When there’s no senior living community within 15 miles of a town with an aging, well-off population, opportunity’s knocking for the first developer to get in there. That was case for Richard Ackerman, founder of Big Rock Partners, a private real estate investment management firm based in Beverly Hills, California and Delray Beach, Florida that invests in and develops a wide variety of commercial real estate. Ackerman, before founding Big Rock in 2004, previously worked at Apollo Real Estate Advisors and Crocker Realty Trust specializing in development and ownership of office buildings and other commercial and residential real estate. Recently, Ackerman bought land in Celebration, Florida to build a $60 million, 225-unit senior living community.
Sabra Health Care REIT provided Ackerman with a $4.5 million loan to acquire the nine acres in Celebration, a planned community developed by the Walt Disney Company in the 1990s. Originally intended as a family community, the combination of residents aging in place, adult children wanting their elderly parents to move nearby, and the fact that there are no seniors housing facilities within 15 miles meant that there is probably a need going unfulfilled. Disney never even zoned land in the community for seniors housing, until now. To Ackerman, he was the right person, with the right plans, at the right time, in winning the right to build and receiving an exclusive option on all the adjacent land surrounding the property. The community he plans to build will basically follow a rental CCRC model, with 130 IL, 65 AL and 30 memory care units. It will be high end too, with rents ranging from $4,000 to $6,000, though Ackerman is sure enough of the surrounding population is looking for a product like his. Big Rock Partners is working with Walker & Dunlop to close on a third-party construction loan sometime in early 2015, while Sabra is providing mezzanine financing. Sabra will also purchase the property upon completion and lease it to Life Care Services. Perkins Eastman is the architect, and a contractor will be chosen soon, as construction is expected to begin in early 2015 and will be completed in summer 2016.
Ackerman plans to grow Big Rock primarily through development, with two to three properties a year as the goal, though he won’t shun a good turn-around acquisition opportunity. Big Rock Partners also has another large development in the works, this one a 300-unit community in Palm Beach County, Florida set to cost $80 million. Ackerman again brought in an institutional lending partner to fund the project. Plus, he has another project underway in South Carolina.
