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After pioneering in Portland the use of immigrant investor financing, a prominent local developer is looking to use it for another project.

Williams & Dame Development, along with financial partner Riverplace Hotel Investors LLC, is planning to build a 203-room Hyatt House extended-stay hotel at the north end of the South Waterfront District. The project is expected to cost approximately $46 million and be financed through EB-5, a federal program that allows foreigners to invest in job-creating projects in exchange for American visas.

In April, Williams & Dame finished development of a 223-room Residence Inn in the Pearl District. John Mangan, a spokesman for the developer, said it was the first Portland project to use the EB-5 program. Now, the Hyatt House is presenting another opportunity.

“Williams & Dame and associates, on behalf of the investors, have begun predevelopment activities,” Mangan said. “The public design review process will probably take place later this summer. The target is to begin construction in the early part of the first quarter of 2015.”

Williams & Dame representatives recently applied to the city for early assistance with the 159,000-square-foot, six-story project. The ownership group, Riverplace Hotel Investors, in November 2013 closed on its purchase of the city-owned site (on the northeast corner of Southwest River Parkway and River Drive) for $5.63 million.

Complete financing is in the works.

“At the Hyatt House, they’re using a similar mix of private investors and EB-5,” Mangan said. “That’s still in the preliminary phases.”

From 1990, when the EB-5 program was established, through 2012, foreigners invested in the American economy more than $2.3 billion, which has resulted in the creation of at least 46,810 jobs, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Activity has been especially strong in the past five years, as traditional sources of financing have dried up. While the government approved an average of 319 new EB-5 applications annually from 1991 through 2008, it approved an average of 1,971 annually from 2009 through 2012.

Marvin Kau, vice president of project development for American United EB-5 Regional Center, a privately owned company, said the USCIS pumped the brakes on that activity a little bit in 2012, when it challenged some of the job creation figures reported by domestic developers. They are required to prove a minimum amount of job creation over a two-year period before EB-5 investors are granted visas – that is why EB-5 projects often are employment-dependent hotels. The Pearl District’s Residence Inn created approximately 200 construction jobs and 60 permanent positions, according to Mangan.

Kau said the USCIS has ratcheted down what it officially allows as a “job,” and as a result the amount of EB-5 investment has tapered somewhat. Now, developers are being challenged to figure out how to get EB-5 dollars to fit in with larger capital stacks; often they use the foreign money as a mezzanine piece to a bigger commercial loan.

This past June, American United signed a working agreement with the Portland Development Commission, and the company now has numerous projects in the pipeline. But the surge of applications nationally and USCIS’ limited ability to process them makes for slow going.

“It’s like the snake digesting the pig – it moves through slowly,” Kau said during an interview in February.

For the Residence Inn, most of the financing came from EB-5 dollars – though the developer did need to seek interim construction financing from First Republic Bank because the USCIS didn’t approve the project for EB-5 until July 2013. Mangan said that more than $40 million of the approximately $50 million project came in $500,000 increments from roughly 80 foreign investors.