The highest and best use of New York waterfront land is NOT parking space. This is something Louis Silverman knew in his bones to be true, even in his pre-CRE days when he and his dad Allan ran a fleet of trucks through Brooklyn. Starting in the late 90s, Silverman began snapping up plots of dirt at a laughably low basis – in one e.g., he paid $8.6M for a 250K sf plot on Kent – and used them to park his rigs, waiting for the world to awaken to Williamsburg. Then came the Bloomberg administration and the rezoning, and Silverman reaped the rewards. He partnered w/ Jeff Levine’s Douglaston (another firm that knows a bit about big & early bets) to develop the aforementioned Kent property, and deal by deal, converted his dirt into gold.

That fortune, made under the aegis of the 4G Truck Renting Company, became the seed capital for one of the most intriguing construction lenders in the mix today: G4 Capital 🚚

Semiconductor moguls, billionaire AUM-gobblers ™ , muni bonds, Mexico’s richest man, a “Russian James Bond,” the Brothers Candy, even Merv Griffin – they all come together in the improbable tale of One Beverly Hills, now being cooked up as a $5B hospitality mecca. This week on the pod, we dive into the project’s colorful history and its even more colorful capstack. Listen on Spotify here, YouTube here or Apple Podcasts here. A shout-out to our sponsor, Bullpen, a talent shop solely dedicated to the commercial real estate industry. Bullpen can recruit trusted CRE pros at all levels, from analysts to C-suite, and can fill both fractional and full-time positions. Check them out at bullpenre.com to get started.

G4 is now kissing $5B in originations, and has carved out a rep for working w/ big, scrappy players such as Simon Dushinsky (runs both Rabsky Group and affiliate Sky Equity Group), Isaac Hager, and the Kestenbaum family’s Fortis Property Group. It did the $284M refi for Fortis’ Olympia Dumbo, and bankrolled Dushinsky on 2 of his biggest recent bets, $286M for his Gowanus project at 313 Bond (later taken out by Affinius) and now $320M for his upcoming 280K sf Tribeca condo. (The Tribeca site was formerly controlled by Eran Polack’s HAP Investments 💎 , who also landed G4 financing for it, but there again, he couldn’t get it done and sold the site to Dushinsky earlier this year.) In ‘23, G4 gave Joseph Chetrit’s Chetrit Group a $235M construction loan for its UES condo & rental – Dushinsky eventually came into that project as a partner *. It has also been a repeat lender to Michael Stern’s JDS Development Group, incl. on its D&G-branded tower supertall in Brickell. (PS: If you’re curious about the economics and licensing deals on branded condo-projects, don’t miss The Promote’s dive into the matter.)

“They know their daled amos,” is how one warehouse lender described G4, using a Halachic phrase that, in effect, equates to: “they stay in their lane.” According to another source, G4 stands out for a softer touch – though they will sometimes pursue foreclosure, as they did w/ Hager here – they’re usually down to parley w/ a delinquent sponsor and work something out.

To launch the platform in ‘05, Silverman brought on Paul, Weiss lawyer Robyn Sorid and former broker Jason Behfarin (10/10 Great Neck headshot). As of ‘22, the firm was on its 6th fund, and there’s previously been chatter about it pursuing a secondaries deal, but we’re unsure of the status of that.

*One repeat conduit for deals has been Henry Bodek, the cherubic rainmaker who runs debt shop Galaxy Capital and seems to have cornered the large loan market for the sub-institutional set - he recently brokered the recap for the Miami River megaproject, chock-full of main characters from The Promote Cinematic Universe.

Finance prof & LinkedIn CRE firebrand Rebel Cole does these intriguing quarterly crunches of banks whose books have the most outsized CRE exposure. Using publicly available Call report data from the FFIEC, Cole crunches the exposure to mortgages and construction loans, as well as unused commitments to fund such loans. His latest tally has alpha construction lender Bank OZK in 5th place at 511%, w/ total equity of $5.9B compared to total CRE exposure of $30.3B. NYCB/Flagstar, the poster child of NYC rent-stabilized lending and now a Steve Mnuchin joint, placed 7th at 499%, w/ total equity at $8.6B compared to total CRE exposure of $42.8B. Lots of notables (City National, Fortress-owned First Foundation, Axos Bank, run by Garrabrants the Gladiator 🤺 ) on the top 50, which you can check out here.

Regulators use the exposure ratio to get a sense of bank health; anything over 300% can raise eyebrows. Some lenders have not taken kindly to Cole’s poking about in the past, but he’s the kind of prof who loves a bit o’ spicy banter.

Bonus: It’s been a minute, but The Promote has published some excellent exchanges between an NPL investor/broker and a federal bank examiner. Check out our breakdown of the CAMELS 🐫 rating regulators use to determine how frisky banks can get, and also the examiner talking us through a loan book review.

In March, Meridian Capital Group co-founder Jeff Weinberg had sued his shop over $6.3M in monies owed, a rare case of a current Meridian staffer publicly rising up against leadership. Weinberg alleged that Meridian did not make good on their deal to make lump-sum payments to him in exchange for his partnership stake; the firm reneged on its payment for the year ‘24, Weinberg claimed, a breach that entitled him to an accelerated payout for ‘25 as well. At the time, Meridian had described his claims as “baseless” and said all disputes had been resolved by a subsequent agreement. However, the court has now awarded Weinberg summary judgment and ordered Meridian to pay up the full sum (+ interest & attorney’s fees). The court found that the “term sheet” Meridian had argued voided the previous agreement was explicitly nonbinding, and given that a definitive agreement on it hadn’t been reached by both parties, the original agreement still stood. (Meridian declined to comment on the judgment.)

Now, it’s clear from talking to sources both within and outside 1 BPP that in recent years, Weinberg no longer embodied the 24-6 hustle ™ that Meridian demands of its key people. This is part of why his equity interests were terminated in ‘19 in exchange for the lump-sum payments. However, Weinberg was owed those payments regardless of whether or not he remained in good standing at the firm, the agreement stated, and the court upheld that reading. Meridian did manage to get one of the sued LLCs (Meridian Capital Group, LLC) off the hook; only MCG Equity Partners will be required to make good on the payments. The legal blow comes even as Meridian leadership has had plenty to celebrate in recent months: It broke its Freddie drought w/ a fat loan brokered for Schron, and pulled off the lucrative sale of agency lender NewPoint to Benefit Street Partners – that sale, though, has brought some legal heat from 2 fmr. rainmakers who’ve demanded that Meridian open the books. 🕊

Colliers has snapped up GREA, a Dallas-based I-sales shop that punched well above its weight in the MF space and cleaned up both during the Great Syndicator Boom in Texas and the distressed aftermath. GREA’s 25-person squad, incl. founder Todd Franks, will join the publicly traded giant, though one prominent broker, Chibuzor Nnaji, decamped for Franklin St. shortly before the M&A. (In the haste to fly the Colliers flag, GREA brokers have jettisoned Twitter accounts & team pages 😀)