Waterloo Region Consolidated Courthouse Project Reaches Financial Close

On March 1, 2010, the Ministry of the Attorney General and Infrastructure Ontario reached financial close with Integrated Team Solutions (ITS), their lenders, Bank of Montreal, National Bank of Canada, Laurentian Bank of Canada, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada and The Canada Life Assurance Company, with each of Bank of Montreal and CIT Financial Ltd. acting as agent during the term of the Project, to design, build, finance and maintain a new Waterloo Region Consolidated Courthouse. The ITS team for this project includes EllisDon Inc., LPF Infrastructure Fund and Fengate Capital Management Ltd., together with EllisDon Corporation providing construction services and SNC-Lavalin Operations & Maintenance Inc. as service provider.

After construction is completed, ITS will receive annual service payments from the Province over a 30-year period. Payments cover construction, building maintenance, lifecycle repair and renewal and project financing. The payments will total approximately $766 million after 30 years. In today's dollars this is equivalent to approximately $379 million.

The project is structured as a design-build-finance-maintain project and will be delivered under the provincial government of Ontario's Alternative Financing and Procurement (AFP) delivery model.

Infrastructure Ontario's legal team was led in-house by Simon Finlayson and Graham McLeod. Ogilvy Renault LLP acted as counsel to Infrastructure Ontario and the Ministry of the Attorney General in the structuring, procurement, negotiation and settlement of the project documents, with a team that included Merie-Anne Beavis, Sandra Nissan, Mary Kelly, Ciprian Gligor and Mark Bailey.

ITS was represented by McMillan LLP with a team that included Chris Bennett, Peter Willis, Robert Scavone, Shahen Mirakian, Valerie Garcia and Ken Bursey. LPF Infrastructure Fund and Fengate Capital Management Ltd. were also represented by Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP with a team that included Paul Harricks, Alan James, John Whyte and Rob Blackstein. The ITS team also included Jody Becker, General Counsel at EllisDon; Peter Schwartz of Harrison Pensa LLP and Kristen Wittman of Taylor McCaffrey LLP. SNC Operations & Maintenance Inc. was represented internally by Marni Dicker.

The consortium of lenders was represented by McCarthy Tétrault LLP with a team that included Byran Gibson, Sarah Bird, Morgan Troke and Samantha Cunliffe. Sun Life was also represented in-house by Sam Steel; Canada Life was also represented in-house by Bob Briercliffe.