Infrastructure and Major Development

When embarking on a public private partnership or complex infrastructure project, you need counsel that approaches opportunities holistically. Our team integrates experience across the firm’s government relations, public finance, real estate, tax, and construction teams to plan, manage, and complete projects. Our counsel spans projects valued in the hundreds of millions to several billion dollars, encompassing industrial parks, stadiums, power plants, and mega-scale urban redevelopments. Additionally, we counsel energy production, transmission facilities or transportation facilities to satisfy overlapping local, state, and federal regulatory requirements.

Our team proactively monitors legal, legislative, and regulatory developments that apply to any given transaction. And when appropriate, we provide direct access to the firm’s government solutions leaders, who know how the changing laws and regulations may positively affect the outcome of their investments. This kind of support across our firm gives clients exactly what they need to mitigate risk, secure processes, and build successful projects.

We bring together environmental, regulatory, and transactional insight to help clients navigate complex, high-stakes projects.

Relevant Experience

• Negotiating project incentive packages for industries developing infrastructure and other large-scale production facilities with the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and Texas.
• Securing necessary federal, state, and local permits and approvals for public-private partnerships and other infrastructure-related financing transactions.
• Negotiating approval to locate a baseball stadium and public roadways on a closed licensed landfill.
• Negotiating environmental investigation and closure protocols on a 400-acre urban land assembly and redevelopment.
• Providing advice to clients on federal and state laws impacting highway and other infrastructure projects, including pipeline and electric transmission projects, concerning environmental matters, including Section 10, Section 404, the Federal Highway Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act, and other applicable requirements.
• Acquiring necessary property rights for highway right of way and other infrastructure projects requiring eminent domain.
• Advising clients regarding environmental and regulatory concerns relating to the construction and operation of renewable energy projects including biomass, solar and wind energy, including providing due diligence to lenders and tax equity investors for more than one hundred solar installations and numerous wind farms, which also included an evaluation of the need for and completeness of efforts to obtain relevant federal, state, and local approvals.
• Advising clients on global strategies regarding regulatory approvals for manufacturing plants, port facilities, subsurface mines, fuel storage and pipeline infrastructure, power plants and transmission infrastructure, solar farms, hydroelectric projects, and district cooling systems.
• Negotiation with ENGOs regarding environmental commitments related to proposed projects.
• Represented a hospital system in the evaluation and mitigation of an environmental risk in acquisition and redevelopment of a contaminated property.
• Represented major national homebuilder in the investigation of and response to reports of depressions or “sinkholes” that reportedly formed in the vicinity of the project in development. Representation included development of strategy for dealing with potential restrictions on government approvals, responding to press and homeowner inquiries, and resuming work at the site while limiting risk to company and project.