HP needed to ensure that a prospective buyer of various clusters of buildings would have adequate utility service and appropriate access to the property without compromising HP’s own ability to operate or sell the rest of the campus. HP also wanted to keep its options open to be able to create a landowner’s co-op to whom it could turn over ownership of and responsibility for the roads and the common utility network in the future after portions of the campus were sold off.  

 

When the opportunity arose to sell 1.2 million square feet of buildings to the Lone Star College System, HP was keen to complete the transaction within less than a month, before the end of the fiscal quarter.

Working against a deadline that even HP felt was likely unattainable, Friedenberg and his team at Sherin and Lodgen negotiated the terms of the sale to Lone Star and drafted a 200 page cross-easement agreement dealing with 11 separate building services, as well as supply agreements for chilled water service and a new set of architectural and use restrictions.

 

With the assistance of local regulatory counsel, he also negotiated agreements for the continued supply of high-voltage electricity through the privately-owned electrical transmission and distribution facilities to the buildings being sold so as to ensure that HP remained in compliance with the requirements of Texas’ electricity deregulation statute.

 

Throughout the negotiations and closing, senior HP executives demanded daily progress updates and assessments of the probability of meeting the closing schedule.