CrossHarbor funds CedarSt’s by-right North Park build with $80M

CrossHarbor Capital Partners is providing $80 million of construction financing for the Samuel, CedarSt Companies’ 197-unit, eight-story apartment building at 2821 Adams Avenue in San Diego’s North Park, a three-year, floating-rate stretch-senior loan that JLL Capital Markets announced Monday. The project’s by-right approval under San Diego’s Complete Communities program is the detail that makes the financing possible, because a ministerial permit removes the discretionary hearing that can turn a construction loan into a two-year entitlement fight.

The project’s 197 units skew heavily to studios and one-bedrooms—82 studios and 93 one-bedrooms, versus 22 two-bedrooms—averaging 621 square feet with 189 parking spaces, and construction is scheduled to begin in the third quarter with completion expected in late 2028.

JLL’s Zach Kersten, who arranged the financing with Jack Wood and Ben Choromanski, framed the location as attracting young professionals who want walkable urban living at a relative value to coastal neighborhoods, and noted that few large-scale multifamily projects have been built or planned within a mile of the site. JLL reports North Park’s average multifamily occupancy at 96 percent and projects average annual rent growth of 3.52 percent in the submarket through 2029.

The Samuel is one piece of a bigger San Diego push for Chicago-based CedarSt, which has assembled a six-project pipeline totaling 1,514 units and $734 million in development costs across the region and manages more than 7,000 units across 35 properties valued at an estimated $4 billion nationally. CrossHarbor, by comparison, manages $11 billion in assets and has completed more than $34 billion in investments since its 1993 founding, so the $80 million loan is a small deployment—but an asset manager’s balance sheet making a construction bet, not a bank adding to a construction book.

The $80 million loan prices the Samuel at about $406,000 a unit, a density of debt that holds up only if the by-right permit does its work and North Park maintains 96 percent occupancy with 3.52 percent annual rent growth through 2029. It fits the two-tier market this publication has argued is forming: capital at work in entitled, high-occupancy projects while older buildings wait for a different class of money, with CrossHarbor effectively underwriting the approval process on top of the real estate.

The three-year term and floating rate are the other half of the trade: CedarSt carries the interest-rate path between now and a late-2028 completion, while CrossHarbor is paid to hold credit and schedule risk. If the by-right approvals hold and the building delivers into a neighborhood with no large-scale competition nearby, the deal looks cheap; if the schedule slips, the floating rate is the price of a calendar that has already been promised.