"We develop real estate, we don't build buildings," says Larry B. Faigin, president/CEO of GreenPark Group. "We'll clean it, subdivide it, put in infrastructure and then sell it off as pads or building lots, or as industrial pads with utilities.

Majority owner of GreenPark Group is Warburg, Pincus Ventures LP, a private equity fund that is based in New York City. GreenPark was established in 1997 as a vehicle for acquiring large-scale portfolios of land and joint venturing with development partners to remediate, develop and sell residential properties.

With an initial $20 million investment in the second fund from Warburg, Pincus, Faigin says that GreenPark is expanding into remediating properties to be sold off for commercial real estate development. Already a first property has been purchased with Fund II capital, a 200-acre parcel in Las Vegas that is being developed by Zenith Insurance. Once the property is cleaned up, plans are to build a casino and destination shopping center on the site south of Las Vegas Blvd and the I-15 freeway.

"There's not a lot of available land left anywhere except on the margins of cities. There's a lot of demand for infill site and reuse sites," Faigin says. "It's also driven in large part by the end use. There's different cleanup standards depending on the use. There's very few uses where there are not some environmental issues."

GreenPark's investors are looking for a reasonable rate of return on the risk they are taking. In the case of the first fund, that rate of return was 30%. With the second fund, the capital is expected to be invested in four years and mature in seven years with a comparable rate of return. GreenPark's funds are institutional quality, seeking investments from public and private pension funds and insurance companies. Merrill Lynch is the investment advisor lining up the institutional investors for Fund II .

GreenPark Group has been focusing its investment activities on the western United States. However, the firm has recently expanded to the east coast, opening an office headed by Charles Smail formerly with Brookville Group of New York.