Infrastructure and Major Development

Foley’s Environmental and Energy lawyers guide private and public clients in complex infrastructure and public-private projects. Our approach to these major real estate development initiatives integrates experience across the firm’s government relations, public finance, real estate, tax, and construction teams to holistically plan, manage and complete projects. Our counsel spans projects valued in the hundreds of millions to several billions in 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 has sophisticated private and public project knowledge and the accompanying skills to facilitate the best possible pathways to completion. The commonality across our clients’ projects is that the environmental and regulatory issues are complicated and public sector involvement can be critical to success.

Our clients involved in these projects always benefit from the first-hand insight we accumulate through handling so many of these initiatives. We proactively monitor 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 full-bodied support gives clients exactly what they need to be mitigate risk, secure processes, and build successful projects.

Relevant Experience

Negotiating project incentive packages for industries developing infrastructure and other large-scale production facilities with the State of Wisconsin, the State of Michigan, the State of Illinois, and the State of 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.