on Feb 28, 2022
HR&A structures and closes $15.6 million loan by Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund in Washington, DC
HR&A structured and closed a $15.6 million loan by Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund to support the redevelopment of Parcel 42, a District of Columbia owned parcel in the heart of the Shaw neighborhood. Parcel 42 is being redeveloped through a public private partnership between the District of Columbia, Dantes Partners and H Street Community Development Corporation. The development plan is to construct a 10-story building with 108 affordable units, 2 market-rate units, and 1,800 SF ground floor retail space that will serve community needs. The project has already broken ground and is expected to deliver in 2024.
The closing of Amazon’s loan signifies an exciting next step in a high-profile development that has been stalled for decades. Three previous RFP processes failed to result in a workable development plan. One of the continued sticking points was the community’s insistence that the resulting development be deeply affordable. Shaw is a historically black neighborhood where displacement and gentrification have defined the last twenty years. Thus, it was critical to the community that the District owned parcel be accessible to existing residents. Parcel 42 benefited from significant public sector support including discounted land acquisition costs paid to the District of Columbia, tax-exempt bonds, allocations of federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits and the newly created DC local Low Income Housing Tax Credits. Yet, there was a financing gap.
HR&A worked with Amazon to subordinate loan with a twenty-year term that filled the financing gap and ensures long term affordability. The project will be deeply affordable with nearly half the units available to households at or below fifty percent of area median income. HR&A’s work helped to ensure long term affordability that matched the terms Amazon was looking for and conformed with the various public funding sources.
Dantes Partners is a leading Black-owned affordable housing developer in the Washington DC region.
Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund (HEF) is providing more than $2 billion to preserve and create over 20,000 affordable homes in Amazon’s home communities of Washington’s Puget Sound region, Arlington, VA and Nashville, TN. HR&A works with Amazon as a credit underwriter for transaction in the Washington DC Metro Area and Nashville.
Read the full press release from Mayor Murial Bowser’s Office of Community Affairs.
