Credit Agricole lends $125M for Miami Design District project
A bank-led syndicate is funding the eight-story office-and-retail building, and the developers broke ground right after closing.
Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank has provided a $125 million construction loan for an eight-story office-and-retail building in Miami's Design District, and the developers broke ground soon after the mortgage closed. Connect CRE reported the financing, citing the South Florida Business Journal. Credit Agricole acted on behalf of a group of lenders, though the coverage does not name the other banks.
Miami Design District Associates and Raycliff Capital are developing the building, which will hold 92,000 square feet of offices above 22,500 square feet of ground-floor retail. Parking goes to the neighboring Museum Garage, leaving the full 114,500-square-foot footprint in leasable use. Snøhetta, the Norwegian architect whose past projects include the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt and the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, designed the project, and Kast Construction is the general contractor.
The $1,090-a-foot question
At roughly $1,090 a square foot, the loan is sizable against a building with no on-site parking and no tenants named in the coverage. The office component is roughly four times the retail, which puts the weight of debt service on office rents. Ground breaking that quickly after closing suggests the design and site plan were already settled. The financing also reads as a bet that the Design District can generate office rents high enough to cover a nine-figure construction debt.
The brief summary leaves out the loan's term and pricing, and Connect CRE's item is a digest of the South Florida Business Journal's reporting, so what is missing may simply be editorial compression. For other developers, the useful benchmark is simple: a bank-led syndicate put $125 million of construction money into a ground-up office project in this neighborhood. The open question is whether tenants follow.
The group structure matters as well. Credit Agricole is the agent, but the mortgage sits across several unnamed lenders, which spreads the financing across several balance sheets.
The Wrap