Dealmaker: Mesa West Capital Lends $100M to Refinance Mixed-Use Development

Mesa West Capital, Los Angeles, provided The Green Cities Co. and American Realty Advisors with $100 million in floating-rate first mortgage debt to refinance 5 MLK, a recently completed Portland, Ore. mixed-use development.

The 17-story building has 220 multifamily units on top of 118,000 square feet of office space and 14,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space. The glass curtain wall building is located at 5 SE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in Portland’s Close-In Eastside neighborhood at the foot of Burnside Bridge. Residents can walk to the Pearl District, one of Portland’s more popular shopping destinations. 

Mesa West Capital’s five-year non-recourse loan retired the existing construction loan, with some proceeds for costs associated with stabilizing the commercial and residential space.   

The residential component delivered in late 2020 and includes a mix of studio, one- and two-bedroom floorplans. The retail and office components are currently vacant.   

“The Close-In Eastside neighborhood has experienced substantial redevelopment activity in the last 10 years spurred in part by the investment in transportation infrastructure by the city of Portland,” said Mesa West Director Joshua Westerberg, who led the origination team from the private lender’s San Francisco office. “This activity has resulted in a significant increase in the residential population along with a migration of commercial tenants to newly constructed and converted creative office buildings.”

Newmark Vice Chairman Ramsey Daya arranged the financing. Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher LLP represented Mesa West Capital as legal counsel for the transaction, led by Mark Osher, Eric Steiglitz and Adam Hopkins.