Dykema Team Led by Laura Weingartner Helps Seminole Financial Services Complete $88 Million Deal

Laura A. Weingartner, Detroit-based member of Dykema’s Real Estate and Commercial Lending groups, whose practice focuses on complex commercial real estate transactions, including renewable and alternative energy lending and project finance, as well as commercial leasing, acquisitions, dispositions, project siting and zoning, and affordable housing development, led a team of Dykema attorneys in helping Seminole Financial Services—a national leader in providing funding for Renewable Energy projects—finalize an $88 million deal that provides construction and permanent financing to Clean Focus Corporation for the development and operation of nine solar projects in Massachusetts.

The $88 million arrangement—which consists of more than $59 million in construction lending and an additional $29 million in permanent debt financing—enables Clean Focus to build nine ground-mounted solar facilities throughout Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. When completed, these solar facilities will deliver combined annual energy production in excess of 28 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year.

The deal is doubly beneficial in that it not only provides a clean source of alternative energy to these communities, but converts “brownfield” closed landfills—widely viewed as a “cost burden” to municipalities—to highly productive use.

The team led by Weingartner that assisted Seminole in bringing this deal to completion included: