Pinnacle scores $48M financing for Hollywood affordable housing project

Pinnacle scored a $47.8 million construction financing package for an affordable housing project in Hollywood, as developers continue to bet on below-market-rate apartments in South Florida. 

The Miami-Dade County-based firm will start building an eight-story, 100-unit multifamily building on 1.7 acres at 6028 Johnson Street this month, according to a Pinnacle news release. Pinnacle 441, as the project is called, will consist of one- to three-bedroom apartments, as well as a live-work space fronting Johnson Street. 

Households earning up to 60 percent of Broward County’s area median income of $88,500 annually will qualify for a unit. This means a one-person household can’t earn more than $40,320, a two-person household can’t earn more than $46,080, and a three-person household can’t earn over $51,840, according to the Florida Housing Finance Corporation. 

Completion is expected late next year or early 2025. 

The project marks the second phase of Pinnacle 441. The first phase, consisting of an eight-story, 113-unit affordable apartment building, is under construction immediately east of phase 1, on the southwest corner of Johnson Street and State Road 7. 

Pinnacle’s financing package for the second phase includes Broward County Housing Finance Authority tax-exempt bonds, $10 million in gap loans from the county, $1 million from the city, $6.6 million in loans from the Florida Housing Finance Corporation, and tax-credit equity from Bank of America, the release says. Pinnacle also received $19 million in equity from the purchase of housing tax credits from Bank of America, which will retire some of the bond financing once the project is completed, Timothy Wheat, partner at Pinnacle, said in a statement. 

Records show that Pinnacle, through an affiliate, paid $3.5 million for the phase 2 development site last year. 

Founded in 1997 by Louis Wolfson III, Michael Wohl and David Deutch, Pinnacle’s portfolio consists of 71 residential developments spanning nearly 9,400 units across three states, according to the firm’s website. The firm’s partners now are Wolfson, Deutch, Coraly Rodriguez, Timothy Wheat and Hugo Pacanins. 

Elsewhere in South Florida, Pinnacle and Ram Realty Advisors paid $15.4 million for a 2.2-acre development site at 19640 West Dixie Highway in the Ojus neighborhood near Aventura. At the time, the partners planned a 285-unit apartment building, including 36 workforce units, that will rise 15 stories, tapering down to eight and then four levels. 

South Florida’s yearslong multifamily affordability crisis was exacerbated from an influx of out-of-state residents from late 2020 until early last year. Developers have seized on demand for below-market-rate units by filing project proposals. 

In Hollywood, Housing Trust Group scored $61 million in construction financing in May for the two-building, eight-story University Station with 216 affordable units planned along North 21st Avenue, between Fillmore Street and Polk Street. 

Last month, Jacksonville-based Vestcor proposed a 590-unit affordable apartment complex at the northwest corner of South Dixie Highway and Southwest 280th Street in south Miami-Dade County’s Leisure City neighborhood.