Junk Removal in Bluffton, SC

StepStone Group, a global private markets investment solutions and advisory firm, has invested $300 million as part of a multi-pronged capital commitment to ACRE in a new strategic partnership that includes a portfolio recapitalization and plans to invest in multifamily properties across the U.S.

ACRE, a global real estate private equity firm that manages capital for institutional and family office investors through private equity and debt funds, currently has more than $3.5 billion assets under management. The commitment from StepStone, a leading pension fund allocator and one of the world’s largest institutional consultancies, is broad-based and is underpinned by recapitalization of a 1,500-unit multifamily portfolio from an earlier ACRE fund. It also includes a joint venture focused on development opportunities in multifamily opportunities across the risk spectrum such as value-add acquisitions, lease-up and ground-up development across the Sun Belt, Midwest and Texas, and a primary fund investment.

The 1,500-unit portfolio that was recapitalized comprises four properties in the Atlanta and Athens, Ga., areas and three in Florida in the Tampa, Fla., and Cape Coral, Fla., markets. The vehicle has secured 3.2 acres of land in Miami for a 349-unit multifamily project; a 158-unit build-to-rent development site in Port St. Lucie, Fla.; a 337-unit development in Chesterfield, Mo.; and a 331-unit development site in Bluffton, S.C. It has also made investments in two value-add assets in the Atlanta market and two Class A deals in Miami and Tampa.

Alex Abrams, managing director of StepStone Real Estate, said in a prepared statement the investment with ACRE is a strong fit with the firm’s strategy of recapitalizing best-in-class real estate platforms that own high-quality assets and providing those platforms additional capital to expand.

In June, StepStone Real Estate formed a $90 million co-investment partnership with Blue Vista to invest in purpose-built student housing. The partnership’s first transaction was a 671-bed project in Atlanta’s West Midtown neighborhood serving students at Georgia Tech.

Partnership Details

ACRE Managing Partner Michael Van Der Poel said in prepared remarks securing the commitment from StepStone marks a tremendous achievement for ACRE and its latest fund. PERE reported the fund investment and co-investment capital will be part of ACRE Multifamily Fund IV, which is still raising funds. The portfolio recapitalization is for assets within a prior fund, ACRE Equity Fund III, according to PERE.

Van Der Poel stated adding StepStone to its growing list of investment partners is a testament to the power of ACRE’s offering and the firm’s track record of generating value across market cycles. Other high-profile global investors to ACRE’s suite of investment platforms includes Hamilton Lane, OPTrust and Almanac Realty Investors, the private real estate investment arm of Neuberger Berman.

Since inception in 2011, ACRE’s acquisition, development and lending efforts have spanned 22,000 units from more than 90 investments in 33 cities. This week, ACRE broke ground on Pepper Hall, a 331-unit multifamily community in Okatie, S.C., in the Bluffton-Hilton Head area. The project is being developed in partnership with Southeast Partners and is slated for completion in early 2024. Earlier this year, ACRE sold four communities totaling nearly 900 units in Georgia, Florida and North Carolina.

While navigating the industry’s ups and downs, Chris Randolph of South Street Partners says his firm has learned that “you can’t rinse and repeat.”

This article is part of our latest special report on International Golf Homes.

When it comes to second homes and golf communities, South Street Partners has more than a dozen years of experience under its belt, riding the industry through economic ups and downs and the increased popularity of drive-to developments in the wake of Covid-19.

South Street, a private equity development firm based in Charlotte, N.C., and Charleston, S.C., has scored major acquisitions of the Kiawah Island Club in South Carolina and its two golf courses; Palmetto Bluff in Bluffton, S.C.; and the Cliffs development, which is set in the Blue Ridge Mountains and has seven separate communities in South Carolina and North Carolina.

With $1 billion in assets, the company’s strategy has been to primarily focus on the southeastern United States, which has experienced sustained population growth partly because of the migration of families and older adults to warmer climates.

Prices start around $2 million in their suite of developments, and Chris Randolph, a partner, says South Street is seeing no slowdown. In the coming year, South Street is building new homes at Kiawah and the Cliffs developments in South Carolina, particularly around Lake Keowee, and in Palmetto Bluff.

Golf remains, depending on where you live, a popular — and lucrative — attraction, so South Street is planning two new courses at Palmetto Bluff in the coming years: a nine-hole short course by King-Collins (architects of the Sweetens Cove course outside Chattanooga, Tenn., which has attracted investors like Peyton Manning); and another course at a private club.

At Kiawah, where Covid increased golf demand and drove up home prices, Beau Welling, Tiger Woods’ design partner, will work on a new course with a residential component. South Street plans to put a considerable amount of land into a conservation easement.

Mr. Randolph spoke about his firm’s investment plans and residential golf developments. The following conversation has been condensed and edited.

South Street just raised its first discretionary fund of $225 million. What does the fund allow you to do for the future, and how will it affect your existing portfolio of properties?

This is the first discretionary fund in South Street’s history and allows us to be more acquisitive of new properties while continuing to work with our legacy investment partners in the private equity and hedge fund space. At the same time, it will also allow us to do deals entirely on our own, to the extent we would like to do that.

As for existing properties, we will use the fund to make improvements at Palmetto Bluff, where we’re building a short course and a regulation 18-hole course, and Kiawah, where we will build a new 18-hole course, as well as other amenities and development activities.

How will you handle the golf real estate at both Kiawah and Palmetto Bluff? Has anything changed about how South Street views residential golf communities?

We may have a bit of a novel approach in that we’re not necessarily layering in real estate directly on the golf course. We want to create the best golf experience possible. From our perspective, that means what I would call a core golf course with little to no real estate impacting the golf experience.

Our theory is that if you create an incredible world-class golf experience, just the proximity of homes to that course will yield higher prices than a traditional fairway-lined real estate golf course development.

When you talk about giving the architects the best land, how much of that is member/customer-driven, and how much of that might be attributed to the average golfer’s growing understanding of what a good golf experience entails?

I think it’s both. We think the golf consumer has gotten far more sophisticated in terms of what they expect. To deliver on that, we need to find the best land for the best golf.

I used the term novel earlier, and I think it is probably still considered a little bit of a novel approach in our industry to not try and really integrate a ton of real estate on the golf frontage.

Another factor that’s driving this for us is that, at Kiawah, we actually see premiums for lots and homes on the parks that we’ve developed versus golf courses. The theory there is that people, especially young families, will pay more for frontage on a park they can access 24 hours a day versus a golf course where you really are only getting out there before and after the golfers play.

South Street has really made a push into offering turnkey homes at its properties. This seems to follow an industry trend. Is that consumer-driven, or simply the best way to maximize profit?

It’s very much consumer-driven and probably the biggest change to our industry, meaning high-end second-home communities. Fifteen years ago, the product of choice was the estate lots where you buy a lot, find an architect, find a builder, find a landscape architect and manage that all yourself.

Through the downturn of 2008 to 2010, people started taking a different approach, where they weren’t necessarily interested in taking on a project of that type. They still wanted a second home, but they were willing to trade some of the customization for a turnkey product that checked probably 90 percent of their boxes.

If you look at our home building activity, we are now the largest home builder at Kiawah and the largest home builder at the Cliffs. We will soon be the largest at Palmetto Bluff, because we believe fully in that strategy of delivering a finished product and doing so with scale and efficiency.

On Lake Keowee [at the Cliffs], we just set a record with a purchase price of $6.3 million. We designed it, built it and did the interiors, all the way down to the forks and knives in the drawers.

To that point, what are other major developments you’ve noticed in the last 10 years, and where do you foresee things going in the next five years?

As we enter into whatever this recessionary — whether it’s deep, shallow, long or short — environment, we’re going to be very conscious of what that means for our buyers.

The good news is we’ve got a very long-term outlook at all of our projects of 10-plus years, if not more. So, we don’t concern ourselves too much with slowdowns in the market in terms of our business plan, but we also want to be conscious of overdeveloping during a time when sales might not be there.

So, we’ll continue to build our amenities. We’ll continue to build the clustered neighborhoods around those amenities. Maybe we’ll scale back a little bit on some of the larger spec homes, but I don’t think it changes our business plan much at all, if any.

One thing we know is that you can’t rinse and repeat. That might have worked in another time, in different cycles. We’ve got to create unique products and, more than anything, we have to deliver the best product possible from both a club and resort experience.

At the end of the day, that’s what people are buying: the private club experience we can offer. The home is important, but you’re buying a lifestyle. Our buyers have worked a long time to have the ability to buy into these communities. The service, amenities and experience we offer need to be just world class.

Starting next year, Palmetto Bluff will be using international workers and interns to fill empty positions, and house them at the recently acquired Fairfield Inn and Suites in Okatie.

With the large growth of Beaufort County in recent years, South Street Partners, the owners of Palmetto Bluff, knew that affordable housing for their workers was going to be a challenge. On top of that, South Street has been struggling to find locals to work in the community, according to Rob Duckett, South Street’s president of operations.

Next year, South Street will be using two visa programs to bring in seasonal workers and interns to help fill needed positions in food and beverage as well as golf course management.

“Finding people within our market is more and more difficult every day because we’re all fighting for the same people,” said Duckett. “Being able to reach out to other markets and bring people into our market is the best strategy, and that’s where the housing comes in.”

Indeed, where are they going to live?

Palmetto Bluff is Bluffton’s largest private residential community with a golf club and resort totaling 20,000 acres in the south of Bluffton. In order to provide housing for the incoming workers, South Street acquired the Fairfield Inn & Suites off Interstate 95. The hotel, which is 11 miles away from Palmetto Bluff, will continue to operate as normal while providing nightly lodging for Palmetto Bluff’s local and international workers.

South Street will utilize J-1 visas, a student training program. Essentially an overseas internship, foreign students on J1 visas come to get experience in their field of study. In the case of Palmetto Bluff, they’ll be studying the hospitality industry.

Palmetto Bluff will work with the schools to develop a training plan for the students. J1 visas can last up to 18 months, but people working for South Street will typically stay for a year, according to Dixie Norris, South Street’s VP of Human Resources.

“The program is really great for them because they kind of get to get immersed in U.S. culture all the while learning the trade that they’re studying in school,” said Norris. “It’s great for us because we have extra help.”

South Street also will use H-2B visas, which allow for international workers to fill temporary, non-agricultural jobs in the U.S. These workers will only be brought in for Palmetto Bluff’s busy season, which typically runs from April through October.

International workers won’t be replacing anyone in Palmetto Bluff, just filling in where workers are needed, according to South Street.

“If we could fill all of our positions with locals, then we wouldn’t have a need for the international program,” said Norris. “This is in no way taking anybody’s spot.”

South Street says it anticipates employing around 45 more domestic and international workers in 2023.

“As we continue to grow and add amenities to Palmetto Bluff, we will also increase the number of full-time employees on our team,” Norris said.

The Fairfield hotel was constructed in 1999 and renovated in 2018. South Street has identified some improvements it hopes to make, like expanded laundry facilities and expanded opportunities for dining. The rooms are “in pretty good shape,” according to Duckett.

The name of the hotel will not change.

Bon Appétit magazine recognized that there is nothing common about Savannah's Common Thread.

On Wednesday, the national food magazine named Common Thread, 122 E. 37th St., to its 2022 list of the 50 Best New Restaurants in America for its ingredient-focused, farm-to-table offerings.

"Chefs Ryan Williamson and Brandon Carter have a talent for taking pristine ingredients and adding layers of complexity that always highlight, rather than hide, a dish’s core flavors," read the blurb highlighting the restaurant. "This is contemporary farm-to-table cooking at its finest—fun, flexible, and fascinating."

The restaurant, housed within the two-story restored 19th-century Krouskoff House on the northwest corner of Abercorn and 37th Street, opened in January 2021 thanks to the masterminds behind FARM Bluffton in South Carolina. When FARM co-founder Ryan Williamson and executive chef Brandon Carter teamed up, Common Thread was born, bringing a new dining experience to Savannah.

Subscribe to our free dining newsletter:Dive into the culinary news and trends of Savannah with our weekly look

Among its carefully crafted seasonal menu, Bon Appétit recommended the oysters, beef tartare and pork presse + sausage.

"Being able to showcase the Savannah culinary scene on a national scale is truly an honor," Carter said in a press release. "Chef de Cuisine Joseph Harrison, executive sous chef Victor Solano, general manager/wine director Libby Burk and an amazing support staff are truly the reason we are able to do what we do. We are honored and humbled to be recognized by such a respected organization as Bon Appètit."

Laura Nwogu is the quality of life reporter for Savannah Morning News. Contact her at LNwogu@gannett.com. Twitter: @lauranwogu_

Jasper County will host another PGA event in October, and tournament officials for the CJ Cup have announced that daily grounds tickets are now on sale Volunteer registration is also open.

The CJ Cup will take place Wednesday, Oct. 19-Sunday, Oct. 23, at Congaree Golf Club, located north of Ridgeland near Gillisonville. Founded by billionaires Dan Friedkin and the late Bob McNair, former owner of the NFL's Houston Texans, Congaree was completed in 2017 on a former 18th century rice plantation off US 278.

“We are excited to bring PGA Tour golf back to Congaree and offer these tremendous fans in the region an opportunity to see world-class players on one of the top courses in the United States,” tournament director Andre Silva said in a news release. “CJ has been a great partner to the tour for a long time, and I know they are eager to bring their unique fan experience to South Carolina this October.”

Grounds tickets prices will be $25 for Wednesday, Oct. 19 (practice round); $55 per day for Thursday, Oct. 20 and Friday Oct. 21; and $60 per day Saturday, Oct. 22, and Sunday Oct. 23. All prices are subject to taxes and fees, the news release said.

The tour said a maximum of two children ages 15 and under are admitted free per one ticketed adult. Tickets can be purchased at CJCUPSouthCarolina.com.

Tour officials also said the CJ Cup is offering active duty, retirees, veterans, and National Guard members up to four complimentary tickets per day, Oct. 19-23. Military members will need an active GovX account to verify military status and unlock the ticket offer, the tour said. If military members don’t have one tied to their military credentials, they must visit GovX.com to create an account.

Tour officials said many volunteer opportunities are available for the tournament.

"Volunteers are an integral part of every PGA TOUR event and make it possible to conduct a world-class tournament by devoting time, talent, and passion to help run all aspects of the event," a press release said.

The tour said there are more than 20 different volunteer committees to choose from, including Competition Support (ball spotters and location-based operators, both inside the ropes), Admissions, Player Transportation, Gallery Management, Supply Distribution and Media Center operations.

Those wishing to purchase tickets or parking passes, or to register for volunteer opportunities at THE CJ CUP in South Carolina can visit CJCUPSouthCarolina.com for more details.

This is the second PGA Tour event at Congaree Golf Club. The first, the Palmetto Championship at Congaree, was last June. The event was won by South African Garrick Higgo.

THE CJ Cup was launched as Korea’s first official PGA Tour tournament in 2017 and was played for three consecutive years at Nine Bridges on Jeju Island before being relocated to the US due to the challenges of COVID-19, a news release said.

Tour officials said the tournament will feature a 78-man field comprised of five players designated by the Korea Professional Golfers’ Association (KPGA), as well as the top-3 available players of Korean nationality from the Official World Golf Ranking, as part of CJ Group’s vision to support development of professional golf in Korea.

The remainder of the field, officials said, will be made up of the leading players from the 2021-22 FedExCup points list and sponsor exemptions. There will be no 36-hole cut, and Rory McIlroy is the defending champion after winning THE CJ Cup at The Summit Club en route to his record third FedExCup title.