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Follow TURFCityView diversifies to ensure growth
Cisneros' firm targets rental units, toll roads.
By Jennifer Hiller,
Updated 10:46 p.m., Friday, November 25, 2011
For more than a decade, Henry Cisneros' CityView, a growing investment and development firm, quietly has invested $800 million in urban residential and mixed-use properties for institutional clients.
Now Los Angeles-based CityView is diversifying, looking to invest more in multifamily rental and in infrastructure projects such as toll roads and bridges.
In the wake of the housing and stocks crash of a few years ago, more people are switching from buying to renting, few new real estate projects are moving forward and the need to replace aging roadways, pipelines and the like continues to grow.
So this year, CityView teamed with AE Capital Advisers, the U.S. subsidiary of an Australian company, to invest in infrastructure projects. An Austin-area toll road that will open in the spring is one of the first projects it helped finance.
“There was so much press about the need for infrastructure,” said Cisneros, former San Antonio mayor and the secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Bill Clinton. “This gives CityView its infrastructure component.”
The Central Texas Mobility Authority sold $95 million on the traditional municipal bond market, but it wasn't enough to pay for the entire cost of the five-mile northern extension of the 183A Toll Road, which runs through Austin, Cedar Park and Leander. AE Capital Advisers and CityView provided another $45 million in subordinate financing. The Central Texas Mobility Authority retains government ownership of the road, but there are protective covenants to ensure AE Capital and CityView are paid over time.
Read the rest of the story here.