Peachtree Group Closes $176.5 Million C-PACE Loan on Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas
Peachtree Group has closed a $176.5 million retroactive Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) loan on the Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, the firm's largest C-PACE transaction to date. The financing recapitalizes renovations completed in 2024 at the 2,520-room resort located at 3700 West Flamingo Road, allowing the property's owners to pay down existing senior debt.
A Retroactive Structure to Recapitalize Completed Renovations
The Rio Hotel & Casino underwent a significant renovation program completed in 2024, encompassing more than 1,400 overhauled guestrooms in the Ipanema Tower, a redesigned casino floor, food and beverage upgrades across multiple venues, and infrastructure improvements including modernization of the central heating and cooling plant, electrical system upgrades, and convention center renovations. The property comprises two hotel towers — Ipanema and Masquerade — connected by a casino podium with restaurants, retail, and a convention center.
Rather than funding construction in advance, the C-PACE loan was structured retroactively, reimbursing completed project costs and enabling the owners, Dreamscape Companies, a Los Angeles-based investment and development firm, to reduce their senior loan balance. The C-PACE financing represents part of an aggregate $740 million capital stack at the asset level that includes mortgage and mezzanine debt, placing the C-PACE tranche at roughly 24 percent of the total stack. Peachtree noted the transaction was finalized in less than 60 days.
"They can be utilized as a rescue capital mechanism, where you just recently opened a new development project, a new development hotel property, a multifamily property, any type of commercial real estate property, and you could technically do a retroactive C-PACE loan to help recapitalize that project and help pay down the bank or the lender that financed the project," said Greg Friedman, CEO of Peachtree Group.
Banks Pulling Back Creates Opening for C-PACE
Greg Friedman framed the deal within a broader shift in commercial real estate capital markets. Banks, which he said account for approximately 50 percent of the commercial real estate lending market and have historically been the lender of choice for new construction and development, are no longer deploying capital at the same pace.
"Banks make up 50% of the commercial real estate lending market. Banks tend to be the lender of choice for new construction, new development projects, and they're just not lending at the same level," Friedman said.
That pullback has created demand for alternative fixed-rate, long-term capital sources. Retroactive C-PACE financing functions as subordinate, long-duration debt that can replace higher-cost mezzanine positions or reduce senior loan balances, improving debt service coverage while preserving sponsor flexibility. Friedman described C-PACE as "an economic development tool" at a time when "capital markets for commercial real estate have been broken."
C-PACE volume has grown substantially in recent years, with industry figures showing originations rising from approximately $2.2 billion in 2024 to $3.6 billion in 2025, a 63 percent increase, as borrowers across property types turn to the product to fill gaps left by traditional lenders.
Securitization Drives Peachtree's C-PACE Business
Peachtree Group has built its C-PACE platform around the ability to aggregate and securitize loans, a structure that Friedman said makes the product highly profitable for the firm.
"C-PACE is very profitable for Peachtree as a business," Friedman said, "because the company can aggregate and securitize the loans." He added that insurance companies are active investors in those securitizations. "We have a lot of insurance companies that will invest into these securitizations," he said.
While C-PACE financing is rooted in energy efficiency and sustainability improvements — a requirement for eligibility — Friedman noted that lenders in the space are increasingly focused on resilience and capital stack benefits rather than purely on environmental branding. The Rio renovation's scope, which included building systems upgrades and infrastructure modernization, supports the resilience underwriting criteria that C-PACE programs require.
Market Context: C-PACE Moves Into Larger Transactions
The Rio deal reflects a broader trend of C-PACE financing moving into larger, more complex transactions across the hospitality and commercial real estate sectors. As traditional construction and refinancing capital has contracted under higher interest rates and tighter bank regulatory standards, sponsors of recently completed projects have increasingly turned to retroactive C-PACE structures to recapitalize assets and manage their debt stacks.
For Peachtree Group, the $176.5 million Rio Hotel & Casino loan represents a record transaction size within its C-PACE lending portfolio.
Sources
Peachtree Group – CNBC: Why a niche category of CRE lending is suddenly seeing record deals