Hedge Fund, Developers Buying Up, Shutting Down Greyhound Bus Terminals

Many of America’s urban bus terminals are disappearing as more investors buy centrally located transit hubs and sell them for redevelopment. 

Greyhound bus terminals across the U.S. are being shuttered, including dozens that were bought and sold by a hedge fund that grew to prominence by buying up local newspapers before selling off their headquarters and cutting staff, CNN reports.

FirstGroup, a British transportation firm that owned Greyhound since 2007, began shedding the stations last year after selling the bus service to German bus and rail operator FlixMobility in a deal that saw FirstGroup keep ownership of Greyhound’s real estate holdings. 

FirstGroup had two stations left in its portfolio by December 2022, when it sold 33 Greyhound stations for $140M to Twenty Lake Holdings, a subsidiary of Alden Global Capital. The two remaining stations were also under contract to be bought at the time.

The company said the properties would initially be leased back to Greyhound at market rates but were expected to be sold over the next three to five years, according to The Tennessean. The sale has already led to bus terminals relocating from downtowns in Houston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Louisville, Kentucky, Tampa, Florida, Charlottesville, Virginia, and Portland, Oregon, according to CNN.

As part of the portfolio deal, Twenty Lake Holdings and Connecticut-based Glimcher Capital Group paid $1.7M for a 37K SF station in downtown Cleveland where they plan to build an apartment tower and repurpose the station into a jazz bar and supper club, Cleveland Magazine reported. 

A Greyhound site adjacent to a Hard Rock Casino in Cincinnati was sold in 2021 to an affiliate of Ohio-based Chavez Properties for $4.3M. The new owner plans to convert the site into a parking lot while Chavez looks for a developer to buy it for an office, retail, hotel or housing project, WCPO reported. 

In Chicago, a downtown terminal acquired by Twenty Lake Holdings is facing closure with a developer eyeing the site for two new towers, Crain's Chicago Business reported. A bus terminal in Richmond acquired by Twenty Lake Holdings for $11M was immediately relisted for sale, according to Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Alden Global is best known for buying other icons of major U.S. cities, cutting costs and selling their real estate for profit, following that pattern with the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, The Baltimore Sun and The Denver Post.

The sales and subsequent bus terminal closings have led some advocates to raise concerns that predominantly low-income Greyhound riders would lose access to an affordable intercity transit option. Bus lines have twice as many riders as Amtrak, with roughly three-quarters of intercity riders making less than $40K a year, according to CNN. 

Terminal closures can lead the service to move to a curbside pickup model often farther from city centers and inaccessible by other mass transit, which leaves riders without access to places to buy food or use a bathroom. 

“All this happening at once is really startling,” Joseph Schwieterman, a DePaul University professor who researches intercity bus travel, told CNN. “You’re taking mobility away from disproportionately low-income and mobility-challenged citizens who don’t have other options.”

A spokesperson for Greyhound told CNN the service works to “actively engage with local stakeholders to emphasize the importance of supporting affordable and equitable intercity bus travel.”

Transit advocates said intercity bus systems are essential to offering mobility to low-income Americans. CNN reported more than a quarter of bus riders would be unable to make trips if the service weren't available, according to surveys conducted by Midwestern governments and reviewed by DePaul University.

“I don’t know the specific details of each building, but it is clear what is happening here: an important piece of transit infrastructure is being sacrificed in the name of higher profits,” Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a professor of real estate at Columbia Business School, told CNN.