The Florida-based real estate investment company 50 Plus 1 Sports has signed a contract with Saint Augustine’s University to lease the entirety of its 105-acre downtown Raleigh property and build a mixed-use development on 55 acres.
Monti Valrie, a managing partner of 50 Plus 1 Sports, says he expects the development to generate $2 billion for his company and $1 billion for the university over the course of the 99-year lease through a revenue-sharing arrangement. Valrie says the development will cost about $700 million.
Most of the acreage 50 Plus 1 plans to build on is empty, but Valrie says the company will need to tear down some educational buildings and rebuild them closer to SAU’s main campus in order to make space for the new development.
Although 50 Plus 1 specializes in developments centered around sports stadiums, Valrie says there won’t be a stadium component to the Saint Augustine’s project. The company hasn’t decided exactly what to build, but Valrie predicts it will include “housing, food and beverage.”
50 Plus 1 will pay SAU $70 million up front to lease the land, according to Valrie. The cash influx comes in the nick of time for the embattled HBCU, which owes at least $16 million in unpaid taxes and outstanding loans and recently had to slash its budget and workforce by half in order to shore up its finances. At an upcoming accreditation hearing in February, SAU must demonstrate to its accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), that it has repaid its debts and secured funding to stay afloat.
“A proactive real estate investment firm”
50 Plus 1 Sports is a small company based in Coral Gables, Florida. According Valrie, it’s not exactly a real estate development firm, an investment firm, or a social equity firm, but some fusion of the three.
Valrie started the company in 2022 after working as a consultant for AECOM, a major architecture and engineering firm. He wanted to design and develop professional sports stadiums using teams of at least 50 percent women, minorities, and veterans—hence the name “50 Plus 1.” Using his connections with global firms like AECOM and JLL, he submitted a bid to redevelop the Historic Gas Plant Site in St. Petersburg, Florida—an 86-acre project that included a new ballpark for the Tampa Bay Rays. The city of St. Petersburg ultimately rejected the bid, citing its lack of detail and the company’s lack of experience.
But to hear Valrie tell it, experience doesn’t matter nearly as much as industry connections for a company like his. He says JLL—a multibillion-dollar real estate company—will act as 50 Plus 1’s “owner’s representative” for the SAU development, overseeing its day-to-day operations. Valrie says he and 50 Plus 1 will be responsible for big-picture decisions about what to build—decisions he plans to make with help from local developers and community stakeholders who know Raleigh well.
“We want to have boots on the ground,” Valrie says.
50 Plus 1 has not identified specific local developers to partner with on this project, but Valrie says he’s spoken to a handful who are interested and plans to come to town to interview them soon.
In addition to its contract with SAU Valrie tells the INDY that 50 Plus 1 is under contract with Allen University, a private HBCU in South Carolina, to build a $425 million mixed-use stadium development. The company is also working on a $70 million housing development in Washington, D.C. and a 27-acre, $92 million development in Miami Gardens.
Valrie says he wants the 55-acre Raleigh development to enrich the surrounding neighborhood.
“I’m a capitalist, we want to generate as much revenue as we can,” Valrie says. “[But] I have to walk a fine line. I never want to wake up and be the cause of gentrification. As an African American, that is my worst nightmare.”
Valrie says the project will create good-paying jobs for small, local businesses.
“That is why 50 Plus 1 focuses on the community that we’re building in and [on] offering jobs and offering small companies [the chance] to actually build,” Valrie says. “People that live in a neighborhood can get a job and work on our project and learn a skill.”
“An amazing opportunity for both of us.”
From the outside, the timing of SAU and 50 Plus 1’s deal seemed sudden. On November 17, days before the university published its 2024 financial audit and weeks before an important accreditation hearing, it signed a Letter of Intent with 50 Plus 1. According to the financial audit, the letter laid out the initial $70 million payment and revenue sharing plan, but didn’t specify how much land SAU would be leasing or what it planned to build.
Valrie says the process of meeting with SAU and discussing a partnership began a month earlier: he heard about SAU’s financial challenges in October and learned that the school sat on prime real estate near downtown.
“I was shocked that a university could have that much property in city limits, close to downtown,” he says. “So this is an amazing opportunity, one that I haven’t seen in a lot of places.”
Despite SAU’s recent struggles with debt and accusations of financial mismanagement, Valrie says school leaders have been “great partners so far.”
He adds: “I feel like it’s a great opportunity for us to be able to work with an HBCU, and especially one that has their rich history.
“We’re not in the business of owning land,” Valrie says. “We’re in the business of doing land leases. Our objective is for [SAU] to own [its] land at the end of the day.”
50 Plus 1 Sports will take home 65 percent of the revenue from the development for the first 10 years, and SAU will get the other 35 percent. For years 11-99, the revenue split will adjust to be 60-40.
SAU did not respond to a request for comment, but published a press statement Thursday afternoon calling the land lease deal “a significant milestone in the…journey toward financial stability, community engagement, and sustainability.”
Chloe Courtney Bohl is a corps member for Report for America. Reach her at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].