The U.S. Army announced that Balfour Beatty Communities, LLC will replace American Eagle Communities Midwest as its partner with Leonard Wood Family Communities, LLC (LWFC). The partnership is part of the Residential Communities Initiative (RCI) Family Housing Privatization Project at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
According to Keith Eastin, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations & Environment, "I look forward to working with Balfour Beatty Communities to achieve success at Fort Leonard Wood similar to what they have accomplished at the nine other Army installations where they are our Residential Community Initiatives partner. They are true professionals when it comes to providing quality housing for our Soldiers and their Families."
American Eagle is divesting all of their Military Housing Privatization Initiative projects across the Department of Defense. Concurrent with the sale was a restructuring of the project which provides a revised end-state of 1,806 housing units rather than the original 2,242 end-state units. The revised end-state is more reflective of the market conditions at Fort Leonard Wood today and includes a realignment of future debt service payments with projected revenue from the project, of which approximately $80M of existing debt was redeemed.
The Balfour Beatty Communities team has worked diligently to identify a solution that, while not constructing as many units, provides major renovations and conversions which will increase actual living space and provide "like new" homes.
A search for a new development partner had been on-going for the past 15 months. American Eagle worked closely with the Department of Army to mutually agree on Balfour Beatty Communities, LLC as the best partner to assume responsibility for the project.
The sale of the project from American Eagle to Balfour Beatty was completed on June 27, 2008.
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For more information please contact Mr. Dave Foster (703) 697-5344 or Dave.Foster@hqda.army.mil.
The US Army Residential Communities Initiative (RCI) plays a vital role in eliminating inadequate family housing on Arm installations. In 1996, the Military Housing Privatization Initiative Act (MHPI) provided the military Services with the authority to leverage scarce public funds and assets to obtain private sector capital and expertise to build, renovate, operate, and manage Army housing. The RCI Program will privatize family housing at 45 installations (grouped into 35 projects) encompassing over 88,000 houses in the U.S. Since March 2008, the private partners have constructed 13,823 homes and renovated 11,277 homes for soldiers and their families.
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