Archinect - News

Saudi Arabia begins securing financing agreements for various NEOM developments

2023-07-17T12:52:00-04:00

Saudi Arabia's megaproject Neom is seeking to raise 10 billion riyals ($2.7bn) in loans, according to a report in Bloomberg published on Monday. The early stages of the $500bn planned city will be financed by money raised from local lenders, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke to Bloomberg. Banks are currently in negotiations with Neom, and the loan could be completed in the next few months.

A separate $3 billion loan will be required for Shushah Island, the luxury resort component of the $500 billion megadevelopment whose record-setting centerpiece is promised for 2025. Another $800 million was secured recently towards the development of Sindalah, which is set to be the project’s first portion to open next year. $5.6 billion more is on the way to build temporary housing and other facilities for 95,000 workers on The Line. The Saudi Private Investment Fund (which underpins NEOM) holds $778 billion in assets currently, according to Bloomberg.

The Silicon Valley Bank crash may carry huge implications for affordable housing development in Boston

2023-03-24T17:27:00-04:00

The fallout from the recent failure of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is having wide-reaching effects across the country. Take Boston, for example, where advocates for multiple in-progress affordable housing developments are concerned about their future following the bank's collapse.

The Boston Globe is reporting on the underpinnings of their dilemma, which concerns the future of the bank's over $1.6 billion worth of investments in the city.

The now-dissolved SVB had purchased the previously-fledgling entity known as Boston Private Bank in 2021, leaving many of its nonprofit clients vulnerable in the wake of the failure. Boston just unveiled its plan to add some 803 units through a $67 million investment, but the 600 or more units derived from projects that were underwritten by SVB remain on precarious footing in spite of several reassurances and the recent FDIC intervention.

New York developer receives $92 million loan to complete project believed to be the largest speculative office building in Brooklyn's Midwood neighborhood

2022-05-10T18:23:00-04:00

A New York developer has scored a $92 million loan to finish a project which is billed as the largest speculative office building in Brooklyn’s Midwood neighborhood.

The construction loan was granted to Baruch Singer, whose Triangle 613, LLC will use the funding to develop a 10-story, 215,379-square-foot Class A office and retail building located at 1497-1538 Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. The loan from private lender Parkview Financial came mid-construction. The development is approximately 35 percent underway, with completion expected in October 2023. As detailed by Parkview Financial Founder and CEO Paul Rahimian, the financing will be used to pay off two existing loans on the project with the remainder going towards completing construction.

According to the lenders, more than 30% of pre-leasing commitments are already in place, with the project garnering a variety of tenant prospects including a co-working office, medical office, health and wellness spaces, a restaurant, and supporting ancillary commercial retail uses.

For the first time, you can buy shares in a building in New York City

2022-04-08T09:00:00-04:00

An office building in Harlem has become the first building in New York City, and one of the first in the country, to be listed on the stock market in its own right. Located at 286 Lenox Avenue, the 18,759-square-foot building holds four floors of office and retail, with three tenants including Wells Fargo.

As of last week, any investor can buy shares in the building, which trades under the stock ticker TESLU. Since going public last Wednesday, the share price has fluctuated from its initial $250 per share, with a high of $255 and a low of $241.

The shares are being sold by the building’s owners Regal Capital Acquisitions, who are selling 8,600 shares (49% of the building’s equity), which they hope will raise $2.15 million. Regal paid $10.2 million in March 2020 to purchase the property, which sits on the site of the now-demolished Lenox Lounge jazz bar that once hosted stars such as Billie Holiday and Miles Davis.

Related on Archinect: Paul Rudolph's Edersheim Residence liste...

The development of high capacity batteries is picking up steam

2020-03-05T14:10:00-05:00

manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries is scaling up rapidly to meet the growing demand for electric vehicles and large systems installed in power grids or at solar farms. As prices for lithium-ion batteries drop — they fell by half from 2016 to 2019, according to BloombergNEF — banks are taking another look.

The Los Angeles Times takes a look at the growing viability for utility-scale battery operations.

One stumbling block for municipalities and building operators alike has been finding affordable battery storage options to keep sustainably generated energy flowing when the sun isn't shining and the wind doesn't blow. A key problem in the widespread deployment of these energy storing units is finance: The investment required to bring these units online is viewed as a risk by banks and other lenders.

Increasingly, according to the report, however, banks and other financial institutions are moving to embrace the financial promise of boosting the development and deployment of these technologies, a trend that will surely help decarbonize the building sector.

Are global investment firms going green?

2020-01-15T18:59:00-05:00

BlackRock, the world's largest asset management firm, has announced that it will use climate risk assessments and environmental sustainability as guiding metrics for how it makes investment decisions moving forward. The impact of this shift could have profound changes for the architecture and construction industries.

The announcement comes from BlackRock CEO Laurence D. Fink via an annual investment forecasting letter sent out to customers at the start of the year. In the letter, Fink writes "Even if only a fraction of the projected impacts [of climate change are] realized, this is a much more structural, long-term crisis. Companies, investors, and governments must prepare for a significant reallocation of capital."

Fink adds, "The evidence on climate risk is compelling investors to reassess core assumptions about modern finance." And as a result, the firm will seek to prioritize investments in that divorce themselves from fossil fuel industries, provide public transparency to the ...

US Federal Reserve to weigh climate change risks in making financial policies

2019-11-14T18:54:00-05:00

The U.S. central bank signaled on Friday it may be getting ready to join international peers in incorporating climate change risk into its assessments of financial stability, and may even take it into account when setting monetary policy.

Despite the Trump administration's unabashed rejection of climate science, the United States Federal Reserve is moving in the opposite direction.

The shift could impact how America's central bank assesses financial metrics like interest rates and how entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac make decisions regarding which mortgages to acquire.

Lifting poor neighborhoods out of poverty with alternative investment models

2017-12-06T14:08:00-05:00

How do you raise the standard of living in the poorest neighborhoods in the country? That’s what community developers, typically nonprofits that build and finance affordable housing, have tried to do over the last few decades. And yet [...] many of these communities remain stuck in poverty. [...] This problem has stumped community developers for decades. But two local nonprofits think they’ve hit on something: They’ve created a private equity fund.

Archinect presents Next Up: Floating Worlds at the Neutra VDL on Saturday, March 4!

2017-02-16T12:15:00-05:00

We don’t draft designs in a void and cities don’t spring straight from our imaginations. Architecture is itself a designed object, circumscribed and delimited by the social, political, and economic conditions of the era. But, likewise, these conditions aren’t exactly natural—they’re designed by a host of actors and forces. For a new generation of architects, the most-pressing design challenge of the twentieth century isn’t to create new forms, but to re-design the architecture of architecture, itself. And, the first step in this process, like with any project, is visualization.

For the fourth iteration of Archinect’s live podcasting series Next Up, we’re taking a look at potential roles for architecture in the contemporary neoliberal political economy, with a focus on issues pertaining to gender and identity. In a sense, what we’re looking at is how architecture is itself designed—and, specifically, how we can redesign the systems in which it is enmeshed. In what ways are people cha...

The hedge fundification of American universities

2016-03-11T14:27:00-05:00

Have you heard the latest wisecrack about Harvard? People are calling it a hedge fund with a university attached [...] Though the exact figure is hard to determine, experts I consulted estimate that over $100 billion of educational endowment money nationwide is invested in hedge funds, costing them approximately $2.5 billion in fees in 2015 alone. The problems with hedge funds managing college endowments are manifold, going well beyond the exorbitant...fees they charge for their services.

"The time has come for students to connect the dots between ballooning student debt, the poor treatment of campus workers, and the obscene wealth of hedge fund oligarchs."

A rallying cry for a divestment movement to oppose hedge funds and their involvement with academia, the article discusses the relatively new relationship between universities and high risk investing. Not only are money managers – and often university trustees – making off with obscene profits, the finance industry has actively lobbied against policies "designed to curb inequality."

For more on the implications and ramifications of academia's historically-unprecedented flirtations with finance, check out these links:

Future Not Found: a "para-tour" of the Chicago Board of Trade led by GRNASFCK

2015-09-30T14:45:00-04:00

The Chicago Biennial is set to launch this weekend with a flurry of events and exhibitions, including Archinect's live podcasting event Next Up. Alongside the Biennial’s programming are a slew of periphery events located around the city and spanning the spectrum of architectural topics. Near the top of our list is Future Not Found, a "para-tour" of the Chicago Board of Trade led by Dry Futures jury members GRNASFCK on Friday morning.

Last year, we profiled GRNASFCK, a nomadic landscape architecture studio that operates along the borderlands of ecology and architecture and focuses on "the geologic past and speculative future." Led by Colleen Tuite and Ian Quated, GRNASFCK leads research expeditions across diverse landscapes, with an eye towards the invisible forces that shape our cities – from extremophile bacteria to resource speculation.

Abandoning their sampling kits for the weekend (or maybe not), Tuite and Quate will lead an archaeologic tour of the world's largest futures and opt...

L.A. County supervisors approve initial funding for new LACMA building

2014-11-06T13:22:00-05:00

The Board of Supervisors has approved a road map for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as it plans a $600-million makeover that would tear down and rebuild most of its Miracle Mile campus [...]. If there are no serious bumps in the road ahead, the plan would yield a streamlined, curving 410,000-square-foot new museum building designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor that would open in 2023, spanning Wilshire Boulevard with an enclosed bridge that doubles as gallery space.

Previously

International Elite Using New York Real Estate to Stash Money

2014-07-01T17:47:00-04:00

According to data compiled by the firm PropertyShark, since 2008, roughly 30 percent of condo sales in large-scale Manhattan developments have been to purchasers who either listed an overseas address or bought through an entity like a limited-liability corporation, a tactic rarely employed by local homebuyers but favored by foreign investors [...] “The global elite,” says developer Michael Stern, “is basically looking for a safe-deposit box.”

Editor's Picks #342

2013-11-19T12:40:00-05:00

The latest edition of Showcase; featured a complete redesign of the Law Faculties and Central Administration Buildings at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), by CRAB Studio.

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With Architecture for Humanity's experience helping communities beyond the relief phase of disaster, they are currently mobilizing to assist in long-term reconstruction. Through speaking with local stakeholders and construction professionals, they are working to begin understanding the on-the-ground situation to prioritize rebuilding needs and help affected regions build back better and stronger.

Donate now and help support Architecture for Humanity's response in the region affected by Super Typhoon Haiyan.

Last week Bustler.net highlighted the winners from the 39th annual KRob Architectural Delineation competition, the longest running architectural drawing competition in the world. Six winners, three juror citations, and 21 finalists were selected this year.

While he ...