Public-Private Partnerships

Williams Mullen’s Public-Private Partnership (P3) Team works with clients to identify and facilitate opportunities that build on the common ground shared by business goals and public policy objectives. Our experience in crafting successful partnerships spans a wide variety of projects and industries. With a thorough understanding of legal, financial and competitive influences, the Team assists clients in developing innovative ways to accelerate project delivery, mitigate risk and maximize return.

Williams Mullen’s Public-Private Partnership (P3) Team works with clients to identify and facilitate opportunities that build on the common ground shared by business goals and public policy objectives. Our experience in crafting successful partnerships spans a wide variety of projects and industries. With a thorough understanding of legal, financial and competitive influences, the Team assists clients in developing innovative ways to accelerate project delivery, mitigate risk and maximize return.

Our P3 Team is skilled and experienced in creating and implementing comprehensive solutions to match public- and private-sector goals, limitations and risk tolerances. A core group of P3 attorneys and professionals, drawing upon the broad resources of the firm's corporate, financial services, government relations, land use, public finance, real estate and tax practice groups, provide a cross-disciplinary team approach tailored to fit the needs of each public-private project.

P3 projects typically involve public bodies, infrastructure builders, private developers, and access to capital markets. Our P3 Team members are experienced in reconciling the differing objectives and perspectives of the various participants, for the most complex to the most straightforward project. The Team's history of successful projects ranges from highways to luxury hotels, and from education to sustainable energy. Contractual arrangements have involved joint ventures as well as design-build, construction management, and design-bid-build approaches, partnered with a wide variety of creative financing mechanisms and tax incentives. From the development of sophisticated capital, mezzanine and debt structures, to privatization, to project operations and maintenance, our P3 Team has the experience and resources to get the job done.

In Virginia, the firm has been extensively involved in dozens of P3 agreements and proposals under the Virginia Public-Private Education Facilities and Infrastructure Act of 2002 (PPEA) and the Virginia Public-Private Transportation Act of 1995 (PPTA). With respect to the PPEA, the firm’s lawyers were instrumental in drafting the Act, the Model Guidelines for public entities, and the Commonwealth of Virginia Guidelines and Procedures. In addition, Williams Mullen attorneys have lectured extensively on the PPEA and PPTA before legislative bodies, government officials, trade and professional associations and other lawyers.

Representative Experience

The following is a sampling of our Team's P3 experience:

• Counsel to the Southeastern Public Service Authority of Virginia in the $150 million privatization of its waste-to-energy facilities in Portsmouth, Va. 
• Developer’s counsel in establishing a public-private partnership with the Virginia Department of Transportation to advance the final design and construction of the Hawks Nest portion of the $2.6 billion, four-lane Coalfields Expressway. 
• Bond counsel and public-private partnership counsel to the Mason School of Business at the College of William & Mary in connection with development and design and $75 million financing of a new business school building, Alan B. Miller Hall. 
• Developer’s counsel in creation of a $70 million public-private partnership with the Warren County, Va., School Board for the design, financing and construction of two new high schools. 
• Counsel to the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in the procurement and negotiation of a public-private partnership arrangement for the Commonwealth’s water and wastewater facilities. 
• Developer’s counsel primarily responsible for creating the legal architecture for the public-private partnership with the City of Newport News, Va. Economic Development Authority for the development and financing of a full-service hotel and conference center. 
• Bond counsel and project counsel to the developer of a social services building in the City of Portsmouth, Va., involving a ground lease, a development agreement, and a tax-exempt lease financing arrangement issued by the City as a general obligation under Virginia’s Public Finance Act of 1991. 
• Developer’s counsel responsible for structuring a public-private partnership arrangement for development of a resort hotel and accompanying parking facility in Virginia Beach, Va. 
• Counsel to Hampton Roads Transit in crafting and negotiating a partnering agreement for the design and construction of a new $42 million transit operations and parking facility, with later phases to include a new administrative building along with private development. 
• Counsel to the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District in the planning, procurement and negotiation of a public-private partnership resulting in privatization of the District’s wastewater system.