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Daniel K. Wright II is a partner in the Business and Finance Department of Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP, resident in the Cleveland office. He received his law degree from CaseWestern ReserveUniversity in 1979 and his undergraduate degree, magna cum laude, from HillsdaleCollege in 1976. Following law school, he spent five years as counsel to First Union Real Estate Equity and Mortgage Investments, a New York Stock Exchange-listed real estate investment trust. From 1985 to 1996, he was Assistant General Counsel to DeBartolo Group in Youngstown, Ohio, then the largest owner/manager/developer of enclosed regional malls in the country. Prior to joining Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP he was a partner in the national law firm of Arter & Hadden LLP and chaired the Real Estate Practice Group in its Cleveland office. Wright's practice involves representation of a wide variety of clients including public and private companies, families and individuals, with an emphasis on business and real estate transactions, including real estate development and finance, design and construction, acquisitions, dispositions, exchanges, all types of leasing (including ground leasing), zoning and land use planning, joint ventures, public-private partnerships, environmental mitigation and remediation, loan workouts, management and property operations, and related litigation. While with DeBartolo, Mr. Wright was responsible for all legal work in connection with the development of eight regional and super regional shopping centers, as well as major mixed used projects adjacent to the Superdome in downtown New Orleans, Louisiana and on The Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas. In 1992, Mr. Wright led a team of eight DeBartolo attorneys in the restructuring and collateralization of over $4 Billion in secured and unsecured debt to 12 of the largest banks in the country. In 1994 Wright played a key role in the transfer of 52 regional and super regional malls and 11 community shopping centers as part of the formation of DeBartolo Realty Corporation, a New York Stock Exchange-listed real estate investment trust, in a transaction valued at over $1 billion. He is a nationally recognized authority on the development of shopping centers, office buildings, hotels and urban mixed use projects. Mr. Wright is a member of the International Council of Shopping Centers, the Urban Land Institute, and the American, Ohio and Cleveland Bar Associations, and currently serves on the International Council of Shopping Centers' Law Committee, which is composed of thirteen nationally prominent real estate lawyers with significant experience in the shopping center industry who advise the ICSC on legal matters of interest to its membership. He is also a member of the editorial board of Shopping Center Legal Update, the legal journal of the shopping center industry, which is published by the International Council of Shopping Centers and distributed to its 45,000 members worldwide. Mr. Wright is the author of numerous articles on real estate and construction-related topics and frequently lectures at local, regional and national conferences on such topics. In 2004, Mr. Wright was selected by his peers as one of the 2004 Leading Lawyers of Northeast Ohio, a ranking of the top one percent of attorneys in Northeast Ohio. He has been named an Ohio Super Lawyer, a listing of the top five percent of Ohio attorneys determined by a 33,000 ballot survey of Ohio lawyers, since 2005. | 