HUNTSVILLE, AL – Watermark Residential, a wholly owned affiliate of Thompson Thrift and one of the nation’s leading multifamily developers, announced the acquisition of 22.5 acres of land in the Huntsville suburb of Madison, Ala. The company will develop a Class A garden-style multifamily community on the land, consisting of one-, two- and three-bedroom apartment homes. The company plans to build the apartments in a single phase, completing them by late 2021.
Located at 1150 Balch Road, the site is in the midst of a thriving suburban neighborhood. The 550-acre mixed-use Clift Farm development is immediately adjacent to the property, which is within walking distance of a newly developed Publix-anchored retail center, as well as multiple dining locations. The development will be the company’s second multifamily community in the Huntsville area. Watermark at Bridge Street Town Centre, a 244-unit Class A multifamily community located at 6854 Governors West NW was completed in 2019 and is currently 86 percent occupied.
“The Huntsville area is experiencing tremendous population growth and demand for quality multifamily options continues to far outpace the available supply,” said Paul Thrift, president and chief executive officer of Thompson Thrift and Watermark Residential. “Huntsville is expected to soon surpass both Birmingham and Montgomery to become the largest city in Alabama. Watermark Residential will help fill the need for quality housing with our Madison development.”
Watermark’s plotted multifamily community will consist of nine three-tale buildings and a clubhouse. Community amenities will include a 24-hour fitness center with state-of-the-art equipment, a resort-quality swimming pool with cabana and a “bark park.”
According to U.S. News & World Report, Huntsville is the fastest-growing metropolitan area in Alabama and the 11th best place to live in the country. The city generated more than 62 percent of jobs in the state during the past decade and continues to experience an influx of investment, including:

Toyota and Mazda are scheduled to start production next year in their new $1.6 billion assembly plant that will generate 4,000 direct and 5,500 indirect jobs.
Facebook invested $750 million in a local data center.
Aerojet Rocketdyne recently completed construction on an advanced rocket manufacturing facility that will soon be home to 800 employees.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has announced a significant expansion at the nearby U.S. Army Redstone Arsenal with the addition of 1,350 employees by 2021, as well as an additional 4,000-5,000 added jobs in the coming years when the FBI’s Huntsville investment is expected to reach $1 billion.

Josh Purvis, managing partner for Watermark Residential, added, “Huntsville is a perfect match for Watermark, which seeks to develop exceptional multifamily communities in areas of high job and population growth where occupancy and rental rates are stable or expanding. We look forward to commencing construction and delivering another exceptional community to the city.”
The Huntsville project is the first of six to be funded by the Watermark 3G Development Fund II which closed in late 2019.

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CHICAGO, IL – Interfaith Housing Development Corporation (IHDC), announced the groundbreaking of its latest housing development, Fifth Avenue Apartments, providing 72 new affordable housing units in the Village of Maywood, a western suburb of Chicago. The development has been made possible thanks to four major financial partners along with an energy efficiency grant from ComEd. These financial partners include the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA), the Cook County Department of Plotting and Development, the Richman Group Affordable Housing Corporation, and Bank of America. The Chicago Community Loan Fund also provided pre-development lending prior to construction.
A vacant 33,000 square foot lot located at 800 South 5th Avenue, once owned by the Village of Maywood, is the site for the new development. The adjacent 5th Avenue corridor is a pedestrian-oriented commercial corridor in the Village, allowing future tenants simple access to transit, education, and retail. The building will be comprised of studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom residential units along with interior and exterior shared community spaces for resident use. It also includes approximately 5,500 square feet of retail space on the ground floor, currently slated for development into a grocery store, addressing the lack of this amenity in the area. Residential parking will be provided off the alley behind the new building, with commercial parking provided along 5th Avenue. New diagonal parking will also be added on surrounding streets to help accommodate additional residential guests and commercial users as well.
“This historically-underserved part of metro Chicago has proven a strong need for quality affordable housing, and we are thrilled to have this project ploughing ahead to meet that need,” said Perry Vietti, the President of Interfaith Housing. “This development has been specifically designed to serve working families and individuals and some special needs populations. Slated for opening in early 2021, we could not be more thrilled to now have this vital community resource coming out of the ground.”
Maintaining its affordability status for a minimum of forty years, the five-tale development will provide affordable housing for households at or below 60 percent of area median income (AMI). Sixteen of the units are designated for households at or below 30% AMI; twenty-eight units are for households at or below 50% AMI; and twenty-eight units will support households at or below 60% AMI. Nineteen of these units will be targeted to special needs populations, including 8 units set aside for homeless veterans and 11 units for tenants selected from the Illinois State Referral Network.
According to Toni Preckwinkle, the President of the Cook County Board, “Investment in affordable housing is critical to communities throughout Cook County. Half of the residents of Cook County are rent burdened, which means they pay more than 30 percent of their income in rent. With rental prices rising and gentrification moving in Chicago, it’s more vital than ever to recognize that housing is a human right.”
The development has been designed by national integrated architecture and engineering firm, HED, and is being constructed by Chicago-based McShane Construction Company. The IHDC development team established early in the project a desire to achieve high levels of environmental sustainability, in an effort to best serve its resident population health as well as that of the surrounding neighborhood.
In 2018, Fifth Avenue Apartments was one of only a dozen projects nationwide, and the only one in Illinois, to be selected to participate in the International Living Future Institute’s (ILFI) third round of the Living Building Challenge Affordable Housing Pilot Project program.
“As a project selected for the Living Building Challenge’s affordable housing pilot program, we have loved developing this design alongside this vital sustainability advocacy platform, identifying the current challenges of pursuing this extreme green approach to design in the State of Illinois,” said Susan King, Principal in Charge with HED. “While the project could not feasibly achieve the current certification expectations, IHDC’s participation in this pilot effort will ultimately benefit countless affordable housing projects around the country in the future as the research continues to develop.”
Additional project team members supporting the design and development of the Fifth Avenue Apartments project include SITE Design for landscape architecture, and Ericksson Engineering for civil engineering. Property management will be provided by Interfaith Management Services, an affiliate of Interfaith Housing Development Corporation, that currently manages the 12 affordable developments that Interfaith owns.

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SAVANNAH, GA – Legacy Capital Partners, in a joint venture with CF Real Estate Services, started construction of Olmsted Savannah, a 163-unit multifamily development project located in the historic district of downtown Savannah, GA. The apartment community, which will include 3,700 square feet of retail space, is slated to open in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Olmsted Savannah is CF s third Olmsted-branded development after the first two (Nashville, TN and Chamblee, GA) each won national and local awards as best-in-class projects. When completed Olmsted Savannah will offer studios, one-, and two-bedroom units. Amenities include a resort-style pool, a fitness center, and multiple resident lounges. The property is easily accessible to Savannah s Historic River Street, and the Port of Savannah. Future residents will also delight in the 3-minute walk to the new Plant Riverside District, a massive 4.5-acre riverfront entertainment redevelopment with a multitude of dining, hospitality, and retail offerings opening in February 2020.
The Savannah metro area experienced a 2 percent job growth in 2019, coupled with rapid population growth, we are confident that this project will fill a void that currently exists within the market, notes Brett Finkelstein, CF s CEO.
The Olmsted brand brings an engaging, eclectic, and down-to-earth feel into apartment living whereby a genuine sense of community is fostered. A focus on resident experience is the driving force behind the design where we bring all elements of architecture, interior design, and marketing along with an exceptional CF led property management team to work as a cohesive whole, making a wonderful sense of place.
This will be our ninth investment with CF, and our second joint investment in Savannah since a 2015 acquisition and repositioning of a student housing property just blocks away from the subject site, states Legacy co-founder and Managing Director, David St. Pierre. We are thrilled to partner again with CF.
While Legacy is primarily an investor in the value-add multifamily space, Olmsted Savannah represents a unique ground-up development opportunity with tremendous upside due to the continued growth of the Savannah market and CF s multifamily construction and property management expertise. The project is being financed through equity invested by the joint venture and a construction loan through Truist Financial Corporation.

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