U.S. Cellular Plaza and Wells Fargo interim CEO C. Allen Parker (Credit: Colliers and Wells Fargo)
FCA Partners, an investment manager that counts one of the country’s top pension funds as a client, refinanced a national portfolio of commercial and residential property for $500 million.
Wells Fargo led a syndicate of banks in providing the loan, including JPMorgan, U.S. Bank, PNC, and TD Bank. The loan is a revolving credit facility that matures in three years.
The deal closed late last month and was just filed in public records.
A mix of 19 office, retail and apartment buildings in nine states secured the loan. Collectively, the portfolio makes up more than 1,500 residential units and 3 million square feet of office and retail space, according to descriptions of the buildings on FCA’s website.
The biggest of those assets is U.S. Cellular Plaza in Chicago, a 637,000-square-foot complex in the desirable office corridor around O’Hare Airport. Telecom giant U.S. Cellular expanded its lease to nearly half of the complex in 2016, according to Crain’s.
FCA is managing the property for the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, a pension fund.
The remaining properties are all in the Southeast and Gulf Coast. They include a pair of office buildings in downtown New Orleans, a suburban shopping mall in Kentucky and a 280-unit multifamily in Charlotte that is a short drive from the headquarters of both FCA and Wells Fargo.
The portfolio securing the loan also includes three properties in Florida, four in Georgia, one in one in South Carolina, two in Tennessee, one in Texas and three others in North Carolina. U.S. Cellular Plaza is the only Illinois property included.
FCA, led by principals Ed Cherry and Al Lindemann, started out as a unit of Charlotte-based Faison Enterprises. It branched off as its own firm in 2014, according to the Charlotte Business Journal.
Last year, Wells Fargo paid out more than half a billion dollars to settle a consumer protection case at its auto- and home-lending divisions, but the bank continues to sign big commercial loans — especially in the Southeast, like a $66 million construction loan it issued for a luxury development in Boynton Beach in April.