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HIT Projects Attract Attention in Local Media

The AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust (HIT) and its investments in housing have captured the attention of local media, which featured the HIT in recent news stories.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch interviewed HIT Chief Operating Officer Ted Chandler about the $108 million HIT investment in two local projects, the Laurel and Park Pacific. Chandler told the paper that the projects “offer an excellent return” while creating construction jobs.

“There is a concentration of several exceptional projects in St. Louis that deserve kudos to business, labor, the construction industry and political leaders,” Chandler told the Post-Dispatch. “What we’re doing in St. Louis is part of the effort to create 10,000 construction jobs by early 2011.”

In the San Francisco Business Times, the HIT was hailed for its role in financing the $33 million Arc Light Apartments development, which the news publication describes as “the first major housing construction financed in the city since February of 2008.” Pointing out that the HIT was part of a complex financing package, the publication notes that “since the economy tanked in the fall of 2008, tower cranes have vanished from the San Francisco skyline.”

The Business Times quotes Chandler as saying that the HIT considers San Francisco “a very strong market.” He added, “As conventional Wall Street financing remains sidelined, we find we bring a scale and flexibility that helps get these developments under way.”

An article in the Business Journal of Milwaukee describes the job-generating power of HIT investments with a focus on the more than 320 union construction jobs that will be generated by The Moderne project, which the HIT has committed to help finance in Milwaukee’s Park East Corridor. A quote from Lyle Balistreri, president of the Milwaukee Building and Construction Trades Council, praises the HIT for investing union pension dollars into the project, “which will bring much-needed jobs and economic development to Milwaukee.”