Dive Brief:
- New York City developer Tishman Speyer has obtained a $194 million construction loan from the Bank of the Ozarks to redevelop five stories above the downtown Brooklyn Macy’s department store into Class A office space, according to The Real Deal.
- Tishman Speyer purchased the space from Macy’s for $270 million in 2015, and Macy’s is using that money to help fund a $100 million renovation of its department store, which takes up the first four stories of the 143-year-old building.
- Tishman Speyer needs more than $490 million in total for the project and, as of March, was looking for $60 million in EB-5 financing, which allows foreigners to secure green cards in exchange for a $500,000 to $1,000,000 investment in U.S. development, according to The Real Deal.
Dive Insight:
Tishman Speyer has also been involved in skyscraper development at the mammoth Hudson Yards mixed-use complex in Manhattan, a project which has also taken advantage of EB-5 investments. According to Next City, Hudson Yards developers raised $600 million from 1,200 Chinese families using that method.
Tishman Speyer also took advantage of available foreign cash when in the summer of 2016 it announced that it had partnered with investment fund Qatari Diar to build a $700 million, 1.1 million-square-foot office development in Long Island City, NY. Shared office space company WeWork will anchor the 27-story mixed-use development, which is close to Tishman Speyer's 22-story Gotham Two office tower.
The Qatar Investment Authority recently announced that it would up its stake in U.S. developments by sinking $10 billion into this country's infrastructure. The QIA has made previous statements about investing a total of $35 billion between 2016 and 2021, but the fund's representatives did not specify whether the $10 billion was part of that figure. The QIA commitment could be what President-elect Donald Trump had in mind when he announced that at the heart of his $1 trillion infrastructure plan was a strategy to lure private investment.
