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EB-5 investment opportunity in New Orleans yields development project
Anonymous foreign financiers have taken advantage of an EB-5 investment opportunity, leading to the construction of a new restaurant, hotel and conference center in New Orleans.
The development firm NobelOutReach has been contracted to build the WOW Café and Wingery, Value Place Hotel and multipurpose convention center after the New Orleans EB-5 regional center brought in $20 million in foreign investments, USAdvisors reports.
On Wednesday, January 27, two ramshackle buildings on General DeGaulle Drive in Algiers, Louisiana, were demolished to make room for the new development that officials hope will ignite economic progress in the area.
Paul Richard, a commercial investment agent who marketed the tumbledown buildings for about five years, told the news source, “But for [the EB-5 investments], I’m not sure this deal could have been done.”
He added, “It ran the gamut of potential land uses, and it really became a function of which land use could underwrite the investment.”
NobleOutReach’s president Bart Hungerford said that federal securities law prohibits him from disclosing the number of investors related to the new project and their financial contributions.
However, the EB-5 visa program mandates that foreigners invest $1 million dollars to an American business or $500,000 to a business in an area of high unemployment in exchange for a U.S. green card.