Hedge Fund Manager Envisions 115 New Parks Emerging from Stalled Atlanta Developments

ATLANTA (Sept. 22, 2010) - For the past year, there's been low-level buzz in Atlanta's commercial real estate industry about a major fund that would replace a slew of failed developments with new parkland. While people knew the public/private effort's name, Redfields to Greenfields, they did not know a lot about the program, the guy behind it or how it would work.

Today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution includes a lot of answers questions people are asking. In an interview with AJC reporter Jeffry Scott, Georgia Tech grad and hedge fund partner Michael Messner explains the Redfields to Greenfields program. (Several blogs, hedge fund trades and Carson Matthews' Buckhead Blog also picked up on the story today. AJC reporter Dan Chapman broke the initial story in December.)

"A Fed-backed land bank would finance purchases of bad real estate at 0 percent interest though the banks," Messner tells Scott. "Nationally a $200 billion fund would stabilize the $30 trillion real estate market, producing a huge return on investment."

Messner specifically identifies Ben Carter's Streets of Buckhead development in his plan. "...finishing the Streets of Buckhead would cost about $1.5 billion," he tells the AJC, which recently reported that the project will be downsized. "If the banks financed Streets of Buckhead, Atlanta would just have more of the same: excess commercial and residential developed real estate. An investment in green space of that same magnitude would remake the entire region and stabilize everyone's property values."

Ultimately, if Messner and his wife Jenny can make Redfields to Greenfields work, the equivalent of 15 new Piedmont Parks would be created inside the Perimeter and 100 OTP. 

Messner's plan is grand and hard to imagine. Then again, if people like him didn't think big, we wouldn't have a lot of the landmark developments we take for granted.

Comments

[InBuckhead]

If the Streets of Buckhead development is turned into a park I will cry..

[Greg]

The Streets of Buckhead will just be more of the same overbuilt mess that we don't really need. Imagine now neat it would be to have a beautiful park in the middle of Buckhead. Older commercial buildings would be renovated and would fill with tenants instead of sitting idle. This would do wonders in places like Memorial Drive and Roswell Road where commercial buildings have sat for years without a use.

[Poplar Bluff Real Estate]

The commercial real estate market is much broader and dynamic than the residential market. There are many property types, whose valuations seldom move in unison. The basic property types are: retail, office, industrial and multifamily residential.

[Hedge Fund Compliance]

We're getting parks in LA also.