Chameleon of the Capstack

The Water Park and a 50-Day Close | Hospitality & C-PACE

PACE Loan Group — Thu, 21 May 2026 11:50:49 -0500

The largest indoor water park in North America draws 300,000 visitors a year, runs massive HVAC and water-recycling systems, and sits on the Atlantic City boardwalk. So how does that qualify as energy efficient and become the first C-PACE deal ever closed in the state of New Jersey?

PLG CEO Rafi Golberstein and Head of Loan Structuring Jerry Ellis break down a Q4 hospitality run that ranged from the funky to the five-star. The headliner: a $45M recapitalization on a 125,000 sq ft indoor water park, closed in roughly 50 days against a hard year-end deadline in a state where no one had ever closed a C-PACE loan before.

Why two years of operating history made an "un-financeable" asset class work. How direct HVAC load and water recycling drove the energy-efficiency qualification. Why a retroactive prevailing-wage waiver created a 30-day application sprint. And how getting Atlantic City to opt into the program in real time turned into two more referred Jersey deals within a week.

This is Part 2 of the hospitality breakdown.

A $30M Hyatt with 6 Layers of Capital | How C-PACE Made It Work

PACE Loan Group — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:28:05 -0500

Most hotel capital stacks have three layers. This one had six: ground lease proceeds, C-PACE, mezz, preferred equity, common equity, and key money, and it still closed.

PLG CEO Rafi Golberstein and Head of Loan Structuring Jerry Ellis walk through Q4's hospitality run: a Hyatt House in Orlando connected by SkyBridge to a 1.74M-attendee convention center, and an $800-a-night unflagged luxury inn in the Hudson River Valley that became PLG's first-ever New York State closing.

Why C-PACE beat traditional senior debt on a Hyatt where the sponsor was deciding between a bank and a structured stack. How a related-party ground lease at 7% functioned as cheaper-than-senior capital. Why tranched funding across four draws saved the sponsor from negative arb on $30M sitting idle. And how a USDA loan falling out at the last minute on the upstate deal turned into a relationship-driven save.

Plus: why New York is the largest CRE market in the country and one of the slowest for C-PACE and what it took to plant a stake there.

Learn more at paceloangroup.com

"Energy Hog" Gets Green Financing | Data Centers & C-PACE

PACE Loan Group — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 09:00:00 -0500

Data centers consume massive power, but does that make them ineligible for green financing? This one draws 20+ megawatts daily, making it the single largest power consumer in downtown Kansas City. It still qualified for $100 million in C-PACE.

PLG CEO Rafi Golberstein and SVP Robbie Pinkas break down how direct-to-chip cooling, upgraded chillers, and Kansas City's underground chilled water infrastructure made a seemingly unlikely deal fully eligible. They also explain why PACE beat investment-grade bonds for this particular capital stack, including non-recourse structure, 20-year fixed-rate terms, and the flexibility a greener sponsor needed that traditional data center financing couldn't offer.

Plus: why PLG now accounts for over a third of Missouri's entire C-PACE production, what makes Kansas City a quietly compelling infrastructure market, and why centrally located data centers may hold more long-term value than the massive isolated complexes dominating headlines.

This is Part 2 of the Patmos Data Center breakdown. Listen to Part 1 wherever you found this one.

Learn more at paceloangroup.com

25 Megawatts and a Printing Press | Data Centers & C-PACE

PACE Loan Group — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 09:00:00 -0600

A defunct Kansas City printing press. 25 megawatts of untapped grid power. A young developer with vision but limited liquidity. In this episode, SVP Robbie Pinkas walks through how he turned a gut instinct about data centers and C-PACE into a $100 million assessment—structuring retroactive proceeds to fund the property acquisition while financing the remaining build-out. The deal closed in under 12 months, the facility is now over capacity, and there may be room for a subsequent assessment. Robbie and Rafi unpack the sourcing, the creative deal architecture, and why this conversion model could be replicable for entrepreneurial data center developers hunting underutilized power allocations.