HIT Invests $42M in St. Louis-Area Multifamily

St. Louis–The AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust (HIT) has provided nearly $42 million in financing for two multifamily developments in greater St. Louis. About $15.8 million of that total will go to Council Tower Senior Apartments in downtown St. Louis, while $26.1 million will be an investment in Parkway Lakeside Apartments in O’Fallon, Ill.

Built in 1968, Council Tower has 277 units of senior housing, with 90 percent of the units now designated as affordable. The HIT is helping finance renovation work to modernize and upgrade the aging building.

Parkway Lakeside, in the St. Louis metro-east region suburb of O’Fallon, is a new project, with the HIT contributing to its financing. The property will include multiple two-story buildings offering 232 market-rate housing units.

As usual with projects financed by the HIT, all on-site construction work at the two properties will be performed under collective bargaining agreements with local building and construction trades unions. The union-oriented investor estimates that about 600 union construction jobs will be generated between the two projects.

Under its Construction Jobs Initiative begun in early 2009, the HIT has invested $174 million to support five projects in metro St. Louis that represent 1,110 new or rehabilitated housing units. Besides Council Tower Senior Apartments and Parkway Lakeside Apartments, other St. Louis-area projects financed through this initiative are Park Pacific Apartments, in St. Louis, with 230 housing units; the Laurel, in St. Louis, with 205 housing units; and Villas at Crystal Lake in Swansea, Ill., with 216 housing units.

Currently, the HIT manages $3.9 billion in assets for about 350 investors, which include union and public employee pension plans. Fifty-nine of these investors are in Missouri and Illinois. The HIT invests primarily in government- and agency-insured and -guaranteed multifamily and single-family mortgage-backed securities.