CORPUS CRISTI, TX-Aries Capital, led by Leonard Smith, senior vice president, from the firm's Houston office, has completed a loan for The Village at Oso Bay, a newly planned 56-unit memory care community in Corpus Christi. The loan is valued at $7.5 million.

The Village of Oso Bay is a development of Thrive Senior Living, LLC based in Atlanta. Thrive owns and operates a number of senior care facilities throughout Georgia, Texas and Florida. Led by the firm's founder Jeramy Ragsdale, Thrive Senior Living creates living environments based on innovation, cutting edge technology and artistic design.

“We are excited to begin construction on our new community in Corpus Christi which will offer compassionate and innovative care,” said Ragsdale. “Construction loans for ground-up senior living facilities are complex and can be difficult, but as a result of Aries Capital's market knowledge and Leonard's persistence, we were able to get this project off the ground.”

The capital structure features a 24-month interest only construction loan and an additional 36 months with a 20-year amortization.  The loan-to-value ratio for the transaction was approximately 75%.

“The difficulty in sourcing a lender for this type of facility is the start-up costs required by the Borrower to cover marketing and presales,” said Smith of Aries Capital. “Many capital sources don't understand healthcare and aren't willing to include those items. We worked diligently to pair the project with the right lender that was comfortable with the industry and willing to finance the development.”

The Village of Oso Bay is expected to break ground this year with completion slated in spring of 2014. Ewing Construction will perform the construction services.

Aries Capital, (www.ariescapital.com) is a national full service commercial mortgage and real estate investment banking firm with offices in Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix.  Since 1991, Aries and its affiliates have arranged and/or directly funded over $4 billion in debt and equity for office, retail, multifamily, healthcare, hotel/lodging and special-purpose properties.