Urban Redevelopment In Columbus OZs, With Cbus OZ Fund

In this webinar, Chris Knoppe shares the opportunity to invest in urban redevelopment in Columbus, Ohio.

Webinar Highlights

• Summary of the positive momentum in Columbus, Ohio, including recent announcements from Intel and Hyperion.
• A discussion of the unique incentives offered by the state of Ohio.
• How urban rehab is differentiated from ground up construction.
• Highlights of the recognition for Cbus both nationally and locally.
• A review of some of the assets that have been rehabbed in the current and previous funds, as well as previews of several assets in the Fund III pipeline.
• Live Q&A with webinar attendees.

Industry Spotlight: Cbus OZ Fund

Cbus OZ Funds is a Qualified Opportunity Zone Fund specializing in urban redevelopment in Columbus, Ohio. The principles of Cbus OZ Funds are distinguished operators who continually identify investment opportunities and execute on redevelopment plans to benefit investors and the surrounding communities.

Learn More About Cbus OZ Fund

Webinar Transcript

Jimmy: Without further ado, I’ll turn it over to you. Thank you, Chris.

Chris: Perfect. Thank you, Jimmy. And hello, my name’s Chris Knoppe. I’m president and a partner at Cbus OZ Funds. For those of you who don’t know, Cbus is hip lingo for Columbus, as in Columbus, Ohio, and that’s where we’re located. First, just a quick disclaimer. We are presenting this offering under Rule 506(c) of Reg D. And to see the full details of our offering, please request our PPM on our website, cbusozfunds.com. I’m gonna spend the next 10 minutes explaining why our fund is an excellent opportunity for you as an investor. So, like I mentioned, we’re based in Columbus, Ohio, and we specialize in urban redevelopment projects in all of the residential neighborhoods surrounding downtown Columbus.

It’s in partnership with our operating company, New City Homes. We are property manager, home builder, and construction manager. So, a couple of things are important to touch on here. First, why Columbus? We’re gonna talk about the benefits of this fast-growing city. We’re gonna talk about some very unique additional incentives that the state of Ohio offers opportunities for investors that’s unique to the rest of the country and gives us a step ahead. And lastly, we would touch on, you know, why my team is worthy of your investment and managing it over the next decade. And we’ll close the presentation covering the terms of the offering and also giving you a view into the pipeline of projects that we already have well established. So without further ado, why Columbus, Ohio? I mentioned it’s the fastest growing city in the Midwest.

Many people aren’t aware of that. It’s the state capital. There’s [inaudible 00:01:54] Ohio state university, a massive amount of large employers that cover all different economic bases, and we have a growing startup. We have one of the highest percentages of young professionals in the country. Specifically, the city was one of only 14 in all of the country that added at least 100,000 residents since 2010, and that’s based on the last most recent census data. The population in Columbus Metro grew by 12% during that period of time and has over 2 million residents. And the region is expected to add 1 million residents by the year 2050. And important to note that we recently had two major economic announcements.

Well, one I would say beyond major, and the other is still big, and there is others coming. So, this forecast of adding a million residents was done before these recent announcements. So, what are those announcements? Just in January, Intel announced plans to build a mega-site on 1,000 acres outside of Columbus. It’s a $20 billion initial investment that’s expected to grow up to $100 billion and will total 8 leading-edge chip factories. This is expected to create 3,000 Intel jobs, thousands more construction jobs, and tens of thousands of permanent local jobs with the various suppliers and partners that Intel will use. Shortly after that, the company Hyperion, which is a car company in the hydrogen fuel cell vein, they announced a relocation from their headquarters in Orange, California to Columbus.

They’re investing $300 million to renovate a 65-acre warehouse where they will manufacture the hydrogen fuels cell stacks for their vehicles. That’s gonna create 700 permanent jobs. These are just very recent examples of why Columbus is attractive. And don’t take my word for it. This is what the CEO of Intel had to say about it. These factories will create a new epicenter for advanced chip-making in the U.S. It’ll bolster Intel’s domestic lab-to-fab pipeline and strength Ohio’s leadership in research in high tech. Ohio has a emerging venture capitalist segment and it’s just leading to a ton of technology investments. We have Google, Amazon, Facebook, all the majors are in central Ohio.

The CEO of Hyperion said, “We looked at many of the top leading states across the country. We looked for a long time and we went through the process of analyzing every piece, every metric, and Columbus had the perfect blend because it’s so diverse, from tech resources to manufacturing base.”

But let’s talk real estate. Why are we focused on urban redevelopment? The residential population in downtown has more than doubled since 2010, or between 2010 and 2020, via the census data. National and local population patterns show that people wanna live in a walkable and affordable neighborhood. The neighborhoods surrounding downtown are experiencing tremendous growth.

And the current housing stock in the urban neighborhoods is inadequate in both quantity and quality. Many of these neighborhoods were built 50, 60, even 100 years ago. And so, the housing stock is outdated and requires renovation. Strong demand exists for a vast revitalization of existing housing stock as well as construction of new housing, particularly in the workforce housing price category that appeals to the masses, and it’s currently undersupplied.

Local knowledge and operations is of huge importance when revitalizing urban communities, and that’s where our company comes into play. And before I get into that, I wanna touch on…I mentioned the tax incentive offered by the state of Ohio. It’s called the Ohio Opportunity Zone Tax Credit, and what it offers is for investors of funds that exclusively invest their money in Ohio opportunity zones, they receive an additional tax credit of 10% of their investment. That tax credit, if you’re in Ohio, can be used to pay your taxes, of course, but if you’re not in Ohio, it’s transferable, meaning you can sell it.

We’re on our third round of these tax credits. They just started being issued for the investors last year. Just were issued just starting today, actually. And we have a buyer lined up at 85% of face value. So, our out-of-state investors are all receiving, you know, 85% of their tax credit in cash. And it’s within the first year of their investment often within first three to six months, depending on your timing. So, It’s a nice little kicker.

Background on us. So, my partners are my two brothers, and we’ve been business partners since 2005. We co-founded New City Homes, and we participated in over 1000 real estate transactions together.

We have extensive experience in new construction, remodel, acquisition, finance, property management. We specialize, like I said, residential and mixed-use redevelopment within urban neighborhoods surrounding downtown. I wanna get to the meat of what our fund is doing. And so, I’m gonna jump through this slide, but it just highlights some of our experience. We’re recognized local housing and development experts. We’ve been featured in publications. We’ve won awards and not only locally but nationally. We’re a nationally recognized OZ Fund. I’m proud to share with you that, just in February, we were announced as a top 25 fund manager by opportunityzone.com. And the national recognition is nice, but it’s really about boots on the ground and also community involvement. This is our team at Cbus and New City.

Every month, we’re out in the streets, we’re picking up the neighborhood, we’re attending community events, we’re hosting round tables. We’re truly giving back to the neighborhoods in which we improve. It also keeps us in touch with the communities, and that’s vital because it’s all about connections to the community. We wanna make sure our projects fit within the community and improve the communities.

So, our office is located right in the middle of one of the largest opportunity zones in the Central Ohio area. And I personally live in that opportunity zone. I moved my family into the opportunity zone a couple of years ago. So it started with a simple mission as it was…