ATLANTA, Jan. 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- With a successful 2017 in the rearview mirror, PPD Holdings, LLLP will embark on an ambitious agenda — with its sights set on Florida and Georgia — that includes new construction and securing land for multifamily projects.

In Georgia, PPD Holdings plans to begin construction on The Crest at Acworth by the end of spring. In the meantime, they are in negotiations for a $30 million construction loan for the 300-unit project.

The Crest at Acworth is one of three properties planned for construction in 2018. The other two are in southwest Florida: The Crest at Bonita Springs and The Crest at Naples. The Crest at Bonita Springs will consist of 264 units in six three-story buildings and The Crest at Naples will consist of 200 units.

The three projects slated for development come on the heels of District at Duluth's completion. Located downtown Duluth, Georgia — and valued at more than $80 million — District at Duluth is a 370-unit mixed use project that will be completed in the summer.

Regarding another property in Georgia, PPD Holdings refinanced a loan with State Farm for The Crest at Laurel Canyon — a 350-unit luxury apartment community in Canton, Georgia — for $28.3 million.

Also on the horizon, PPD Holdings is searching for land to purchase across the southeast.
"Our focus is on the Greater Atlanta area; Raleigh, North Carolina and Tampa, Florida," PPD Holdings founder Pablo Diego said.
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About PPD Holdings, LLLP

​PPD Holdings is an investment company based in Atlanta that specializes in multifamily real estate and service-related industries across the Southeast. With over 30 years of combined experience, PPD Holdings has invested in assets worth more than $1 billion since its founding in the early 1990s. For more information, visit www.ppdholdings.com

ATLANTA, Dec. 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Management Group LLC was recently named to Multifamily Leadership's annual list as one of the "Best Places to Work in Multifamily" for 2018. In the list, which spotlights 25 multifamily companies across the United States, TMG ranked No. 6.

Multifamily Leadership, which specializes in advising industry executives, announced the top 25 companies at its annual summit held Nov. 13-15 in Scottsdale, Arizona.

To qualify for the list, companies were evaluated based on criteria including:
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• Employee policies, practices and demographics
• Leadership and planning
• Corporate culture and communications
• Role satisfaction
• Work environment
• Relationship with supervisor
• Training, development and resources
• Pay and benefits
• Overall engagement

To evaluate companies against the criteria, Multifamily Leadership conducted Employee Engagement & Satisfaction Surveys that consisted of 78 statements for employees to respond to, along with two open-ended questions and seven demographics questions. This survey made up 75-percent of a company's overall score. An employer questionnaire on benefits and policies made up the other 25 percent.

"An important measure of a company's leadership strategy is its quality of workplace," TMG Executive Vice President Jamin Harkness said. "This is a multi-billion-dollar industry that not only provides jobs, but creates local communities for individuals and families who realize the value of renting in today's economy. That's why it's so important to create a great workplace for those serving multifamily communities."

About The Management Group LLC

​The Management Group LLC (TMG) is an Atlanta-based, full service real estate asset management provider comprised of professionals from the multifamily, retail, construction and development sectors. TMG is dedicated to leveraging technology and best practices across sectors to simplify every interaction between our service and the end customer. For more information, visit tmg-atl.com.

Karen Huppertz
For the AJC

Duluth’s 30,000-square-foot restaurant and retail district known as Parsons Alley was the winner of the Urban Land Institute Atlanta District Council’s Development of Excellence Award. Last year’s ULI winners included Ponce City Market and the Porsche Experience Center. The ULI jury included about 20 development and design professionals who recognized and rewarded the blend of new design and respect for the old in Duluth’s downtown spaces.

Mayor Nancy Harris along with Council Members Marsha Bomar, Greg Whitlock, Billy Jones, and Jim Dugan accepted the award along with development partners, Kronberg Wall, Vantage Realty, Fabric Development, and Weissman at the awards ceremony Sept. 14. Also present was Downtown Development Autnority Chairman Rob Ponder and Economic Development Manager Chris McGahee.

The ULI Awards for Excellence program recognizes an outstanding real estate development project or initiative that exemplifies the ULI’s mission of providing leadership in the responsible use of land and in creating and sustaining thriving communities. The awards recognize the full development process of a project including construction, economic viability, marketing, and management, as well as design.

Link

ATLANTA, Aug. 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- PPD Holdings Investment Group has refinanced loans for two of its multifamily properties in Greater Atlanta and has received preliminary loan approval for the construction of two apartment communities in Southwest Florida. The financial maneuvers total $111 million.

A $34 million HUD 221(d)(4) loan is pending approval for the construction of The Crest at Naples, a 200-unit Class A apartment community in Naples, Florida. PPD also expects to finalize construction financing for a 264-unit community in Bonita Springs, Florida. The $30-million loan is expected to be approved during the third quarter of 2017. Upon completion, these properties will remain in the PPD Holdings portfolio.

The two development projects are the first of many planned for Florida coastal areas.

"We expect to add around 250 units a year in markets from Tampa to Naples over the next 10 years," PPD Holdings founder Pablo Diego said.

In the Greater Atlanta area, PPD Holdings has closed on refinancing loans for The Crest at Sugarloaf and The Crest at Berkeley Lake. The $28 million loan on The Crest at Sugarloaf — a 540-unit apartment community in Lawrenceville, Georgia — was refinanced with lender The Guardian Life Insurance Company. The Crest at Berkeley Lake is a 382-unit apartment community in Duluth, Georgia that had an $18.95 million loan refinanced with PPM America.
Currently, PPD Holdings is refinancing The Crest at Laurel Canyon, a 350-unit complex in Canton, Georgia.

"Initially we had budgeted for a refinance of The Crest at Laurel Canyon by June of 2018," Diego said. "But leasing has been extraordinary and has exceeded expectations, so we are positioned to take advantage of refinancing right now."

PPD Holdings is currently building its portfolio and doesn't intend to sell any assets in 2017.

About PPD Holdings, LLLP
​
PPD Holdings is an investment company based in Atlanta that specializes in multifamily real estate and service-related industries across the Southeast. With over 30 years of combined experience, PPD Holdings has invested in assets worth more than $1 billion since its founding in the early 1990s. For more information, visit www.ppdholdings.com

ATLANTA, Feb. 13, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- PPD Holdings Investment Group has taken advantage of the recent boom in the multifamily industry, closing sales on numerous properties located across the Southeast, with those transactions totaling more than $361 million.

They're looking to parlay that success into more investments in 2017 and beyond.

"We were able to sell these properties at top market," PPD Holdings founder Pablo Diego said.
PPD Holdings sold apartment home communities located in Greater Atlanta, Nashville, Tennessee, and Raleigh, North Carolina.

Those properties include:

• One Metrocenter: 320 units (Nashville, Tennessee)
• Circa & Ecco 400: 608 units (Sandy Springs, Georgia)
• The Crest at Laurelwood: 272 units (Woodstock, Georgia)
• Wesley Pond: 246 units (Douglasville, Georgia)
• Wesley Park: 370 units (Norcross, Georgia)
• Wesley at Windward: 294 units (Alpharetta, Georgia)
• The Crest at Brier Creek: 291 units (Raleigh, North Carolina)
• West End Village: 244 units (Nashville, Tennessee)

In addition to the current units under the PPD Holdings portfolio, over the next 18 months it plans to invest in an additional 1,200 units in properties located in the Greater Atlanta area and in Southwest Florida.

PPD Holdings is also pursuing opportunities in the Southeast, particularly in Raleigh, North Carolina and in Nashville, Tennessee.

About PPD Holdings, LLLP

​PPD Holdings is an investment company based in Atlanta that specializes in multifamily real estate and service-related industries across the Southeast. With over 30 years of experience, PPD Holdings has invested in assets worth more than $1 billion since its founding in the early 1990s. For more information, visit www.ppdholdings.com

Written by 
GwinnettCitizen.com

Duluth - The time is here! One of the City’s most frequently asked questions, when will something be done with Proctor Square? has been answered!
On Tuesday, July 19th at 11:30 a.m., a ceremonial demolition gathering will be held on site at Proctor Square located behind 3116 Buford Highway. The downtown revitalization is now reaching across Buford Highway as Duluth continues its transformation! 

After 43 years of retail service the Proctor Square complex and associated outparcels at the corner of Duluth Highway and Buford Highway are slated for demolition beginning next week.  

The Dunwoody based developer Residential Group, LLC has acquired Proctor Square along with outparcels consisting of Duluth Corners, Georgia Cremation, and FM Appliance.   The eight-acre assemblage will become The Village in Duluth, a 375 multi-family rental unit complex with 11 retail/office store fronts with connected living space above and two corner restaurant sites.  

The development will feature a wrapped parking deck accessible to the public on the first two levels, tree lined boulevard with parallel parking, sidewalks, and public art sites.  The urban style units will be split 50/50 between one room and two bedroom units.  The project is expected to take 24 months to complete. Estimated construction cost is $64,000,000.

Proctor Square was first constructed in the late 60’s on one of the highest points in Duluth.  It was the first true shopping center in Duluth and served the community well as it evolved over time.  

The community is invited to attend and take a ceremonial sledgehammer swing at the property before demolition crews mobilize. To attend the event please turn off Buford Hwy onto Fox Street and enter the Proctor Square site at the gate opening. Parking is available on that end of the site (see map).

Written by 
David Allison
Atlanta Business Chronicle

A new $64 million redevelopment of downtown Duluth, Ga., has begun with the demolition of an old grocery store.
The 43-year-old Proctor Square shopping center will become an 8-acre redevelopment with a 375-unit apartment complex and 11 retail and office store fronts, the Gwinnett Daily Post reported. Read the story and check out a rendering here.The project is expected to take two years to finish.

Atlanta Business Chronicle reported in March about another project in Duluth. Fabric Developers and Vantage Realty Partners broke ground on the redevelopment of seven historic downtown Duluth buildings, making room for up to seven new restaurants. The $7 million project could open its first restaurants by January.
The roughly 40,000-square-foot project, called The Block at Parson’s Alley, is drawing inspiration from Decatur, a model of downtown revitalization.

Keith Farmer
Gwinnett Daily Post

Rita Bowens remembers the excitement of the arrival of Winn-Dixie more than three decades ago because as a Duluth native, it meant she and her family no longer had to drive to Doraville or beyond for shopping.
Her mother loved Parsons, the original general store shopping destination in Duluth that “had everything.”
But Bowens, 61, admitted she was a bit melancholy last week as she stood at the corner of Buford Highway and Duluth Highway and watched heavy excavator construction equipment demolish the vacant building at Proctor Square.
“It is part of my history, my parents are no longer living so representing them and knowing that for them to be able to see the change,” Bowens said. “I see the change for them. … I think it’s a good change for the city because change is everywhere. You can’t stay stagnant.”
Born and raised in Duluth, Bowens remembers the Proctor Square heyday in the 1970s and ’80s and when Gwinnett Place Mall opened and pulled customers from the Winn-Dixie, a five and dime store called Elmore’s and Western Auto.
While the property had stores as recently as a few years ago, questions about the property have buzzed around the city for the last decade, and were one of the first things asked of Mayor Nancy Harris when she began to campaign 10 years ago.
Once home to the Rexall Grill before it moved across the street, Proctor Square had 43 years of retail service before a developer from Dunwoody, Residential Group, acquired Proctor Square along with Duluth Corners, Georgia Cremation, and FM Appliance.
The expected $64 million project across eight acres will become a 375 unit rental complex with 11 retail and office store fronts with connected living space above and two corner restaurant sites. The development will feature a wrapped parking deck accessible to the public on the first two levels, tree-lined boulevard with parallel parking, sidewalks and public art sites.
It’s expected to take two years to finish.
“The whole design of the building is kind of an early industrial design,” developer Kurt Alexander said. “It kind of ties back into the railroad, early city of Duluth, and if you look at a lot of the architecture, signage, buildings in place, we’re pulling off of those ideas and bringing it into our project. It is a new property, but it does reach back to the history of Duluth and what’s existing now.”
He added that it’s an urban project in a suburban location that offers urban amenities with restaurants and outdoor space.
As she spoke to a gathered crowd in the parking lot, Harris said she expects this to be a catalyst for further development. The brick, wrought iron and public art is also designed to mix old and new, like the remade downtown area that has a late 1800 design.

“Yes, we’re getting rid of something really old, but it had no use,” said Harris, a former Winn-Dixie cashier. “… We feel like by doing this, that place is going to get better, and that place is going to get better, and the place down the road is going to get better. We just feel like it’s really going to be a trigger for economic growth on Buford Highway.”
Councilman Billy Jones remembers the property as a young boy after it first constructed in the late 1960s on one of the highest points in Duluth. It was the first true shopping center outside of Parsons.
When Jones was a young teenager, he worked at Western Auto, and that helped him buy his first car at the bottom of the hill, a 1973 Chevrolet Nova.
“I remember working in this store looking out the window going, ‘I’m going to buy that car one day,’” Jones said. “It sat there a long time — it seemed like it took me a year to get my down payment.”
Jones’ parents had a television sales and service business and a laundromat at one end of the property, and between his job and after-school time with his father, Jones said he “hung out here a lot.”
Jones’ grandmother lived just behind the property, and because of his family ties, he said history is very important and recalled a one-time city motto: having pride in old and new.
“On the flip side, you’ve got to move ahead with some things,” he said. “There’s got to be a mix. … Some things have to come down for advancing, but there’s a mix, a fine balance.”

Written by 
Tyler Estep
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

​Work on a $64 million mixed-use project in the heart of downtown Duluth — a development complete with hundreds of apartments, a pair of restaurant spaces and nearly a dozen other storefronts — will begin next week, city officials announced Friday.
Proctor Square, an aging retail center, will be demolished to make room.
The project from Dunwoody-based developer Residential Group, LLC, dubbed "The Village in Duluth," will go up on eight acres centered at 3116 Buford Highway, on the southwest corner of that road's intersection with Duluth Highway. It will feature "a 375 multi-family rental unit complex with 11 retail/office store fronts with connected living space and two corner restaurant sites," Duluth spokeswoman Amanda Leiba said in a news release. 

The aging Proctor Square retail center will be demolished to make room for The Village in Duluth, a $64 million mixed-use project. (Credit: City of Duluth)It will also include a parking deck, "tree-lined boulevard" and public art sites. 
Construction is expected to take two years, but work will begin Tuesday — when demolition begins on the 1960s-era Proctor Square, which officials called the "first true shopping center in Duluth." Developers have also acquired three neighboring outparcels. 
The project's start is just the latest step in a flurry of big-time development around downtown Duluth. 
Down the street from the Proctor Square project, work is well underway on "The Block at Parson's Alley," a 30,000-square-foot restaurant and retail district surrounding the city's Village Green. Dreamland Bar-B-Que has already opened on the site near Lawrenceville and Main streets, as has O4W Pizza.
On the western side of Duluth Highway and Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, a 31-acre development known as Sugarloaf Marketplace will include 330 luxury apartments and 75,000 square feet of retail. A Sprouts Farmers Market opened on the site in May.
Homesouth Communities is working on a 36-townhome development on the back side of downtown, too.

Written by
Curt Yeomans
Gwinnett Daily Post

​Duluth Mayor Nancy Harris put a major emphasis on one simple two-letter word as she talked about what has been going on in the city during her State of the City Address on Monday: “Be.”
Harris told a packed house of residents, staff and elected officials that the city should be visionary in looking at what it wants to be like in the future. She added that it should be healthy by not only having quality parks and recreation facilities, but using them and also partnering with Gwinnett Medical Center to develop a former Ingles grocery store.
The mayor said the city should also be a destination. It should, she said, be Duluth.
“We want you to eat in Duluth, shop in Duluth and be Duluth,” Harris said. “Everything you do needs to be about Duluth.”
Harris’ speech focused on what has been going on in Duluth in the last year and what will be coming up this year. As part of her theme of being Duluth, she paused for a moment so she and the city council handed out six Capture the Spirit Awards that recognize contributions to the city.
The awards were presented to Michael Robbins, Donna Daluga, Ann Parsons Odum, Melissa Henry, Helen Jones and Maxine Garner.
During her speech, Harris outlined some city business matters, such as working on a new 10-year parks and recreation plan to replace one that is now a decade old. She added that the city has partnered with Gwinnett County, Johns Creek and Fulton County to secure a $400,000 matching grant from the Atlanta Regional Commission to study the revitalization of Rogers Bridge.
There were also some transportation projects, such as working with Gwinnett County to put sidewalks on Duluth Highway, from Buford Highway to Claiborne Drive, construction of George Rogers Road, median work on Buford Highway and landscaping at the intersection of Pleasant Hill Road and Buford Highway.
A major part of the city’s plans for the future, though, is to increase walkability, particularly in its downtown area.
“Citizens are looking for places to live that are walkable,” she said. “We may not be able to make it possible for you to walk to your jobs, but we want to make it walkable enough that you can walk to a restaurant or that you walk to shopping areas.”
Two major walkability-minded developments she highlighted were The Block, a restaurant district that will be located next to the Duluth Town Green, and Sugarloaf Market, a mixed-use residential and retail development at the corner of Peachtree Industrial Boulevard and Sugarloaf Parkway.
Both projects are under construction.
Walkability is a key factor in attracting young work-age professionals, the group known as “millennials,” who prefer walkable areas and both bring families with them and are attractive to businesses who are looking to relocate.
Harris said millennials make up 17 percent of Duluth’s population. That’s not good enough, she said.
“I would like to get that number a little higher,” Harris told her audience. “That’s why we’re doing a lot of the things that we’re doing — to attract millennials because that’s the age group businesses are looking at.”
Projects like The Block and Sugarloaf Market are important to the city. It puts restaurants and other retail near residential areas. The Block, in particular, is seen by Duluth officials as the kind of project that will boost the energy of the city’s city’s downtown core.
The rest of the city will benefit from it as a result, Harris said.
“When you have a strong and vibrant downtown, that’s an economic development catalyst for the entire city,” she said.
Harris also gave residents a tease of one project coming up in the next few weeks during her speech. The city council will vote on whether to approve the Residential Group’s proposed The Village At Duluth development during its Feb. 8 meeting, she said. The project is designed to include about 400 residential units and street-facing retail.
If the city council approves it, the development would be built at the current site of the Proctor Square shopping center at the corner of Buford and Duluth highways. Harris said it is being looked at carefully however because of the volume of housing it plans to provide.
The city already has 639 housing units that are in the process of being built. That includes 134 single-family attached units, 174 single-family detached units and 331 urban-style apartments.
“We’re going to look at how many apartments do we want and how many do we need,” Harris said after her speech. “We want to look at all of the data and make an informed decision.”