New Grim partner to take lead

Cohen-Esrey to serve as general contractor, property manager; Sari still involved

The recently announced co-developer of the Hotel Grim will be the renovation project’s primary manager from now on, a company executive told the Gazette on Tuesday.

Developer Jim Sari—who with the city of Texarkana, Texas, assembled the financing necessary for the Grim project—will continue to be involved, said Tom Anderson, managing director of Cohen-Esrey Development Group. But Cohen-Esrey will take the lead, serving as general contractor for the project and, once it is done, as the building’s property manager.

The company is better positioned than Sari to see after the project’s final details, Anderson said.

“We, like Jim, are in the affordable housing development business. We, unlike Jim, are a fairly large organization with several different business units including property management and construction. So we are developers, owner/operators, managers and general contractors on projects like this really all over the country,” he said.

Sari, Anderson and others from Cohen-Esrey are expected to attend Monday’s regular meeting of the Texas-side City Council in support of resolutions needed for the project to proceed. Anderson expects work on the Grim to prog-

ress quickly thereafter.

“We’ve got about 12 different irons in the fire with the various parts of this right now. The next immediate step is the council meeting on Monday, where we need a city resolution of no objection to move forward. We’re taking that opportunity to introduce ourselves,” he said.

The developers need the City Council action in order to complete a tax credit and bond allocation application. Cohen-Esrey is also negotiating with debt and equity sources, working out a construction budget and getting needed historic preservation approvals.

“We’re doing everything we can to push this thing to get closed into our construction loan by the end of the year. We hit that, we’re looking at being able to start having units completed the first quarter of 2020, and I’d say spring of 2020, we’d all be there with a pair of oversized scissors cutting that red ribbon,” Anderson said.

Anderson praised the city’s enthusiasm for the Grim and commitment to the project as important factors in Cohen-Esrey’s decision to get involved.

“We do historic adaptive reuse projects like this all over the place. … They’re difficult, and we’re fairly selective on what we say yes to and what we say no to. One of the components that is absolutely crucial today, in my opinion, in making these things work is having a local city, municipality, community that is 100 percent behind the project. …

“I went out to lunch when I was there, and there must have been a thousand people, lots of folks from the downtown community, and everybody was so high on getting this project done,” he said. “It felt like a place I wanted to do business.”