RiverOak Launches Urban Investment Fund

STAMFORD, CT-RiverOak Investment Corp. has launched a new fund--RiverOak Urban Retail Investors Fund I--which will focus on acquiring urban mixed-use retail properties, GlobeSt.com has learned exclusively. RiverOak CEO Steve DeNardo announced the creation of the fund.

"The retail is something I've had an interest in for a long time and I've also done a lot of inner city retail in the past," DeNardo tells GlobeSt.com. As for what spurred the fund's development, he says that he watched and realized that there weren't a lot of organized capital sources targeting the types of properties that it will target. "I felt we had a competitive advantage."

The fund has a capital target of $300 million. Lianne Merchant, a partner at RiverOak Investment Corp., is leading the fund’s capital raising initiatives. "The combination of a slowly recovering economy and the revaluation of high street retail properties in these demographically strong and growing markets makes this an ideal time for the launch of RiverOak Urban Retail Investors Fund I," Merchant said in a prepared statement. "Institutional investors are currently looking for emerging managers such as RiverOak to identify and capitalize on reasonably priced, quality assets at this opportune time in the real estate cycle."

According to the company, the urban, mixed-use retail properties the fund will target and reposition will be located in 24-hour central business districts that are currently showing positive growth. DeNardo says that the cities the fund will target are Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, DC. "Our criteria is strict," he says, adding that they are "getting some good traction," and "do have a development pipeline," though he declined to identify any propective buys.