Cooltown Studios
The official blog for crowdsourced placemaking

Friday, January 14, 2005

$150 million equity network for CoolTown redevelopment projects

CoolTown investment

Got a cool project that needs capital? Need a project to invest in? CoolTown Investments is assisting a diverse network of real estate investors across the country ($150 million to date) to invest in medium and higher risk, medium-high return urban rehab/developments.  One such fund focuses on investments of $3-$10 million each, which translates to $10-$30 million developments. The underlying philosophy of the investment sources?  They understand the immense value of providing the kinds of developments that creatives truly want.  These investors are ideal for developing a model example for the surrounding neighborhood.

Here is the basic CoolTown project criteria
- Urban/small city infill/rehab (as in the image), not suburban or greenfield, not new ground-up development.
- Target market consisting of, but not limited to the creative class, gen xers/yers, urban boomers, entrepreneurs, women, urbanists, early adopters
- Urban new urbanist/smart growth design principles

Here are the basics of the financial criteria:
- A minimum of $3 million, ideally $5 million in equity requirements, which typically means this is a $10-$20 million project.
- Partnership with an experienced local developer that can guarantee the construction loan.
- 2nd and 3rd-tier cities preferred. 1st-tier cities already suffer from hyper-inflated land prices.
- An area with strong population growth.
- The investment can be short-term or up to 8-10 years.

Invested projects will have the benefit of reaching into a ‘beta community’ of qualified residential and business tenants well before construction, aided by a monthly web visitor base of 14,000 people a month representing a demand that is waiting for such places to be developed.


Posted by Neil Takemoto in • Beta CommunitiesInvestment | (0) Comments | Link
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