INVESTORS TAKE NOTE: DL3 REALTY’S SALE OF THE NEWLY-DELIVERED AND REDEVELOPED BLUE CROSS BLUE SHIELD MULTIPURPOSE SOLUTION CENTER IS BOTH PROFITABLE AND SOCIALLY RELEVANT

INVESTORS TAKE NOTE: DL3 REALTY’S SALE OF THE NEWLY-DELIVERED AND REDEVELOPED BLUE CROSS BLUE SHIELD MULTIPURPOSE SOLUTION CENTER IS BOTH PROFITABLE AND SOCIALLY RELEVANT

The sale in July 2021 of Blue Cross Blue Shield Multipurpose Solution Center, including the Blue Door Neighborhood Center, in Morgan Park’s Marshfield Plaza retail and office development is the latest signal that DL3 Realty’s Venture Development approach both realizes attractive returns and revitalizes communities.

Profitability matters because venture developers like Chicago’s DL3 Realty are charged with convincing potential investors to look to historically disinvested areas as they consider their next development projects. Investors are often hesitant to risk significant capital in certain urban neighborhoods because they don’t think they can make an attractive return on their investment.

“Positive equity returns fuel additional investments,” says DL3 Managing Partner Leon I. Walker. “Venture developers find opportunities for private investors to put capital to work in underserved urban neighborhoods. By overlooking these communities, private investors often miss out on opportunities to invest in areas that are beginning to move toward higher levels of inclusive economic growth.”

“The sale of Marshfield Plaza this summer proved the naysayers wrong,” Walker said.

The approximately 127,000 square foot repurposed former retail box sold for more than $20,000,000. Walker says proceeds from that sale will help seed investments by DL3 along Chicago’s 63rd Street corridor from Jackson Park to Englewood, fund scholarships at Roosevelt University’s Marshall Bennett Institute of Real Estate, and support efforts to expand the pool of minority developers through DL3’s Chicago Emerging Minority Developer Initiative (CEMDI). “That’s the ripple effect,” Walker says.

Walker says venture developers have the ability to manage the needs of a wide range of investor and stakeholder interests, understand the importance of development shaped by actionable community needs, and are willing to take short-term financial risks in lower-income neighborhoods to achieve higher long-term investment returns.

“Social returns and financial returns can and should co-exist,” Walker says. “We need more investors to realize that.”
The JLL Capital Markets team representing DL3 Realty in the sale was led by Brian Shanfeld, Alex Sharrin, Steve Okon and Brian Longee.

About DL3 Realty
DL3 Realty is a full-service real estate development and advisory firm that employs its nationally recognized Venture Development model to transform historically disinvested communities with high-impact commercial developments and affordable housing projects targeting working families. Over the past five years, DL3’s projects have generated more than 3,000 local jobs and DL3 is working with America’s leading corporations to invest and create 10,000 new jobs in Chicago’s neighborhoods by 2030. To learn more about Venture Development please visit http://www.dl3realty.com/venturedevelopment.

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