In November 2017, we invested in Englewood Square, a Whole Foods-anchored shopping center on the south side of Chicago. Last month, Englewood Square held the grand opening for an AT&T store, filling the last remaining open space in the property with a high-quality tenant. This marks a major milestone for the project, which is now 100% leased.
When the shopping center opened in September 2016 — the first major private commercial investment in the area in decades — there were skeptics of the project’s ability to drive broader local change.
But the efforts of Whole Foods and developer, DL3 Realty, have brought tenants rarely seen in inner-city communities — PNC Bank, Starbucks, Chipotle — and attracted other major investment in the surrounding area as crime rates have fallen.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, since the project launch, shootings and homicides in the Englewood Police District in 2017 were down nearly 50 percent over 2016.
“That’s a dramatic drop,” said Leon Walker, managing partner of DL3 Realty. “And all of that was on the heels of our opening in October 2016. That’s what we call the ripple effect. AT&T is the perfect tenant to finish off the Englewood Square Development. Their commitment will help encourage others to invest in Englewood.”
Fundrise investors helped catalyze this transformative development, while we also structured our investment senior to the developer’s common equity in order to mitigate risk. Since we made the investment in November 2017, the income has helped support quarterly dividends for the Heartland eREIT.
