Bill Harrison has been responsible for innovating and documenting complex commercial real estate transactions utilizing a wide variety of public-private partnership arrangements. He has crafted public-private transactions for a growing list of public and private sector members in the lodging industry, the sports industry, the entertainment industry and in higher education. He also has an in-depth understanding of complex structured financing arrangements in the field of tax-exempt finance, including municipal finance. He is frequently called upon by developers, municipalities and institutional lenders to help structure new projects. Mr. Harrison’s prior service as a member of Virginia Beach City Council (1994 to 2002) gives him a unique perspective in the planning of public-private partnerships. He has been successful in crafting such public-private joint ventures for municipal parking facilities, a 20,000 seat outdoor amphitheater, a soccer stadium, a TPC Golf Course, hotel and conference center projects, university facilities, performing arts facilities and public entertainment complexes. [Emphasis added.]
So brags Virginia Beach Mayor-elect Will Sessom’s guy-pal Bill Harrison, a former member of the Virginia Beach City Council, in the website bio for his law firm, Williams Mullen. This is the law firm where the infamous illegal Obama/Sessoms fliers were distributed during a Sessoms campaign training session.
Mr. Harrison is adept in the use of Virginia’s Public-Private Educational Facilities and Infrastructure Act of 2002 (PPEA) as a tool to bring private sector expertise to bear on public projects—saving time and money. He has also structured public-private transactions involving the formation of special tax districts and tax increment finance districts by municipalities to provide revenue streams necessary to support the debt service on the public sector’s leveraged investment. He has been involved in the formation of Community Development Authorities as a means of providing additional revenues to assist in the financing of the development of infrastructure improvements associated with public-private mixed-use projects.
What Bill’s glowing bio fails to mention is that some of the listed projects were planned while he was on council, and some while he was in private law practice. Some were just in the planning stages, then executed once the “right” people got into position to make sure that other right people would profit. It’s so hard to keep it all straight, what with public-private partnerships getting so complex, you know?
Coincidentally, Bill’s pal Will Sessoms is a President at Towne Bank, which has a branch located smack in the Town Center, a special tax district public-private partnership. Will came to Towne Bank after he left the Vice Mayor job and, again coincidentally, after Towne Bank handled financing for the 31st Street Hotel public-private partnership. You remember, the hotel we helped build after voters told Council in a referendum that we wanted a park?
If it’s good for Williams Mullen, and good for Towne Bank, and good for Will and Bill, then it MUST be good for Virginia Beach, by definition, right?
Filed under: Local, Will Sessoms | Tagged: Hampton Roads, Will Sessoms
