Community Development, Affordable Housing & Headquarters Relocation

Headquarters Relocation

Stites & Harbison is well-situated to advise business enterprises wishing to relocate or expand in Tennessee, Georgia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. Our firm's lawyers are strategically located in Tennessee's largest metropolitan area, Kentucky's two largest cities, in the state capitals of Tennessee, Georgia, and Kentucky, and in the heart of southern Indiana's rapidly expanding business corridor.

Among other services, our firm can help clients:

• Structure joint ventures between domestic firms and foreign enterprises
• Negotiate with state and local governments concerning relocation incentives
• Draft economic development-related legislation and constitutional amendments
• Assemble land for industrial sites on a confidential basis
• Structure and participate in governmental and tax-exempt financing directed toward economic development and expansion

We understand Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky and Indiana incentive programs offering training assistance, municipal property tax abatement and other relocation assistance. The firm also assists clients in negotiating low-interest loans from the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority.

Community Development/Affordable Housing/Neighborhood Revitalization

Stites & Harbison prides itself on the breadth and depth of its neighborhood revitalization experience, particularly in the area of affordable housing. Over the past 25 years, our real estate attorneys have represented owners, developers, and institutional lenders involved in commercial, residential and mixed-use projects in Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and other states in the region. Transactions have ranged from traditional construction and permanent financing to credit enhancement, low-income and historic tax credit financing, tax increment financing, bond financing, and securitization of loans.

Two recent examples of this experience include the Laurel House development in Nashville and the Park DuValle development in Louisville.

• The Laurel House project involved rehabilitation of an existing warehouse into retail and office space with new construction of 48 units of affordable housing above this space. The firm's services for the Laurel House development have included land acquisition, the tax-credit application process, closing on the land acquisition, tax increment financing, and construction loans, and, most recently, closing on the equity contribution and HUD-insured permanent financing.
• The Park DuValle involved representing a local housing authority in connection with a neighborhood revitalization project under the Hope VI program to create 1,500 new HUD-financed housing units. We also represented a consortium of commercial lenders in the revitalization financing of Louisville's Village West low- income housing project.

Other projects of which we're particularly proud include:

• Kentucky Broad Street Portfolio Project, Louisville
• Uptown Square at Lindberg Station, Atlanta
• Healey Building, Atlanta
• Historic Scottish Rite, Decatur, Ga.
• Phoenix Place Apartments, Louisville