Abington Arms

TFG was retained by Holy Rosary Catholic Church — the neighborhood church of Little Italy — and University Circle, Inc. ("UCI"), a 501(c)(3) Community Development Corporation, to refinance and rehabilitate Abington Arms: 152 low-income elderly housing units in the heart of University Circle, Cleveland's medical and cultural center.

At the time, the 38-year-old senior housing resource was showing every sign of its age. Ownership was 50% Holy Rosary Catholic Church and 50% UCI. With University Circle gentrifying rapidly, both partners feared HUD might one day deem the physical plant inadequate — and that this affordable housing resource could be lost to the community for good.

TFG was charged with engineering a workable full rehabilitation and systems upgrade, and with structuring a refinancing — including the use of Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) — that would generate an appropriate sources-of-funds package. We also extended the Housing Assistance Payments (HAP) Contract — the Project-Based Section 8 — for an additional twenty years.

Fourteen months later, in February 2017, the ownership was restructured to admit TFG to the partnership. That move enabled an arm's-length sale of the property, generating Acquisition Credits that materially increased the LIHTC equity and unlocked more than $7.5M of LIHTC-qualified expenditures for stabilization and physical upgrades. The full rehabilitation construction work was completed on time and on budget in December 2017.