Harrison Street, a privately-owned, Chicago-based investment management firm with a historical, exclusive focus in education, healthcare and storage real estate, is now expanding into social infrastructure with its latest fund, Harrison Street Social Infrastructure Fund. It has already received a commitment of up to $200 million from the Texas Municipal Retirement System (TMRS), according to board meeting documents.
The strategy of Harrison Street Social Infrastructure Fund (HSSI) is to assemble, through development and acquisition, a portfolio of high-quality social infrastructure investments, which serve the education, healthcare, government and utility sectors. The fund is one of very few open-ended infrastructure funds in the market and even more unique in its market positioning by focusing exclusively on its target sectors. HSSI will be focusing on sourcing transactions from universities and municipalities for individual transactions often less than $150 million, which may be considered middle market to lower middle market in the infrastructure universe.
The commitment to Harrison Street makes up 7 percent of TMRS’ real return portfolio, with public markets (48 percent); infrastructure (26 percent); private energy (9 percent); minerals and mining (6 percent); and agriculture (4 percent).
TMRS’ total real return allocation activity for 2019 year to date is $200 million, on pace to be within the approved range of targeted pacing of $400 million to $800 million.