Cohen's Mid-Atlantic Pipeline: $500M and Counting

WASHINGTON, DC-Cohen Financial is getting set to announce that it has secured $49.75 million for a national hotel developer to build a 218-key Courtyard Marriott hotel, which will go up on the corner of Florida and New York Aves this summer. At the beginning of the year, Cohen Financial arranged the land acquisition financing of the 31,107 sf infill site on which it will be developed.Cohen Financial secured the partial recourse loan with 85% loan-to-value (LTV) and five years interest only priced at a spread of 180 basis points over LIBOR from a national real estate finance company.The deal, which closed about 10 days ago, was originated by Ben Greazel, a director in Cohen Financial’s Skokie, Ill., and is illustrative of the growing bulk in the firm’s Mid-Atlantic pipeline, Chris Carroll, managing director in Cohen Financial’s Chicago office tells GlobeSt.com.”Over the last 12 months we have done $404 million in transaction in the Mid-Atlantic,” he says. Another recent transaction, originated by Carroll, is the $26.09 million in acquisition and construction financing ($8.8 million for the land and $17.29 million for the construction) arranged for a local developer to build a 136,000-sf retail center in Lexington Park, MD. It is one of the few remaining sizable parcels of available land fronting Route 235, the submarket’s main commercial road.Currently the company has another $500 million of deals in its pipeline, originating from its 10 or so offices around the country.Transactions such as these, Carroll says, led the company to establish a local presence here in order to better target the region. Cohen Financial opened the DC office last fall. With several months of operation behind it, the office is in full growth mode, Bill Curtis, director of Capital Markets in Cohen Financial’s DC office tells GlobeSt.com. According to Curtis, the DC office alone expects to close $180 million to $200 million in transactions this year – a number he offers by assuming the office stops placing loans right now, which of course it won’t. “Who knows what the final number will be when the year closes,” Curtis says.The greater DC area is generating much of that activity. DC is an extremely vibrant commercial real estate market, Curtis says, and has been ratcheting stellar returns in recent years. “Even for the size of this market and the federal government’s presence the growth has been fairly remarkable,” he says.