Nuveen Green Capital’s Jessica Bailey, Alexandra Cooley Pioneer C-PACE Movement

A visual in the Darien, Conn., headquarters of Nuveen Green Capital (NGC) provides a daily reminder of how far the company and the Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) lending sector it specializes in has grown over the past decade as the industry nears the $10 billion threshold.

NGC, which was co-founded by Jessica Bailey and Alexandra “Ali” Cooley in 2015 as Greenworks Lending, still has a page from one of its early pitch books showing a U.S. map with Connecticut, Ohio and California colored green, indicating the only three states at the time with C-PACE programs. Their firm, which was acquired by Chicago-based asset manager Nuveen in 2021, closed the commercial real estate industry’s first rated C-PACE securitization in 2017, and has paved the way for the sector to expand into 40 states.

Last year, in fact, NGC accounted for nearly half of the C-PACE market share nationally with more than $1.2 billion of volume.

“When we both look back at that, we think of who took that bet with us and said you can turn those three states into a national industry and soon — we hope — an international industry,” said Bailey, who previously worked with Cooley at the Connecticut Green Bank prior to forming NGC. “It really was that public-private partnership that helped us expand into 40 states across the U.S. and really has set the table for the impact and the scale that we’ve seen in the industry.”

Bailey and Cooley first teamed at the Connecticut Green Bank in 2012 when they were building a C-PACE program, aimed at delivering private capital to commercial property owners in the Constitution State looking to decarbonize their buildings. The duo quickly realized this strategy could be taken to a national level given the void in the middle CRE market for landlords in need of capital for energy enhancements to reduce operating expenses.

C-PACE financing, which typically has fixed-rate, 30-year loan periods funded by a special tax assessment on the property tax bill, has expanded well beyond its initial vision of facilitating building renovations or new construction projects. Now it’s playing a far bigger role in the capital stack. When interest rates began to rapidly rise in 2022, more CRE borrowers sought C-PACE as a credit enhancement in existing debt deals for recapitalizations and refinancing past debt.

“Having had the opportunity to work with Jessica and Ali at the Connecticut Green Bank, where they played integral roles in designing, implementing, and launching the nation’s first successful C-PACE program, I have been truly inspired by their shared journey as they continue to make a significant impact on the commercial real estate and C-PACE industries,” said Bryan Garcia, president and CEO of the Connecticut Green Bank. “Through their ongoing efforts, Ali and Jessica have consistently demonstrated the many benefits of C-PACE, and their well-deserved success serves as a testament to their dedication and hard work.”

The expansion of C-PACE got a big boost in late 2024 when New York City expanded the number of projects eligible for this type of financing mechanism to include gut rehabilitations in addition to renovations. Bailey and Cooley advocated hard for New York City’s C-PACE expansion by working closely with the New York State Research and Development Authority and with City Hall to create new guidelines. It was part of their long run of educational outreach on behalf of the industry dating back to working with the Connecticut Green Bank. 

“Rather than going into the public sector and saying ‘This is how you need to do this so private capital can do what they do,’ we really approach them as partners and we ask them what their needs are,” Bailey said. “We worked over the course of two to three years to figure out how to revise the structure of the program in New York City to make it more amenable to building owners wanting to use C-PACE financing. And I wouldn’t say this program is perfect — I wouldn’t say any program across the country is perfect — but it’s good, and it’s getting better.”

During the initial more limited rollout of New York City’s C-PACE program, NGC closed the second deal ever in the Big Apple with a $28 million loan to fund the retrofit of parent company TIAA/Nuveen’s building at 730 Third Avenue in September 2021. It marked New York City’s last C-PACE transaction prior to a prolonged pause in the program caused by administrative delays. The pause found Cooley and Bailey working behind the scenes to greenlight larger-scale C-PACE deals for the most populous U.S. city.

Cooley said New York City is now poised for a big flow of C-PACE originations with a number of conversion projects taking flight as some office owners look to switch their buildings to residential use. She also noted that C-PACE can be a tool for New York City CRE borrowers with large capital stacks in need of gap financing or developers seeking cost savings as they confront higher construction costs from tariffs enacted by President Donald Trump.

Also, even as the Trump administration takes aim at environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) principles, the NGC co-founders expect C-PACE to remain on an upward trajectory. That’s due to the increased versatility since those early days at Greenworks, when Bailey and Cooley were helping building owners with weather-resiliency projects and the fact that C-PACE policies are administered by individual states rather than the federal government. 

“Certainly there is not as much demand for clean energy improvements or sustainable redesign of commercial real estate,” Bailey said, “but that’s only a piece of what C-PACE has been about all these years. Where we have found traction is when building owners are trying to make a smart financial decision to position their building for success. We think both from a market demand perspective and politically we’re pretty well insulated from anything that’s happening in D.C., which feels pretty good.”

NGC closed its largest deal to date last fall with a $220 million, 30-year C-PACE loan to finance the recapitalization of San Francisco developer Jay Paul Company’s new 19-story office building at 200 Park Avenue in Downtown San Jose. The transaction came on the heels of a $190 million C-PACE loan NGC originated in August 2024 for JC Hospitality to refinance past debt on its Virgin Hotels Las Vegas property.

The clean energy lending arm of Nuveen positioned itself for further growth last October by partnering with Canadian global investment group CDPQ to launch a $600 million CRE lending program. It combined long-term C-PACE financing with senior bridge and construction loans.

Sandeep Srinath, managing director of the asset securitization group at ING Americas, which provides financing for C-PACE lenders, credits Bailey and Cooley for advancing the industry over the past decade. ING partnered with NGC on the company’s first C-PACE deal in 2017 and has been active in the space since. 

“Since then, it’s remarkable to see not only the growth but also how the C-PACE approach has revolutionized commercial real estate,” Srinath said. “A lot of credit goes to Nuveen Green Capital for helping pioneer the C-PACE space, and they remain a leader that continues to push boundaries and innovate.”

The growth in deal count has fueled growth in-house. After beginning with Bailey and Cooley as the only two on staff, NGC has increased to around 100 employees in its Darien and Manhattan offices, with women comprising much of the firm. Both Cooley and Bailey take pride in running a women-led CRE finance firm in a male-dominated industry after encountering some initial bumps along the road with some sexist comments from investors — including questions about whether they’d use the money to decorate their offices. 

“It would have been a lot harder had we not had each other,” Cooley said. “For the most part it didn’t come up, but there were a couple instances where it definitely did, and the fact that we could look at each other and be like, ‘That was weird, and that is not normal,’ and then move on, I think that really helped having a partner who was going through the same thing.” 

The paths for both Bailey and Cooley into CRE alternative lending were, appropriately enough, of the non-traditional variety.

Bailey, a Chicago native, came from a policy background after studying political science at the University of Notre Dame and earning a master’s in international relations at Yale.

Cooley, who grew up in Westport, Conn., initially did consulting work in the oil and gas space after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008 at a time when ethanol was driving energy policies in Washington. The experience proved to be a “light bulb” moment for Cooley to chart a future focused on alternative energy lending, and eventually created a path to join forces with Bailey at Connecticut Green Bank.

“I realized that you can have a smart policy that drives the private sector into creating the change that you want to see,” Cooley said. “That realization drove me to go to business school, and I ended up with the nontraditional path out of business school going into the public sector. But what the Green Bank was starting to do was so interesting to me because it was really setting the table for private capital to come in.” 

Closing in excess of $1 billion in originations in a year while also advocating for the C-PACE industry nationwide brings very little free time for the NGC co-founders.

Bailey, who is also busy raising four kids, enjoys heading to the mountains when she can for skiing and hiking. Cooley is especially preoccupied these days after giving birth to identical twin girls last July. She also just completed a renovation of her apartment, developing a passion for interior design from the project. 

Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, NGC sees plenty of green shoots for C-PACE with its recent expansion in New York City, New Jersey, Georgia and Hawaii along with an enhanced program in Florida. Only a few states remain without any movement in C-PACE-enabled legislation. That makes for a far more complete map from Bailey and Cooley’s early days forming an alternative lender that has helped pioneer an industry. 

“In terms of de novo states where we don’t have any policy, there’s fewer and fewer, not that we’re not trying for them all,” Bailey said. “But, for the most part, the map has moved from those three green states to really a pretty green map.”

Andrew Coen can be reached at acoen@commercialobserver.com.