Jamestown Secures $180 Million Loan for Ponce City Market, Atlanta

By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

Size matters to Jamestown. The real estate development firm’s 1.1 million-square-foot, mixed-use Ponce City Market restoration project, Atlanta’s largest adaptive reuse endeavor ever, has just reeled in a $180 million construction loan. The transaction marks the largest such financing in the city since the end of the Great Recession.

With commercial real estate services firm CBRE as an advisor, Jamestown obtained the loan from PNC Bank N.A., which acted as the head of a consortium that included SunTrust and JP Morgan.

Ponce City Market has all the elements lenders love. For one, the project itself is an irresistible magnet. A redevelopment and restoration of a property that was originally built in 1926 as the home of Sears, Roebuck & Co., it will serve as a coveted live-work-play destination.  There will be 517,000 square feet of premier loft office space, 330,000 square feet of retail and restaurant offerings and the Flats at Ponce City Market, a collection of 259 apartments.

And then there’s the solid sponsorship. Jamestown’s list of owned and sold properties over its 30-year existence totals $9 billion. The company has a strong history of turning major assets around. Jamestown’s previous investments include the 2005 acquisition of Manhattan’s 1.9 million-square-foot General Motors Building, which, according to the company’s website, had 170,000 square feet of vacant or rolling office space at the time of the purchase. When Jamestown sold the tower in 2007,100,000 square feet of that space had been leased at rents 25 percent higher than pro forma. There was also a deal to bring Apple’s flagship Fifth Avenue store into a previously unutilized space.

For the Ponce City financing, it also didn’t hurt that Jamestown has a longstanding lending relationship with PNC, SunTrust and JP Morgan.

With Ponce City Market fully funded, the first of the project’s openings is set for this fall.