That was the start of ARCTRUST's MORE program. MORE stands for Money, Opportunities, Resources, and Experience. "ARCTRUST brings more to a relationship than your typical joint venture partner," Ambrosi says, "We are not just bringing capital to the table. The principals of ARCTRUST have a nearly 40-year history in all phases of real estate development, including the approval and entitlement process, working with the municipalities, land seller negotiations, environmental issues and the construction process. We all have experience being the boots-on-the-ground and can share a perspective with our joint venture developers that most typical financial partners cannot."

ARCTRUST promotes the program as a "True Joint Venture Relationship", with a focus on an initial pipeline of transactions that is then expanded to create new opportunities for its JV partners through its relationships with nationally recognized tenants and its excellent reputation with developers, brokers, and sellers. The approach has led them to deals in every state from New York to Florida as well as select Western and Midwestern markets.

The program allows joint venture partners to leverage ARCTRUST's back-office resources and support that includes in-house legal team, accounting team, engineering and management to help ensure that projects can finish on time and on budget.

A Partnership with Many Hats

LeCates describes their position in the industry as being between family and friends on one side and institutional on the other. "We tend to align with successful sponsors whose pipelines have outgrown their capital sources.  We have a greater flexibility than most institutional sources of capital and are open to creative structures that address the needs of our partners," he says, and notes it has extended as far as raising outside money as a co-GP and acting as a co-sponsor.

Still, LeCates notes, while ARCTRUST prefers to remain a silent partner, they do judge every deal on whether they have the ability to do the development themselves. "Our first question of any development deal is whether we understand it enough to do the work ourselves.  It is the first gate to build the necessary support to proceed with an investment," explains LeCates.

"We're there to help the partner in any way that we can," Ambrosi says. "Whether it's our resources, whether it's our experience, whether it's finding a new project for them to work on."

There are many capital options available to experienced and reliable sponsors in the marketplace.  In a business where not all partners are created equal, ARCTRUST delivers MORE.