First Asset from the Bay Area Fund
CityView has closed on its first asset from the Bay Area Fund--a $300 million fund that will be used to invest in Bay Area, Calif., multifamily communities.
San Francisco—CityView, a real estate advisory firm, has closed on its first asset from the Bay Area Fund—a $300 million fund that will be used to invest in Bay Area, Calif., multifamily communities.
This first asset, a Class A mixed-use property called Potrero Launchch will have 196 rental apartments and 28,000 units of office and retail space.
The Potrero Launch will include many green elements when completed. According to Tony Cardoza, managing director, Bay Area Fund, the community, which will apply for LEED certification, is going to incorporate recycled materials during the construction. Additionally, Cardoza says there will be solar panels that will generate a third of the electricity for the common areas.
This building, as well as other Bay Area Fund projects, will include units dedicated to affordable housing. In the Potrero Lanuch, this includes 20 percent of the apartments.
“We’re looking for infill houses near areas that are underserved,” Cardoza tells MHN of future Bay Area Fund properties. “We want to try to provide opportunity [to create jobs].
It is especially important to build apartments in the Bay Area, because it will hopefully create employment in an area that has recently seen slow job growth.
“We recognize that the United States is a metropolitan nation,” Henry Cisneros, former HUD secretary and founder of CityView, said in a press statement. Seventy five percent of the nation’s GDP is generated in just the largest 100 metropolitan areas—places like the Bay Area. This region is a focus on our equity dollars because of several factors—it’s one of the focal points of the nation’s business and professional services, its artistic and cultural opportunities, its transportation, its educational and scientific talents and its foreign trade activities. The area is a big draw for people, jobs and the capital necessary to justify large-scale investments in housing. We certainly hope that more housing options will help ease the high cost of rental housing for Bay Area residents.”
Cardoza agrees.
“’Clogged arteries’ exist here in the Bay area in terms of jobs,” he says. “We’re trying to fix that through housing.”
Potrero Launch is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2012.
