Madison Realty writes $127M Arcadian takeout as Centennial exits

The Arcadian, a 502-unit Fort Lauderdale apartment complex in the Sistrunk District made up of two eight-story buildings, received a temporary certificate of occupancy earlier this year and has no stabilized rent roll. Madison Realty Capital has just written a $127 million construction takeout for it anyway. The loan retires an $84.5 million construction facility Centennial Bank issued in 2024, adding $42.5 million of leverage to a project still in lease-up, Commercial Observer reported.

Across 502 apartments, the debt works out to roughly $253,000 a unit. Centennial, which closed a $450 million federal-lease portfolio financing with Eagle Point last month, is the construction lender stepping aside.

Only part of the income is market-rate: 151 of the 502 apartments are priced for renters earning between 100 and 120 percent of area median income, and the development carries about 15,000 square feet of ground-floor retail plus a 629-space parking garage. Fort Lauderdale's Community Redevelopment Agency put $10 million into the project, $8 million of it a forgivable loan through the agency's Development Incentive Program — capital the sponsor does not repay on the terms of the senior debt.

Berkadia's Scott Wadler, Brad Williamson, Bobby Dockerty and Nicholas Horowitz represented developers Fuse Group and KREA Developments on the placement. Madison's South Florida pace is quickening: in July the firm supplied $227 million for Metro Parc, a newly completed 559-unit Hialeah project, which works out to about $406,000 a unit, well above the Arcadian's loan per unit.

The maturing apartment wall has been clearing through structured capital rather than distress sales, and what clears tends to be income-visible collateral. The Arcadian sits at the far edge of that: a building with a temporary certificate of occupancy and no stabilized rent roll, taken out by a private lender at half again the size of the bank construction debt it replaces. The math is likely legible because of the subsidy — an $8 million forgivable piece the sponsor does not have to repay like the senior debt above it.

The Sistrunk District, Fort Lauderdale's oldest African-American neighborhood, is in the middle of a development wave, and the Arcadian is one of its completions. The loan does not yet have a rent roll to point at. The 502 units were financed with lease-up under way, and the pace at which they fill — 151 of them restricted to 100 to 120 percent of area median income — will determine whether the takeout was sized right.