North Bridge, Acore Provide $161M Loan to Expand Area15 District in Las Vegas

One of the nation’s largest immersive entertainment districts just secured financing to expand its popular attractions in the heart of Las Vegas through the largest new development construction C-PACE loan in Nevada history. 

Fisher Brothers has secured $161 million in construction financing to build and expand new attractions to Area15 District, an experiential retail and entertainment complex that opened on the Last Vegas Strip in 2020, Commercial Observer can first report.

North Bridge provided $108 million in C-PACE construction financing — the largest individual C-PACE construction loan ever in Nevada —  while Acore Capital provided a $53 million senior construction loan. 

Walker & Dunlop’s New York capital markets team of Keith Kurland, Aaron Appel, Jonathan Schwartz, Adam Schwartz, Michael Diaz and Michael Ianno arranged the financing. 

C-PACE  — the acronym for Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy — is a federal program run at a state level that is privately funded and designed to incentivize developers or building owners to prioritize sustainability in their buildings in return for favorable financing terms. C-PACE financing began in 2009 and is currently used in 40 states and the District of Columbia, according to the United States Department of Energy. 

Laura Rapaport, founder and CEO of North Bridge, told CO that because of the ways the laws are written in Las Vegas, her team was able to create a synthetic construction loan with C-PACE financing that is 35 percent of the total stabilized value of the expansion project. 

“I believe it’s the largest C-PACE construction loan ever done in Nevada, and it’s the first construction C-PACE loan structured with an all-institutional stack, with Acore [debt] as well as Fisher Brother [equity] and Walker & Dunlop putting everything together,” she said. “It leveraged the knowledge we have of how construction works, how financing works, and how the C-PACE program works to create the optimal structure for the borrower and one that worked exceptionally well for the lender.”  

Rapaport added that her firm’s $108 million loan is acting as a “synthetic A note” and that the fixed-rate nature of the loan gives Fisher Brothers the freedom to sell the property with or without the C-PACE loan attached, or to refinance without the attachment to North Bridge’s earlier financing. 

“There’s a lot of flexibility for our partners,” she said. 

The new construction financing will add nearly 300,000 rentable square feet to Area15 District, including new attractions such as Universal Horror Unleashed, iFLY Indoor Skydiving, and Felix & Paul Studios’ Interstellar Arc, as well as a repurposed Boeing 747 aircraft that had previously been used at the nearby Burning Man concert. 

“This 20-acre expansion builds on our prior success and allows Area15 to continue delivering the world’s leading immersive entertainment and retail experiences to our guests,” said Winston Fisher, partner at Fisher Brothers & CEO of Area15. 

Area15 District has attracted more than 13 million visitors since opening four years ago and has been ranked as the most most visited attraction in the United States in 2022 and 2023, per foot traffic data from PlacerAI, according to Fisher Brothers. 

Kory Klebanoff, managing director and co-head of eastern region originations at Acore, said in a statement that his firm is “excited to share in Fisher Brothers’ vision for Area15 and help capitalize its next phase and continued success.”

Brian Pascus can be reached at bpascus@commercialobserver.com