TSB Capital Advisors’ relations with Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors

This page tracks materials related to the involvement of TSB Capital Advisors in East Lansing’s Center City District deal.

TSB Capital Advisors took credit for having “consulted on construction financing” for this deal, indicating, “This transaction continued the firm’s successful relationship with Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors.”

The following letter from Timothy S. Bradley of TBS Capital Advisers was provided by Mark Bell of Harbor Bay as part of a packet presented for the Planning Commission meeting on March 22, 2017. (The packet included heavily redacted market studies.)

Here is more from the Harbor Bay presentation on the project to Planning Commission at that time:

Harbor Bay included TSB Capital in the list of groups it thanked in the May 2018 invitation to a celebration of the project. TSB has arranged funding for other Harbor Bay projects in Cleveland and Grand Forks (ND).

In April 2020, Mark Bell wrote to Mayor Ruth Beier asking (vaguely) for accommodations in light of the pandemic and enclosing a letter from TSB Capital Advisors to Mark Bell. See page 3 of this document.

Timothy S. Bradley is based in Arizona, where Peter Paul Bell lives or lived, and they appear to have been associates. It appears the name Scottsdale Capital is a reference to Scottsdale, Arizona. (There is a “Scottsdale Capital Advisors” in Scottsdale, AZ, but it appears to be an unaffiliated company?)

Peter Paul Bell’s company “Scottsdale Capital” is legally registered in Illinois, not Arizona. The letter provided to the East Lansing Brownfield Redevelopment Authority about the bond in Sept. 2017 listed an address of Richmond, IL, and did not hint at the Bell-family ownership of the company. In fact, Peter Paul Bell’s company Scottsdale Capital is legally registered to the same address in Northbrook, IL, as Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors.

These are photos of the building at that address, which is part of a sprawling industrial complex about an hour north of Chicago. Neither company’s name is on the door. The door lists only an older Bell-family company.