CEO invest in underserved urban market: Capri Capital Advisors' new $287.5 million fund targets commercial development.

Capri Capital Advisors LLC., led by Quintin E. Primo III, is hoping to tap into urban commercial development with the dosing of a new fund that could spur millions of dollars in new business. The fund will provide investments to developers of office, industrial, retail, and apartment properties, as well as condominiums and hotels.

"Capri Select Income II is the second of a series of mezzanine investment strategies that we have executed over the last five years," says Primo, Capri's chairman and chief executive officer. "Our first fund was $115 million. This fund is more than twice the size at nearly $300 million. We fully expect our next fund thereafter to be larger."

In seeking projects to invest in, Capri is particularly interested in urban development. "We have a bias to urban investments," says Primo. "By investing in urban markets, it gives the fund an opportunistic flavor and capitalizes on the gross underserving of these areas by traditional corporations and investors."

News of the fired was welcome to African American developers. "Any fund that will provide access to capital would help blacks gain a larger foothold in the industry because, as everybody knows, the No. 1 impediment that we have is access to capital," says Andy Ingraham, president of the National Association of Black Hotel Owners, Operators & Developers.