The Dallas Morning News

Friday, April 16, 2005 Saturday

By Mercedes Olivera

Mercedes Olivera: Cisneros laying foundations for cities, families

If you build it, they will come.

And if you build lots and lots, even more will come.

These words could easily be Henry Cisneros latest mantra for his successful real estate ventures.

City View, a company he founded in California in 2001, has developed into a successful workforce-housing firm, with projected revenues of $1 billion this year.

By tapping into an underserved market – America's working families – that is hungry for its share of the American dream, Mr. Cisneros has broken new ground in the real estate industry.

With $100 million in investment capital from the California Public Employees Retirement System, City View operates in California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona.

Now Mr. Cisneros has launched a separate company to develop workforce-housing communities in urban centers in the other 45 states. That plan includes several sites in North Texas.

How can the former secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development do that? By marshaling an additional $250 million over the next two years from the pension fund world – the largest institutional base of investors in the country – for his American Workforce Housing Fund.

The fund will provide the capital, and firm officials will work with builders and developers who know urban housing and can see the potential of land considered obsolete.

"You have to have an eye that is able to see the beauty of the city and how to recycle ground that's had previous use," Mr. Cisneros said. "You have to know how to bring rebirth to the city."

Mr. Cisneros is banking on the idea that not just working families will find his concept of a "village within a city" appealing. He said young singles, empty-nesters and married couples tired of long commutes will also be attracted to this "new urbanism," a development philosophy encouraging dense, pedestrian-friendly projects.

Greenleaf Village, a multiethnic, low-crime community in West Dallas, is a good example. It was one of the first home-building projects Mr. Cisneros was involved in as a businessman.

The 310-house development with moderately priced homes sold out in 18 months. It sits in an area previously blighted by 3,500 public housing units and has received national recognition for being a model for neighborhood revitalization.

Fernando de Leon, the American Workforce Housing Fund's senior manager, said these new communities are part of the back-to-the-city movement emerging among many demographic groups.

"People's lives are already so complex that they want to avoid the hassles of long commutes and be able to spend more time with their families," Mr. de Leon said.

Dallas Mayor Laura Miller said Mr. Cisneros knows that "Dallas is extremely interested in building more affordable single-family homes" and has available land to do it.

Only 48 percent of Dallas residents are homeowners, she said, while the homeownership rate nationally is 68 percent.

Convincing city officials that home development projects are essential to the life and growth of a city comes easy to Mr. Cisneros, former mayor of San Antonio.

"When he comes to a city to talk about building homes, he inspires the whole city to get behind the effort," Ms. Miller said.

Dallas housing analyst Ted Wilson of Residential Strategies Inc. praised Mr. Cisneros' vision of capitalizing on the country's latest urban trend.

"There's been an awful lot of attention to close-in locations because of the average commute time being about 30 minutes now," he said. "It makes sense to turn the focus back into the city, in what were once great neighborhoods that have fallen into a little disrepair."

Mr. Cisneros said he's not giving up on American cities, which he calls "mirrors into our societies."

"The beauty of homeownership lies in the neighborhoods where people grow up," he said. "It just resonates with you for the rest of your life."