A rendering of Twin Lakes Center in Cary, North Carolina — Courtesy: HFF
By Joshua Burd
A developer has secured nearly $29 million in financing for a project in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, in a transaction led by brokers from HFF’s New Jersey office.
The brokerage said it worked on behalf of the developer, LeylandAlliance, to arrange the $28.75 million loan for the first phase of Twin Lakes Center, a 153,229-square-foot, Wegmans-anchored project at 3600 Davis Drive in Cary, North Carolina. The deal includes $6.25 million in preferred equity with a life insurance company and a $22.5 million, floating-rate construction loan with CapitalSource, a division of Pacific Western Bank.
The HFF team included Senior Managing Director Greg Nalbandian, Senior Director Roger Edwards, Associate Devlin Murphy and Analyst Andrew Zilenziger. They worked closely with LeylandAlliance principals Jason Hess and Howard Kaufman, who oversee the Twin Lakes Center project.
“This loan request was very well received in the marketplace,” Nalbandian said. “Having a fully executed 25-year ground lease with Wegmans, which accounts for 85 percent of GLA and 67 percent of NOI along with some other preleasing, HFF was able to structure a very aggressive nonrecourse construction loan between the lenders at a very attractive interest rate and no equity participation.”
The 35.8-acre Twin Lakes Center will be completed in phases and consist of restaurants, retail and high-end senior housing in a park-like setting with unique amenity spaces, HFF said in a news release. Those features will include a lake overlook with seating areas, a pedestrian-friendly street and walking paths.
The first phase entails development of the four-building retail center, which is 93 percent preleased and will be anchored by Wegmans. The store will be one of the first of four future Wegmans planned for the Research Triangle area of North Carolina.
The retail phase is expected to be completed in July 2020, HFF said, noting that development is a few miles south of the renowned Research Triangle Park and equidistant from both downtown Raleigh and downtown Durham in the heart of the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill region.
“HFF exceeded our expectations in delivering a phenomenal construction loan that met all of our objectives,” Hess said in a prepared statement. “We now look forward to completing this fabulous project that has been several years in the making.”
