Grosvenor Doubles Loan Commitments Under Mezz Program; Another DC Deal TBA

WASHINGTON, DC—After years of limiting its mezzanine finance program to a few select cities, namely Vancouver and Seattle, last year Grosvenor Americas expanded it to a few more select cities — Washington DC, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Now the program is expanding once again, this time in terms of its investment total. It has partnered with two Canadian investors, which will allow Grosvenor Americas to more than double the total value of its loan commitments over the next two to five years to $300 million from $170 million, co-CIO James Delmotte tells GlobeSt.com.  The company plans to stick with the cities in which it has a development team — the aforementioned Vancouver, Seattle, Washington DC, San Francisco and Los Angeles — meaning they will be the recipients of the increased funding. The program is formally called Structured Development Financing and under it Grosvenor Americas has financed nearly 50 projects around the country. The deals are invariably new multifamily construction. The developer is invariably a solid company with a strong track record and the project itself is almost always urban and transit-oriented and complementary to Grosvenor’s ‘Living Cities’ philosophy. In theory, it sounds like every second or third development in the Washington DC area would match this criteria but that is surprisingly not the case, Delmotte says. But, he adds, “we tend to be very picky about our projects and partners.” The first deal Grosvenor Americas provided financing for in DC was Madison Investments’ Elysium Logan, a residential property located at 1427 and 1429 Rhode Island Ave., NW. The company provided $5.77 million. Its second DC transaction was larger at $20 million, which was secured at the end of the year by PN Hoffman for its luxury condominium development, Parcel O-1 at The Yards, in the Capitol Riverfront. Grosvenor Americas is working on its third DC deal, Delmotte says, which it expects it will be able to announce by the end of this summer. If all goes according to plan, there will be two more in 2016. “We expect to do two or three deals in DC every year,” Delmotte said.

Grosvenor Americas provided $20 million to PN Hoffman for its luxury condominium development, Parcel O-1 at The Yards.