Chameleon of the Capstack

PACE Loan Group
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Every capital stack looks clean on paper until the pressure hits. Chameleon of the Capstack is a podcast from PACE Loan Group (PLG) that pulls back the curtain on real commercial real estate deals, how they were sourced, structured, and closed using C-PACE financing. Co-hosted by COO Bali Kumar and CEO Rafi Golberstein featuring the PLG team and various CRE industry guests, each episode breaks down the creative problem-solving behind actual transactions, revealing how C-PACE adapts to fit deals that traditional financing can't quite reach.

Episodes

  1. Jun 29

    Lender Consent Is the Real Boogeyman in Senior Living C-PACE (Pt. 2) | Peter Grabell, PACE Loan Group

    Banks will tell you they've loosened their credit box. They've also quietly capped how many dollars they'll write you. In Part 2 of our senior living conversation, PACE Loan Group Managing Director Peter Grabell walks through the deals where C-PACE does the work nobody else in the stack wants to: clearing lender consent, freeing up bank capacity, and refinancing a bank partially out of a deal years after the building's already stabilized.

  2. Jun 22

    Why Senior Living Is a Leverage Problem, Not a Cost Problem — with Peter Grabell

    An aging population is the most reliable demand story in real estate, so why do senior lenders still treat senior living like a problem child? Because someone has to operate it, and that makes banks nervous enough to cap leverage a full 10 points below a vanilla apartment building. In Episode 3 of The Chameleon of the Cap Stack, Peter Grabell, Managing Director and Head of Production at PACE Loan Group, sits down with PLG CEO Rafi Golberstein to make the case that senior living is a leverage problem, not a cost-of-capital problem, and to show how C-PACE quietly fills the gap that banks, credit unions, and equity leave open. Real deals, real cap stacks, real decisions.

  3. May 21

    The Water Park and a 50-Day Close | Hospitality & C-PACE

    The largest indoor water park in North America draws 300,000 visitors a year, runs massive HVAC and water-recycling systems, and sits on the Atlantic City boardwalk. So how does that qualify as energy efficient and become the first C-PACE deal ever closed in the state of New Jersey? PLG CEO Rafi Golberstein and Head of Loan Structuring Jerry Ellis break down a Q4 hospitality run that ranged from the funky to the five-star. The headliner: a $45M recapitalization on a 125,000 sq ft indoor water park, closed in roughly 50 days against a hard year-end deadline in a state where no one had ever closed a C-PACE loan before. Why two years of operating history made an "un-financeable" asset class work. How direct HVAC load and water recycling drove the energy-efficiency qualification. Why a retroactive prevailing-wage waiver created a 30-day application sprint. And how getting Atlantic City to opt into the program in real time turned into two more referred Jersey deals within a week. This is Part 2 of the hospitality breakdown.

  4. May 11

    A $30M Hyatt with 6 Layers of Capital | How C-PACE Made It Work

    Most hotel capital stacks have three layers. This one had six: ground lease proceeds, C-PACE, mezz, preferred equity, common equity, and key money, and it still closed. PLG CEO Rafi Golberstein and Head of Loan Structuring Jerry Ellis walk through Q4's hospitality run: a Hyatt House in Orlando connected by SkyBridge to a 1.74M-attendee convention center, and an $800-a-night unflagged luxury inn in the Hudson River Valley that became PLG's first-ever New York State closing. Why C-PACE beat traditional senior debt on a Hyatt where the sponsor was deciding between a bank and a structured stack. How a related-party ground lease at 7% functioned as cheaper-than-senior capital. Why tranched funding across four draws saved the sponsor from negative arb on $30M sitting idle. And how a USDA loan falling out at the last minute on the upstate deal turned into a relationship-driven save. Plus: why New York is the largest CRE market in the country and one of the slowest for C-PACE and what it took to plant a stake there. Learn more at paceloangroup.com

  5. Mar 16

    "Energy Hog" Gets Green Financing | Data Centers & C-PACE

    Data centers consume massive power, but does that make them ineligible for green financing? This one draws 20+ megawatts daily, making it the single largest power consumer in downtown Kansas City. It still qualified for $100 million in C-PACE. PLG CEO Rafi Golberstein and SVP Robbie Pinkas break down how direct-to-chip cooling, upgraded chillers, and Kansas City's underground chilled water infrastructure made a seemingly unlikely deal fully eligible. They also explain why PACE beat investment-grade bonds for this particular capital stack, including non-recourse structure, 20-year fixed-rate terms, and the flexibility a greener sponsor needed that traditional data center financing couldn't offer. Plus: why PLG now accounts for over a third of Missouri's entire C-PACE production, what makes Kansas City a quietly compelling infrastructure market, and why centrally located data centers may hold more long-term value than the massive isolated complexes dominating headlines. This is Part 2 of the Patmos Data Center breakdown. Listen to Part 1 wherever you found this one. Learn more at paceloangroup.com

  6. Feb 23

    25 Megawatts and a Printing Press | Data Centers & C-PACE

    A defunct Kansas City printing press. 25 megawatts of untapped grid power. A young developer with vision but limited liquidity. In this episode, SVP Robbie Pinkas walks through how he turned a gut instinct about data centers and C-PACE into a $100 million assessment—structuring retroactive proceeds to fund the property acquisition while financing the remaining build-out. The deal closed in under 12 months, the facility is now over capacity, and there may be room for a subsequent assessment. Robbie and Rafi unpack the sourcing, the creative deal architecture, and why this conversion model could be replicable for entrepreneurial data center developers hunting underutilized power allocations.

  • 6 Episodes

About

Every capital stack looks clean on paper until the pressure hits. Chameleon of the Capstack is a podcast from PACE Loan Group (PLG) that pulls back the curtain on real commercial real estate deals, how they were sourced, structured, and closed using C-PACE financing. Co-hosted by COO Bali Kumar and CEO Rafi Golberstein featuring the PLG team and various CRE industry guests, each episode breaks down the creative problem-solving behind actual transactions, revealing how C-PACE adapts to fit deals that traditional financing can't quite reach.

Information

  • Creator
    PACE Loan Group
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    6
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 PACE Loan Group
  • Show Website
    Chameleon of the Capstack