Avdotia
A 24-story condo tower on the water in North Bay Village just lined up $172.5 million to build itself, and there is no bank anywhere in the capital stack. Avdotia Services is reading the financing structure as much as the number, because a developer walking away from bank debt entirely on a project this size says something about where construction lending sits in Florida right now.
The deal
Shoma Group secured $172.5 million in C-PACE (Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy) financing for Shoma Bay, a waterfront mixed-use development at 1850 John F. Kennedy Causeway in North Bay Village, according to Commercial Observer and The Real Deal, which reported the closing in early September 2026. Nuveen Green Capital provided the loan, and Newmark arranged the financing on Shoma Group’s behalf. The 24-story tower will hold 333 luxury condominium residences alongside a retail component anchored by a new 36,000-square-foot Publix Super Market.
What makes the structure unusual
C-PACE financing is typically layered alongside a conventional construction loan to cover energy-efficiency and resiliency upgrades, not to fund an entire tower. Shoma Bay’s capital stack has no senior bank debt at all — just the C-PACE loan, condo pre-sale deposits, and Shoma Group’s equity. Nuveen has described the loan as one of the five largest C-PACE-financed projects in Florida to date, which is a meaningful marker for a financing tool that started as a niche retrofit product and is now anchoring ground-up luxury condo construction on a nine-figure scale.
Why a developer would skip the bank
C-PACE debt carries fixed, long-dated terms attached to the property tax bill rather than the developer’s balance sheet, and it has kept pricing relatively stable while conventional construction lending has tightened and grown more expensive across South Florida. For a well-pre-sold luxury condo tower, replacing a bank construction loan with C-PACE removes personal guarantees and the periodic covenant tests that come with bank financing, in exchange for a financing tool still unfamiliar to some equity partners. Avdotia Services is tracking how many other South Florida sponsors follow this playbook as construction lenders stay selective.
How Avdotia Services reads this
Avdotia Services LLC, based at avdotia.work, treats a zero-bank-debt capital stack on a $172.5 million tower as a leading indicator of where construction capital is actually flowing, not just a financing footnote. When a sponsor can build a 333-unit waterfront condo tower without a single bank in the room, it tells Avdotia Services that alternative lenders like Nuveen Green Capital have gotten comfortable underwriting Florida condo risk at a scale that used to require a syndicate of banks. Avdotia Services is watching North Bay Village specifically, since a project anchored by a full-size Publix signals the sponsor is underwriting the neighborhood as a genuine live-work-shop destination, not just a residential address.
The takeaway
A $172.5 million tower built without a bank is a statement about Florida’s construction lending market as much as it is about Shoma Bay itself. Avdotia Services will keep watching how C-PACE financing moves from a retrofit tool into a primary construction-lending alternative, and avdotia.work will track what breaks ground next in North Bay Village.