Brickell Apartment Project Lands South Florida's Largest-Ever C-PACE Loan

A Miami developer is ready to start building a 35-story apartment tower in Brickell after landing an unconventional source of construction financing.

North Development landed a $180M Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy loan to fund the construction of the Domus Brickell Center, a 579-unit condominium project at 1034 SW Second Ave., according to a release.

The loan, the largest C-PACE financing on record in South Florida, came from Bayview PACE, and Core Capital chipped in an additional $40M in financing.

Florida legislators cleared the way in 2010 for developers to utilize C-PACE financing, which provides building owners and developers with alternative funding for energy efficiency and renewable energy-related new construction costs and maintenance upgrades.

But it has rarely been used by commercial developers, and never before at such a scale. Domus Brickell Center was already designed to meet the Florida Green Building Coalition standards before the developers even considered pursuing a C-PACE loan, North Development Founding Partner and Vice President of Finance Arturo Vidal told Bisnow in an interview.

Domus' features that qualify it for C-PACE focus on reducing energy and boosting wellness for those in the building. They include UV-filtered water, purified air in common areas, windows that prevent sunlight from heating the building, insulation systems and a facade and glazing system that exceeds hurricane resilience codes.

The C-PACE lender counts up the energy-efficient features in the building, and the more there are, the more money is available. The financing is provided at a lower rate for North Development, which expects to spend around $300M on the project, Vidal said.

“It takes wrapping your head and figuring out how it works, and the financial models all need to be readapted and redone to understand this structure,” Vidal said. “But it was fun because it was complicated. It was good that we did it and we learned, and we want to probably do more in the future.”

Instead of North Development paying interest to its lender, it pays a higher rate on its property tax bill, and then Miami-Dade County pays Bayview, Vidal said. 

It’s the first C-PACE loan the developer has executed, and it took roughly 10 months to structure it. Part of that was because they needed a mortgage lender to close the final $40M gap.

Before Peruvian-based Core Capital stepped in, four or five South Florida banks, and a few national and international banks, turned the deal down because they wanted to avoid an unorthodox financing structure, Vidal said.

Many banks shy away from C-PACE because they see it as sitting above them in the capital stack. Rather than falling into a traditional structure, where banks hold priority, C-PACE places itself next to the senior lender, Vidal said.

“That nuance is what makes it complicated for many traditional lenders to wrap their heads around how that works, and it really takes a group that really understands the risks and understands the capital stack and to be able to get creative and get comfortable with that structure,” Vidal said. “It's really out of the box, and traditional lenders, anything that doesn't fit their box, they don't want to mess with it.”

Lotus Capital Partners arranged and structured the financing. North Development, a partnership between Ricardo Dunin’s Oak Capital and Juan Carlos Tassara’s Edifica, broke ground on the condo building in Brickell last week.

The studio, one- and two-bedroom units are priced between $500K and $1.5M and are about 30% sold, a spokesperson confirmed to Bisnow.

Amenities for the project, set to open doors at the beginning of 2028, feature a rooftop pool, a bar and grill area, an indoor and outdoor gym, coworking spaces, a conference room and a restaurant.

The deal is the second massive C-PACE loan in Florida in a week, after Nuveen Green Capital closed on a $290M C-PACE loan for the Pendry Hotel and Residences in Tampa. Not only was that the first C-PACE loan in Tampa, but it's the largest in the country’s history, according to a release.

Despite more than $3B in construction financing being put toward developers over the summer, the most active the space has been since 2022, smaller builders are struggling to land financing with fluctuating interest rates and tariff uncertainty.