There were some doubters about the CapX2020 Transmission Expansion Initiative, a series of five joint ventures to install new electricity transmission lines throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas, when Nixon Peabody partners William Andrews and Lori Green signed on as project counsel in late 2008. Instead of the typical two or three participants, the $1.7 billion, 700-mile project involved 11, making it an unprecedented undertaking in the transmission industry.
“There was lots of skepticism about whether you could get that many entities to work together,” says Andrews, a project finance partner in Washington, D.C. He and Green, a corporate partner based in Rochester, New York, quieted the cynics in July 2010, when the first of the ventures closed after receiving the required permits. The second venture received its permits four months later. Two more lines are expected to receive their permits in 2011, and the fifth one in 2012.
