AMLI Gains Foothold With $13.7M Purchase

AMLI rose to the forefront as the logical buyer for the Gates of 7th Street Station at 2601 W. 7th St. after it acquired 194 class A units practically right up the street in May. That's all the buying for now in Fort Worth, Mark Alfieri, AMLI's senior vice president in Texas, tells GlobeSt.com. "Everything that is available or could have been available has been sold down there," he says.

The seller of record is the 7th Street Station LP, an investment group comprised of GE Capital and Westdale Asset Management of Dallas. Kevin Jennings, Westdale's acquisitions director, confides that he approached AMLI right after it bought the Reserve Upper West Side from Trammell Crow Residential in Atlanta. "They bought right down the street so I figured they'd be interested in what we had," he says.

Jennings was right on the mark, with AMLI saying yes to the 92%-occupied property. AMLI agreed to a "fair price" and the seller walked away with a tidy profit on an asset bought in February.

AMLI 7th Street Station was built two years ago on 7.8 acres along 7th Street and just west of Henderson Street. The five three-story buildings have an average unit size of 1,029 sf and bring in a monthly rent of about $1,000 per unit.

Allan Sweet, AMLI president, says the plan is to team property management for the two top-of-the-line communities. The strategy "should produce significant economies of scale," he says. "As a unit, we believe these two acquisitions represent a solid investment in an improving urban location."

The corridor's improved dynamics are coming from its linchpin positioning between the CBD and the Cultural District, which is a month away from unveiling its newest museum. It's all just a matter of time before the closed-door talks by developers materialize into the mixed-use projects now rumored to be under discussion. AMLI 7th Street Station is right across the street from the 1.4-million-sf, 45-acre Montgomery Ward property, which just fell out from under its second contract.