Built for occupants that cannot borrow like corporations
BWRA’s principals spent more than two decades refining a financing program for nonprofits and governments. The constraint is familiar: a city hall must stay a city hall, a campus must keep its dormitories, and a transit agency must keep running trains. None of those missions is improved by a conventional mortgage that crowds out other borrowing or invites political controversy.
Structured sale-leasebacks, ground leases, and operating leases let the institution remain in place while private capital funds recapitalization or new construction. Lease rates are designed to sit 75 to 200 basis points below otherwise available private-market pricing.
Public-sector examples
The USPTO headquarters is the largest leased federal facility in the United States—nearly 2.5 million square feet under a GSA lease, recapitalized at $872 million. The District of Columbia City Hall restoration used historic tax credits and private investors so a cash-strapped government could still occupy and later repurchase a landmark. Newark Penn Station kept Amtrak and New Jersey Transit in control through ground and operating leases while investors funded rehabilitation.
Campus and nonprofit examples
The model is ideal for non-core college or university assets such as dormitories or faculty office space. At the University of Hartford, investors built two- and three-story housing on land leased from the university. The university leased the buildings back and will ultimately own them—growth without endowment draw or new institutional debt.