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Overview

With clients ranging from casinos and racinos to various hotels, restaurants, and other gaming and hospitality organizations across the country, Calfee attorneys are experienced at serving the unique business and legal needs of this regulated industry.

Calfee’s experience in the gaming and hospitality industry spans key practice areas, including construction, labor and employment, litigation, insurance coverage, commercial and public finance, mergers and acquisitions, commercial contracts, tax law, intellectual property, government relations and policy matters, licensing and rulemaking processes, and real estate transactions. Calfee attorneys serve our clients in a variety of ways, including supporting the launch and ongoing regulatory requirements of Ohio’s sports gaming industry, and serving as real estate counsel on leasing, property management, portfolio services, and related commercial arrangements. Together, these capabilities help gaming and hospitality clients address immediate operational needs while positioning their businesses for long-term success.

Professionals

Experience

Experience

Calfee's full-service approach ensures that we can support a variety of client needs in the gaming and hospitality industry.

Construction

  • Represented a private developer in the structuring, development and negotiation of the contract documents for a 300,000+ sq. ft. mixed-use development. The project was a design-bid-build delivery that included street-level retail, commercial office space, hotel space and 200+ residential units.
  • Represented a developer in the structuring, development and negotiation of contract documents for the $350 million+ project in Ohio, which included a stadium, recreational sporting complex, center for excellence and hotel.

Government Relations and Policy

  • Serving as the representative in Ohio in all government-related matters for a gaming company client. An important recent matter was advocacy in the state's biennial operating budget bill, Ohio House Bill 33. The operating budget bill is Ohio's most important policy bill of the two-year session and contains a multitude of provisions that impact the gaming industry. Along with other industry lobbyists, we advocated for or against the inclusion of gaming provisions during the House, Senate, and Conference Committee phases of the legislative process.
  • Counseled a client through the rulemaking and licensing processes in the state for the inaugural launch of Ohio's new sports gaming industry. We worked with the client to successfully submit their licensing application and addressed regulatory questions posed by regulators throughout the submittal and license review process. During the process, we frequently added productive comments and proposed revisions to the state rule package to create a competitive and safe marketplace for operators and customers. The client and its individual licensees received their licenses and were able to open by the universal start date. We continue to provide counsel on regulatory issues for the client.

Public Finance

  • Representing a port authority in an approximately $50 million tax-exempt bond financing of the acquisition of a convention center hotel.

Real Estate

  • Serving as lead real estate counsel to a gaming and hospitality client. Calfee provides real estate portfolio services to the client relating to its historical office tower in the Midwest. Specifically, we negotiated and documented the client's engagement with an international real estate company for leasing/marketing services and property management services. We represented the client as the landlord in connection with leases of office space by two unrelated Fortune 1000 companies.
  • Represent a hospitality and gaming client and its family of companies in connection with a host of real estate transactions including the refinancing of more than $1 billion in syndicated, secured financing, the acquisition of a trio of central business district buildings including a historic structure that will be rehabilitated with historic tax credits and private financing resources, and retail leases for nationally franchised restaurants. Also assisting the client with tax increment financing for the development of the trio of buildings.
  • Worked with a private, member-owned sport and social club client on the negotiation and consummation of a purchase agreement that resulted in the assignment to a third-party investor of the client's interests in three separate Option, Lease, Easement and License Agreements historically entered into with three different cell phone providers having communications equipment and antennae located on and surrounding the client's water tower. An additional easement agreement memorializing the arrangement between the parties was also negotiated and recorded at closing.
  • Served as local counsel to a joint-venture hospitality client to solve zoning, entitlements, and title issues, as well as ground lease and parking rights assumption issues associated with a local hotel acquisition; and a hospitality joint venture in connection with the acquisition and financing for the redevelopment of a downtown hotel property. Counseled the client on mortgages and subordination and inter-creditor agreements to address priority and security issues between public and private lenders and international investment fund investors.
  • Represented an entrepreneurial client on the purchase, financing, redevelopment and, ultimately, the sale of a boutique hotel property.
  • Represented a private developer in a $45 million historic rehabilitation project involving the mixed-use redevelopment of a 120+-room hotel and 50+ luxury residential units. The project utilized federal and state historic tax credits. Assisted with all aspects of satisfying the requirements of the federal and state historic tax credit investors.

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