R&V Management and Trammell Crow Residential secured $200M in financing for the Alexan West End, a 600-unit apartment project in Long Beach. CBRE worked on behalf of the borrowers.

CBRE Capital Markets' debt and structured finance teams, which included Bill Chiles, Scott Peterson and Morgon Fraser in San Diego and Tom Traynor and Adam Spengler in New York City, secured the five-year financing. The package includes a $166M construction loan from Kennedy Wilson and a $34M mezzanine loan from an undisclosed national life insurance company.

“This capital allows the developer to get out of the ground when few other projects will and deliver much-needed housing to Long Beach,” Peterson said in a news release.

A fourth-quarter report from CBRE found construction starts in the greater Los Angeles area, which includes Long Beach, were at their lowest levels since 2012.

“The increase in vacancy rates and slight decrease in asking rents resulted in near-term hesitation amongst developers facing increased borrowing costs and difficulty sourcing debt,” the report says.

The new complex at 600 W. Broadway will span four buildings reaching either seven or eight stories and containing a mix of studios and one-, two- and three-bedroom floor plans. The average unit size in the complex will be 767 SF.

The multiphase project is part of the West Gateway project, which is slated to rise on surface parking in Long Beach’s downtown and bring a total of 756 units to the more than 5.5-acre site.