Lancaster Pollard helps health care, senior living, affordable housing and private education organizations expand and improve their services by providing financial advice and financing solutions. Lancaster Pollard’s services enable hospitals, assisted living facilities, nursing homes, rural housing properties and private schools to develop the financial plans and secure the funding necessary to continue to serve their communities and lets them focus on what’s truly important –their residents, their patients, and their students.
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Home > News > Press Archive > 5/23/06 Grace College Finance

Financing Helps Build New Event Center, Preserves College’s Liquidity
COLUMBUS, Ohio (May 23, 2006) – A combination of strong alumni support and a tax-exempt bond issuance provided today by Lancaster Pollard will help an Indiana college provide new amenities for its students and remain competitive.

Grace College and Theological Seminary will build a 60,000-square-foot, multi-purpose event center with a combination of $5 million in alumni support and $6.8 million in tax-exempt bonds. The financing structure allows Grace College to preserve liquidity while supporting other campus improvements and moving forward on its eight-year “Invest in Leadership; Impact the Future” capital campaign. The new 2,800-seat Orthopaedic Capital Center will host the college’s basketball and volleyball teams and serve the Winona Lake community. Companies already are calling to schedule events when it opens in 2007, said Steve Popenfoose, chief executive officer of Grace College. The former gymnasium complex was the oldest in the college’s athletic conference.

“Lancaster Pollard showed us how to get more out of our assets through an investment strategy we had not considered,” Popenfoose said. “Their knowledge about tax-exempt bonds helped us approach our financing with techniques we had never used before, and we are very happy with the results.”

Lancaster Pollard structured the tax-exempt portion of the financing, securing a letter of credit (LOC) and reducing the LOC fee by 25 basis points to lower both the immediate and long-term cost of borrowing. The investment banking and mortgage banking firm also provided a swap on a portion of the variable-rate debt to create a fixed-rate structure and protect against interest rate fluctuations.

“Combining donations with tax-exempt financing is a strategic way to fund major education projects while retaining financial flexibility for everyday operations,” said Tanya K. Hahn, senior vice president of Lancaster Pollard.