Nuveen Green Capital Closes $220M C-PACE Loan for San Jose Office Building

San Francisco developer Jay Paul Company has sealed $220 million of Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) financing for the recapitalization of its newly built office property in San Jose, Calif., Commercial Observer can first report.

Nuveen Green Capital (NGC) provided the 30-year year loan on Jay Paul’s recently completed 19-story Class A office building at 200 Park Avenue in Downtown San Jose. The deal marks the second-largest C-PACE transaction in the country to date and the largest ever from NGC, which has now surpassed $3 billion in total originations.

The only larger C-PACE transaction involved a $255.9 million loan from CounterpointeSRE in early 2023 for a conversion of San Francisco’s Aronson Building into a Four Seasons Private Residence.

Cory Jubran, senior director of originations and West Coast head at NGC, said the San Jose loan enables Jay Paul to fund extensive sustainability and resiliency measures in the building while still executing its business plan by taking advantage of C-PACE’s long-term, flexible financing structure.  Jubran said the 965,000-square-foot building is well equipped to attract some of the nation’s top corporations, particularly in the technology space because San Jose is in the heart of Silicon Valley. 

“C-PACE  is best suited for people who are green development minded, but also have a longer-term business plan,” Jubran said. “We’re glad that we are able to continue to put out these dollars for really strong sponsors and really strong properties and ultimately properties that hit all of our goals from a green energy standpoint, and this project does that in leaps and bounds.”

JLL (JLL) arranged the transaction with a capital market’s debt advisory team led by Matt Cimino and Bruce Ganong.

Jay Paul’s new building at 200 Park, currently San Jose’s tallest building, features a number of sustainability measures including a seismic bracing system designed so that the structure will move less during the small earthquakes that often strike the San Francisco region. 

“I’d like to thank everyone at Nuveen Green Capital who made this unique and complex financing structure possible for our 200 Park project,” Matt Lituchy, chief investment officer of Jay Paul Companies, said in a statement. “The team successfully navigated us through the C-PACE process and provided one of the largest transactions of its kind.”

The San Jose loan adds to NGC’s active year on the West Coast. The Darien, Conn.-based lender has originated around $700 million of C-PACE deals in the region since late 2023. 

In August, NGC closed a $190 million C-PACE loan for JC Hospitality to refinance past debt on its Virgin Hotels Las Vegas property, as CO first reported at the time. 

NGC also executed a $90.4 million of retroactive C-PACE financing in June for the recapitalization of the adjacent Thompson Hollywood hotel and Tommie Hollywood properties in Los Angeles. 

Jubran said he expects NGC’s C-PACE activity on the West Coast to pick up more steam in 2025 as interest rates fall. 

“Our intention is to make C-PACE a household name when it comes to developers and owners who want to finance their projects, and we want to really be in that continued conversation as a common solution, and I think we have done really well as leaders in the space,” Jubran said. 

“We have a very strong outlook for 2025 because of a lot of the legwork that we did this year,” Jubran said. “I think as the capital markets and liquidity start shaking out and deal volume continues to grow we’ll continue to have a percentage of that overall deal volume, and I think that bodes really well for the growth of the firm, as well as C-PACE in general.

Andrew Coen can be reached at acoen@commercialobserver.com