EB-5 funding still isn't the easiest way to finance commercial development, but it’s getting a little easier as investors have come to know it better, Riviera Point Development Group CEO Rodrigo Azpurua tells us. (Everything gets easier once you take the time to learn it, except for calculus.)
“Investors they're meeting in South America and China are more aware of EB-5 than in the last few years, and show greater urgency," Rodrigo says. In fact, interest in EB-5 is intense now in Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil, where '14 has brought political turmoil and a new level of economic uncertainty. This summer, for the first time in the federal EB-5 program’s 24 years, he notes, applications from a single country, China, reached the government’s cap, with a waiting list growing.
EB-5 is a complex process, but at its heart, the program provides permanent resident visas for investors that create a certain number of jobs in the US. Riviera Point Development Group recently put together plans for another EB-5 funded commercial property development. This summer the company closed on a four-acre site at Southwest 145th Ave and Southwest 27th St in Miramar, and expects to begin work on the 72k SF Riviera Point Corporate Center by fall '15. (Stiles will be leasing it.) Plans for the $18M development follow the company’s completion this summer of the first of two buildings at Riviera Point Professional Center, Broward County’s first EB-5 funded, multi-tenant office building, at University Drive and Florida’s Turnpike in Miramar. That $17M project drew 34 international investors.
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