Profiles: Town Lane

Since closing its’ impressive $1.25 billion debut fund last year, Town Lane has added several experienced team members and begun to deploy capital. Founded by Tyler Henritze, Town Lane is one of the notable real estate investment firms recently launched by former Blackstone executives. Joining Blackstone as an analyst, Henritze spent 19 years at the firm, eventually becoming Head of Strategic Investments and Head of Real Estate Acquisitions Americas and overseeing $88 billion of equity deployed. He was involved in some of the firm’s most successful investments including Hilton Worldwide and The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.

Since initially launching, Town Lane has added several junior and senior hires. Junior hires include background from Starwood Capital, Evercore Real Estate Strategic Advisory, Ares Management, Goldman Sachs Coatue Management, and Blackstone. The firm has also added three senior advisors, including Guy Metcalfe, the prolific real estate investment banker known for advising clients on over $850 billion in transactions at Morgan Stanley. He also serves as Senior Advisor at KKR and on the boards of CBRE and Prologis. Michael Nash and William Stein, who both recently retired from Blackstone, have also joined as senior advisors. Nash was co-founder of the Blackstone’s real estate credit investment business (BREDS), serving as its Chairman since 2016.

The firm’s mandate for Town Lane Real Estate Opportunities Fund I is flexible across commercial real estate sectors and across the capital stack. It has announced two initial transactions, which are both joint ventures. Along with Cousins Properties (NYSE: CUZ), Town Lane acquired Proscenium, a 526,000 square foot Class A office building located in the Midtown submarket of Atlanta, GA for approximately $83 million in an all-cash transaction. In another joint venture partnership with PowerHouse Data Centers, Town Lane acquired 122 acres in Charlotte, North Carolina. The site is the future home to PowerHouse Charlotte, a five-building, 2.5 million square feet data center campus. Investors for Fund I include “a diverse and esteemed group of experienced institutional investors, including university endowments, charitable foundations, family offices and pension funds.”