In short, the actions we took increased our cash to over $320 million at the end of the first quarter, which should allow us to weather the downturn created by COVID-19.
Combined, we expect to save about $1 million in cash from these actions.
Lastly, the Board recently made the decision to temporarily suspend the quarterly common dividend, preserving roughly $18 million per quarter.
No decisions regarding dividend payments beyond second quarter 2020 have been made.
Currently, all 49 of our properties are open and operational.
As of May 7, 53% of our tenants by ABR are open.
As of May 8, we collected 58% of our April rent and reimbursements, largely from open tenants.
Of our top 25 tenants based on ABR, over 86% have paid or have agreed in principle to some form of short-term deferment.
In Tier 1 are tenants who have both good long-term business models and have largely been able to remain open through the pandemic.
87.9% of this tier remains open and 83.9% paid April rent as of May 8.
In Tier 2 are tenants with solid long-term business models and good balance sheets pre-COVID, but that sell more discretionary items.
The discount apparel retailers like T.J. Maxx and Ross fall into this category along with other investment grade quality tenants not included in Tier 1.
Our Tier 2 tenants paid 78.7% of April rent, but only 27.2% by ABR were opened in April.
Tier 3 tenants offer more commodity like products like full-line apparel and accessories.
And Tier 4 tenants are more experiential in nature, including full service restaurants and in many cases were key drivers of traffic pre-pandemic.
Collectively, Tier 3 and Tier 4 tenants paid 36.1% of April rent, 35.6% by ABR remained open.
Of the 275 tenants that we targeted, nearly two-thirds have told us they applied for the PPP loan.
To this point, while only 127 rent relief requests have been approved, 121 have been in the form of deferrals totaling $3.8 million and only six abatements have been granted totaling less than $71,000.
We are seeing incredible demand at our non-grocery anchored centers from grocers and are currently in negotiations with seven top tier grocers at non-grocery anchored centers in our portfolio that would improve the durability of cash flows at these centers if we -- if closed and increase the number of our centers with a grocer or grocery components by 14%.
Our employees have now been working safely and efficiently from home for almost 10 weeks, but a year ago, we established an option to work-from-home day program, which made the transition to full work-from-home environment quite smooth.
Today, we have donated over 20,000 meals to support school lunch programs, at-risk populations, essential workers and nursing home employees and local communities.
Out of abundance of caution and after analyzing our potential cash need, we drew down $225 million from our line during the quarter, bringing our total cost position to over $320 million at the end of March.
Based on all the steps we have taken over the last two years to solidify our balance sheet, we are fortunate to not have any debt maturing in 2020, only $37 million maturing in '21, and just $53 million in '22.
If our cash collections remained at the April level of 58%, we would be able to fund our ongoing operations without utilizing much of our cash on hand.
Our breakeven cash collection rate is roughly 61%.
It is also important to note that 46 of our 49 properties are unencumbered, providing us with the optimal operational flexibility to make decisions quickly without the burden of servicers or lenders.
Operating FFO for the first quarter was $0.26 per share, which was in line with our internal projections.
During the quarter, we recognized about $800,000 in costs related to the suspension of our acquisition and disposition program, which have been excluded from operating FFO as they are non-recurring in nature.
Same-property NOI growth for the first quarter 2020 was 2.3%, which included a 120 basis point drag from rent not probable of collection reflecting the initial impact from COVID-19 attributable to a conservative approach we took with an entertainment tenant that had a substantial open AR balance that we deemed uncollectible.
We ended the quarter at an occupancy rate of 93.3%, down 100 basis points sequentially given typical seasonality and recapture of an expected anchor space but up 150 basis points year-over-year.
In total, we signed 46 leases comprised of 558,000 square feet of which 60,000 square feet were new leases and 490,000 were renewal leases.
We experienced blended releasing spreads of 6.2% and 36 comparable leases, including a 6.2% renewal spread and a 5.2% new lease spread.
We entered the quarter with signed not open ABR of about $2.1 million.
While we have seen a slight delay with rent commencement dates, we expect the rents to commence over the next 12 months.
Regarding near-term rent expirations, we only have 3.4% of our ABR expiring over the balance of 2020, mitigating some near-term tenant retention risk.
From a capital perspective, we have only $14 million of remaining committed capital spend in 2020, of which $11 million is related to our signed not open backlog and residual capital for recently opened tenants, with the balance largely related to essential maintenance capital.
Extrapolating the $18 million per quarter common dividend we were paying would equate to $54 million in potential capital preservation through the next three quarters.

Summary:
Lastly, the Board recently made the decision to temporarily suspend the quarterly common dividend, preserving roughly $18 million per quarter.
No decisions regarding dividend payments beyond second quarter 2020 have been made.
Operating FFO for the first quarter was $0.26 per share, which was in line with our internal projections.