'We Cannot Get Anything To Work': Chicago Projects Being Dragged Down By Development Hurdles

Chicago-based JLL promoted 18-year company veteran Michael Anderson to head of finance for its work dynamics sector in the Americas region. 

In the new role, Anderson is responsible for strategic financial operations for the work dynamics business. Anderson joined JLL as an intern in 2006 and most recently served for more than two years as its executive finance director for the enterprise division in work dynamics Americas. “Over my 18 years with JLL,…

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With demolition dust settled, permits in place and crews set to begin work, developer Shift Capital was finally ready to move forward on plans to construct hundreds of hotel rooms aimed at serving patient families and others from two nearby hospitals.

The project would have been the only hotel in that part of North Philadelphia to meet a growing market. But just as construction was gearing up and executives were preparing to sign loan paperwork, lenders pulled funding “at the eleventh hour,” according to principal Nancy Gephart.

The $70M project remains in limbo, the victim of spiking insurance rates and other costs that meant the project no longer penciled.

Shift is far from the only one putting projects on the shelf. This year, the pace of construction abandonments is on a sharp rise as the industry absorbs blows ranging from higher insurance rates, persistently high interest rates and skyrocketing materials costs or delayed shipping…

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Two years after Congress passed reforms meant to guard against fraud, the federal bureau charged with overseeing the country’s EB-5 program has yet to roll out a draft of new regulations, but it has threatened to shut down as many as a quarter of the firms that handle investor funds.

The future of billions of dollars of foreign investment in U.S. commercial real estate development sits on a knife's edge as the agency that administers the visa program threatens to close the companies that manage the projects over a missed fee.

“It's a hair-on-fire-level conversation,” said Adam Greene, an EB-5 specialist at Peachtree Group. 

The EB-5 program gives immigrants a path to a green card by investing in U.S. job creation or development. It has facilitated huge projects, including New York’s Hudson Yards, and helped more than 100,000 people secure permanent legal status in the U.S. However, it has also been vulnerable…

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