Redevelopment Agency Financing

Orrick served as bond counsel in the first California tax allocation bond issue ever sold (Redevelopment Agency of the City of Sacramento Capitol Mall Project) and has continued to occupy a prominent position in that practice area. Our Redevelopment Agency Financing Group has been able to adapt the tax increment process for use in a variety of situations, some of which are outlined below:

• Our firm created the "escrow bond" structure, which allows agencies to sell bonds in anticipation of future increases in assessed valuation. This technique avoids the weaknesses found in high interest bond anticipation note financings and drastically reduces issuance costs that would be incurred in multiple financings. It is now in common use throughout the State.
• Tax allocations payable under a repayment contract between the City of San Jose and its Redevelopment Agency saved San Jose Civic Improvement Authority lease revenue bonds from default when an uninsured catastrophe struck the San Jose Performing Arts Center. In this situation, Orrick attorneys pioneered the use of tax allocation repayment contracts to offset lease rentals securing redevelopment agency lease revenue bonds long before express authorization appeared in the Community Redevelopment Law.
• Orrick drafted and sponsored California legislation that facilitates capital appreciation and variable rate tax allocation bonds. This legislation was essential to the success of a $140 million lease revenue bond convention center financing for the Redevelopment Agency of the City and County of San Francisco which was also the largest deep discount municipal bond issue ever sold.
• Orrick also drafted and sponsored the legislation that permits tax allocation bonds to be sold through negotiated sale.

Orrick has engineered a number of approaches to enable agencies to comply and leverage (through the issuance of bonds) their housing set-aside payments.

While Orrick's experience in redevelopment agency financing is heavily concentrated in California, we have also served as bond counsel for non-California issuers as diverse as the City of Reno, Nevada and the City of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Since 1985, we have worked on 235 financings totaling more than $7 billion for such projects as:

• Antioch (downtown area)
• Concord historical downtown
• Long Beach downtown and westside projects
• Minneapolis (MN), Hennepin County (refunding of tax increment bonds)
• Monterey Community Center and Park
• Pasadena downtown project
• Pinole (Pinole Vista Redevelopment Project)
• Rancho Mirage (City Hall project)
• Redding (Canby-Hilltop-Cypress Redevelopment Project)
• Reno (NV) downtown redevelopment project
• San Francisco Yerba Buena Center
• San Francisco George R. Moscone Convention Center
• San Mateo (Shoreline Redevelopment project area)
• Santa Ana Main Street project
• Santa Barbara Central City project
• Santa Clara's Great America Theme Park
• Santa Monica Ocean Park project
• Shasta County (Shasta County area development project)
• South Tahoe (CA) redevelopment project
• Sparks (NV) downtown redevelopment project
• Sunnyvale central core project
• Watsonville central downtown project
• Windsor (various capital improvements)