City of Dallas Regional Center program trades green cards for development capital
By RUDOLPH BUSH / The Dallas Morning News
In Dallas, like in so many parts of the country, cash for big-time development deals has all but dried up.
But City Hall thinks it has found a new money tree that backers hope will bloom, in time, with hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign investment.
After years of trips to China and other parts of the Far East, council member Ron Natinsky and city staff have crafted what they expect will be a powerful new development tool that could help fund the redevelopment of downtown and poorer areas of Dallas.
The program – known as the City of Dallas Regional Center – is a citywide adoption of a federal immigration program that trades green cards and the promise of permanent residency for investments of $500,000 or $1 million.
According to Natinsky, hundreds of investors – particularly from China but also from Mexico, South America and elsewhere – are lining up for the chance to get in.
“These are not people who are scraping together $500,000 or $1 million. These are people who have a high level of net worth,” he said.
At City Hall, there is hope that the foreign money will be targeted toward some of the city’s hardest development cases, including dilapidated downtown properties such as the Statler Hilton and 500 N. Ervay St.
But it’s also possible the money would go toward building warehouses in southern Dallas or retail centers in the north.
The investment program is complex and governed by strict federal immigration and customs rules that determine who gets in and who’s kept out. The process of clearing investors can take months.
Under the program’s rules, investors who put up $1 million can invest anywhere in Dallas. Investors who put up $500,000 must invest in areas where unemployment is 50 percent higher than the national average.
And every investor’s contribution must create at least 10 permanent jobs. So if 10 investors put up $10 million, their project has to directly or indirectly result in 100 new jobs.
In return, that money would be available to developers here at interest rates well below market – something that can make the difference between a project being viable or not.
Dallas could reap huge benefits from the program, largely because it is believed to be the first city in the country to adopt it on a citywide basis.
“We are ahead of the curve in the sense that few, if any, city governments have taken the initiative and done this,” said Karl Zavitkovsky, director of Dallas’ economic development department.
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