PB Pembroke Owner LLC broke ground on the construction of 192 new student housing beds to serve the UNC-Pembroke campus. The project financing consists of $3M in Opportunity Zone equity from the Woodforest CEI-Boulos Opportunity Fund, a $10.77M loan from Self-Help Credit Union, and $840,000 in developer equity.

"These 192 beds will help directly serve UNC-Pembroke's mission of expanding to 10,000 students and being able to qualify for the research grants and other Federal funding growing to that size enables – greatly enhancing the quality of education it can offer to the existing ~7,600 student, majority-minority, population (and the future students to come)," Avram Fechter noted. Fechter is a managing partner with EquityPlus Manager, one of the joint-venture (JV) partners in the deal.

More data about UNC-Pembroke is available at https://www.uncp.edu/about/quick-facts.

Mike Thomas, a Managing Member for LU1Pembroke, said, "We are excited to be able to deliver these units for the Fall 2021 semester. It took us two years to close on financing for the project because many student housing lenders/investors will not provide financing to student housing projects on campuses with less than 10,000 students. The support of the Town Council and Town Manager was critical in attracting our financing partners to the table."

Construction of these 192 student housing beds is the first phase of the development of the broader 13 acre parcel at 696 Prospect Road. "Now that we commenced construction on Phase 1, we can turn our attention to finding retail/commercial tenants for the 20,000 sq. ft. of planned commercial space in Phase 2," explained Tim McCarty, another member of the development team. "Our goal is to have financing in place in Fall of 2021 to begin construction of Phase 3 – another ~300 beds of student housing".