How the EB-5 Visa is shaping North Texas real estate

When the program works, everyone is happy.

 

Developers get low-cost capital from silent investors who really just want to break even. 

Investors get those all-important green cards.

 

Those who facilitate the investments get their cuts. And cities benefit from new jobs and tax-generating enterprises and developments. 

Dallas hired an immigration attorney and came up with a model that Karl Zavitkovsky, director of economic development for the city of Dallas, thought could work. 

“We wanted it to cover the entire city, we wanted to set up criteria that would align with our economic development objectives, and, most important, we wanted something that would be administered by a third party,” Zavitkovsky says. 

In 2009, the city entered into a ten-year contract with Civitas Capital Group, and the City of Dallas Regional Center (CDRC) was formed as a public-private partnership. 

A CDRC project was Craig Hall’s 18-story office tower in the Arts District. 

The CDRC provided $65 million, and Hall broke ground on a speculative basis. While still under construction, he won big leases from KPMG and Jackson Walker.

Of the 500,000 immigration visas approved by the federal government in fiscal 2015, about 10,000 were through the EB5 program. 

Of those, more than 9,000 came from Asian countries, including more than 8,000 from China. Of the others, about 90 came from Russia and 80 each from Mexico and Venezuela.

To date, Civitas has raised and deployed $350 million in EB5 investments in Dallas.