Retail ground-up still banks when the lender knows the sponsor

Associated Bank has closed a $9 million development loan for Trailhead Crossing, a 12-acre, multi-building retail project on US-36 in Delaware, Ohio, a Columbus suburb. Connect CRE first reported the financing, noting it is the bank's eighteenth loan to the sponsor, GTZ Properties, run by Mitch Goltz and Jeremy Forman from Highland Park, Illinois.

The ticket works out to $750,000 an acre, which puts the deal at the neighborhood end of the ground-up spectrum, and the tenant roster is built from credit names: three freestanding buildings for Chik-Fil-A, Chipotle Mexican Grill, and Take 5 Oil Change, plus a three-tenant strip with Dunkin Donuts, Nothing Bundt Cakes, and Pacific Dental Services. Daniel Barrins, a senior vice president in Associated Bank's Chicago commercial real estate division, arranged and closed the loan; one of two pad-ready sites has a pending sale to a national daycare company.

Eighteen loans to the same sponsor is a relationship ledger, not a transaction. At that depth, the credit decision rests on Goltz's record as much as on the leases, which is what turns a pro forma into a bankable balance sheet for a 12-acre retail ground-up in a Columbus suburb. The later phase, set to be anchored by a big-box national retailer, is the next entry in that history.