MelissaVandewater

Melissa Vandewater has over 20 years of experience advising developers, investors, owners, tenants, and lenders in complex commercial real estate transactions. Melissa represents developers, operators, private equity firms, and investors with data center acquisition, development, and leasing across the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. Melissa has led some of the largest data center acquisition and leasing transactions over the past several years, and her experience includes master service agreements, service level agreements, powered-shell leases, electrical services agreements, tax incentives, and data center campus acquisition, development, and financing.

Prior to joining Jones Day, Melissa led a team of lawyers in the leasing and development of data center campuses to a hyperscaler tenant, including negotiation of build-to-suit leases, development agreements, and service level agreements involving over 1000 megawatts across the United States. She also negotiated and closed a data center operator's acquisition of approximately 57 acres of land in Loudoun County, Virginia, for development and operation of a new data center campus; represented the seller of a mixed-use development in Austin, Texas, in a complicated multimillion dollar transaction that included the sale of existing office buildings, vacant land, interests in parking garages, and partnership interests in developed and undeveloped parcels for office and residential uses; and was lead counsel to the developer of a high-end mixed-use project located near Phoenix.

Melissa has served as counsel to banks in loan transactions and has guided financial institutions through loan modifications, workouts, and real estate owned (REO) dispositions. She has negotiated and closed multimillion acquisitions and financings for banking institutions involving construction loans for condominiums, shopping centers, and senior housing facilities.