, barbecue chef, and sommelier. He and his wife, Kate, enjoy traveling throughout the United States and abroad, having recently visited Wales, France, Australia, and New Zealand. They spend as much time with their two daughters as they can, even though the younger one has resided in Amsterdam for the past 3 years. Those Amsterdam visits give Eric and Kate an opportunity to work on their urban biking skills.