Real estate investment trusts and institutional private capital

Commercial Real Estate Banking

(Visual Description): Truist Commercial Real Estate

Portman Holdings

Building a Partnership

[music begins]

[John C. Portman IV] Portman Holdings is a development investment and management firm that focuses on large-scale complex urban projects.

My name is John C. Portman the fourth, president of Portman Holdings.

(Visual Description: John C. Portman Jr. picture is displayed on the screen)

My grandfather, our founder, our late chairman, John C. Portman Jr. founded the company as an architectural firm in 1953.

I wasn’t sure that I wanted to join the family business. My father, my grandfather, Ambrish, they were kind enough to say, "Well, why are you looking elsewhere? Why don't you consider coming here?"

[Ambrish Baisiwala] John was an invaluable partner to have in the company. That's why I was very keen that he come back and join the business.

My name is Ambrish Baisiwala, which is a real mouthful. And so most people just call me AB and I'm the chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Portman Holdings. 

We’ve spend a lot of time trying to build an organization that's a very flat organization and so it's a very small team. Everybody is empowered and very encouraged to kind of speak their views and thoughts and if they have a point of view then to kind of debate that. So ultimately my role really is to first of all make sure that we have the best team possible.

So Portman, basically in partnership with Georgia Tech, developed an office building called Coda. And because of Coda, Anthem basically approached us and they said that they wanted to be inside that building, but we did not have enough space inside the building for them.

(Visual Description): Portman approached SunTrust now Truist with a proposition:

Would they be willing to move a branch, sell the resulting land to Portman, and finance a construction loan to make the expansion possible?

The answer was “yes.”)

[John C. Portman IV] Phase two has been under construction for several months now, it's now starting to go vertical and come out of the ground, it will also be a modern-looking tower in the heart of Midtown.

And they've been great in the sense of underwriting the entire construction loan, which is not a small loan, and syndicating whatever they needed to syndicate, and freeing up additional capacity and room for Portman for other projects.

[Ambrish Baisiwala] If they commit to something, they've always delivered. And if something changes, they've always managed to figure out a solution that is satisfactory to them. And it solves our issues as well.

[music ends]

(Visual Description): Truist Commercial Real Estate

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