Banner Year Includes New Approaches, Strong Investments At American Lending Center
Welcome back to Build Your Dream, and Happy Holidays to all.
It has been a momentous 2024 for American Lending Center, thanks in large part to partners like you. As I write we have 94 fully financed EB-5 projects in 31 states, 27 I-956F approvals, 13 Regional Centers serving all the continental United States and $1.868 Billion in assets under management.
In many ways, every day of this past year has been a highlight as we build the EB-5 community through support for job creation and economic development. Still, there are highlights among the highlights, and I’d like to talk about a few.
New Approaches
American Lending Center has been a leader in the EB-5 ecosystem since our founding, and this year we broke new ground working with the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022. That federal law, administered by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), clarified a number of procedures and opened doors to our vision of creating jobs and needed infrastructure, particularly in rural areas of our country.
Specifically, ALC launched a new “rescue” approach for EB-5 investors in conditional permanent residence but lacking sufficient job creation credits to achieve permanent status. The Reform Act allowed for a smaller second investment to cure the shortage of job creation credits for permanent residency.
ALC was the first to submit an application to USCIS using this approach, and announced the program publicly in September at the Global Mobility & Investment Summit.
Expertise Displayed
I have long been interested in supporting sustainable development, and our government partners came up with a way to help make that happen. It’s called C-PACE – Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy. It is available in 38 states now, with more expected to sign on soon.
This innovative financing approach allows builders to finance qualified energy- and water-saving components, and have that financing repaid through a voluntary assessment on the property tax bill. We formed a partnership with X-Caliber Rural Capital to complete loans for projects in rural areas using this approach.
Those projects range from cutting edge vertical farming facilities to new green energy approaches. In October, we published a white paper about how this type of financing can be part of an overall financing package without jeopardizing issuers of other portions of the loan.
Rural Healthcare
I’ve talked before about how people in rural areas face declining healthcare resources. So I’m happy to say that we have been able to support several rural hospital projects this year.
That started in April with a bridge loan for a Florida hospital project. That loan allowed construction to start in early 2024, and the hospital will be open in late 2025 – before the grants to pay for more than half of the project are even available!
We also helped finance hospital facilities in Alabama, Washington state, and Missouri. Those projects are replacing facilities that are 50-75 years old.
Community Focus
Perhaps the most fun thing – certainly the most physically demanding! – we did in 2024 was creating and hosting the first Irvine Dream Run, including the Tech Week 5K and the FirstGen Color Run. More than 350 runners and nearly 100 volunteers gathered to support innovation and celebrate our community – both things close to my heart.
Next year’s run will be bigger and better at the Orange County Great Park.
Go to the website to register.
Our COO, Stella Zhang, has adopted the UCI Paul Merage School of Business and its New Venture Competition, now called the Stella Zhang New Venture Competition. Teams from the Innovation and Entrepreneurship program compete for $100,000 in prize money after a full school year of work.
Stella added another job this year. She delivered the commencement speech at the UCI School of Business Masters program. She encouraged graduates with a powerful definition of leadership – “True leadership is not about power or prestige, but about service and stewardship.”
Into The Future
We have been humbled by our successes this year, including making the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies for the fifth consecutive year. It was a great celebration on May 31 at our Irvine headquarters when American Lending Center marked our 15th anniversary.
Our dream for the future is to continue fostering growth and innovation while making our community a better place to be. That community stretches from the Far East to rural areas of America to our headquarters in Irvine, California.
Again, Happy Holidays. We look forward to Building Our Dream with you in 2025.
John Shen
CEO & co-founder
American Lending Center
About American Lending Center:
American Lending Center Holdings (ALCH) is a California corporation that currently manages 13 EB-5 regional centers capable of sponsoring EB-5 projects anywhere in continental United States. Since its inception in 2009, the regional centers have successfully raised EB-5 capital for 98 EB-5 projects (as of 9/30/2024) in 31 different states. ALCH made the list of “Fastest-Growing Private Companies in America” by Inc. 5000 in each of the last five consecutive years (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024) and was ranked on the prestigious list of “Americas’ Fastest Growing Companies” by Financial Times in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
American Lending Center LLC (ALC), a sister company and a former subsidiary of ALCH, is a mission-based California regulated lending institution. It is also a licensed NFRL SBA 7(a) lender and authorized SSBCI lender in California. ALC underwrites prospective EB-5 projects on behalf of ALCH. As of September 30, 2024, ALC and ALCH have helped create or retain over 140,000 jobs in the American economy.
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