First Opportunity Zone Project Breaks Ground

Quinn Palomino

The first opportunity zone fund development has officially broken ground. Private equity firm Virtua Partners and its hotel management affiliate Hotel Equities has started development on the 130-room Springhill Suites by Marriott in the Phoenix suburb of Avondale. This is seemingly early project in the opportunity zone saga, and is moving forward as Treasury officials map out the remaining regulations for these investment-friendly zones. However, Virtua was an earlier believer in the model and began fund raising last summer and planning a development pipeline even earlier.

“Our investments over the years have always been tax-centric. We followed the legislation as it made its way through Congress in 2017, and when it passed, we knew that it was going to have a pretty transformational impact on commercial real estate,” Quinn Palomino, principal and co-founder of Virtua Partners, tells GlobeSt.com. “As soon as it was passed, we put together a pipeline of projects. We currently have a pipeline of more than 120 projects across the country, mostly concentrated in the Sunbelt and primarily in residential and hospitality assets.”