Craig Robins' Dacra Lands $125M Loan for Sweetbird North in Miami
Office construction debt is scarce nationally, and this sponsor group still got a $125 million loan closed on a speculative building.
Craig Robins’ Dacra, Raycliff Capital, L Catterton Real Estate and the Bernard Arnault family office have closed a $125 million construction loan for Sweetbird North, the Snøhetta-designed office and retail building rising in the Miami Design District, with Crédit Agricole leading a group of lenders, Commercial Observer and Connect CRE reported August 19.
Why it matters
Office construction financing is scarce almost everywhere right now, and scarcer still for a speculative, ground-up building without a reported anchor tenant. This loan closed anyway, on a roughly 120,000-square-foot project. For Miami developers pricing their own office deals, the signal is in who backed it rather than the rate: a French bank leading a syndicate against sponsors with deep balance sheets in Dacra, LVMH-linked L Catterton Real Estate and the Arnault family office, alongside Raycliff Capital. That sponsor depth, more than any single term, is likely what got this one done while comparable office starts sit stalled elsewhere. Our permit-wire coverage from earlier this month already showed the City of Miami had issued a $31.1 million building permit for the site, evidence the project was headed to construction with or without this debt in hand.
The numbers
The construction loan totals $125 million. Sweetbird North spans roughly 120,000 square feet across eight stories, with more than 92,000 square feet of office space on floors three through eight and about 22,500 square feet of ground and second-floor retail, matching the scope described in the city’s August 4 building permit. Crédit Agricole is leading the lender group behind the loan. A search of Miami-Dade County’s official records, current only through August 13, turned up no mortgage instrument yet recorded against the Design District ownership entities tied to this financing, so the closing has outrun the public filing.
What’s next
Kast Construction is the general contractor of record on the city permit, and the sponsors are targeting a 2028 completion. Watch the Miami-Dade Clerk’s official records for the mortgage, and any related UCC filings, to post in the coming weeks. That filing will name the specific borrowing entity and confirm the recorded loan amount against the reported $125 million.