UPDATED, Feb. 16, 4:45 p.m.
Clara Homes scored a $26 million construction loan for the first phase of a three-building luxury apartment development in Bay Harbor Islands.
Records show Clara Homes secured the financing from Maxim Credit Group, an affiliate of New York-based Maxim Capital.
Clara Bay Harbor will include three, six-story buildings with 150 apartments. It marks the developer’s first multifamily development in South Florida.
Miami-based Clara Homes, led by founder and CEO James Curnin, paid a combined $32.2 million for the Bay Harbor Islands non-contiguous site assemblage between 2021 and 2022.
Clara Homes won approval for the first phase of the project in April, and will break ground at the site at 10281 West Bay Harbor Drive next month, according to a press release. Phase one of Clara Bay Harbor will have a six-story building with 28 two- to five-bedroom units, a 56-spot parking garage and a rooftop pool.
The developer expects to complete the first building in the spring or summer of 2024, the release shows. The other two buildings are set to break ground later this year, on sites at 10200 East Bay Harbor Drive and 1147-1163 100th Street, according to the release.
Curnin previously told The Real Deal he anticipates a monthly per-square-foot rent of $5 to $7 for units in Clara Bay Harbor. That would translate to $6,500 per month for Clara Bay Harbor’s smallest planned units of 1,300 square feet.
Since the pandemic-fueled real estate frenzy in South Florida, developers have been drawn to the tri-county region like magnets. Bay Harbor Islands now has several residential projects in the works.
Among them is Ian Bruce Eichner’s 68-unit La Baia, which launched sales in October 2021. Ugo Colombo’s CMC Group is also making a play in Bay Harbor Islands, in partnership with Morabito Properties. The joint venture secured a $64.5 million loan last year from Bank OZK to build Onda Residences, an eight-story, 41-unit condominium. And Chicago-based Regency Development Group bought a site in Bay Harbor Islands for $22.5 million in May.