Freddie Mac forward loan anchors Battle Creek workforce housing

CPC Mortgage Company has structured an $8.018 million permanent loan for Riverbend at Capital, an 80-unit affordable and workforce housing community in Battle Creek, Michigan. Edison Community Partners is putting the project on a long-vacant former Kmart site at 10 W. Fountain Street, near the Kalamazoo River and downtown Battle Creek, and the roughly $30.2 million plan calls for a four-story building of one- and two-bedroom apartments plus a multipurpose community center, with completion expected in 2027.

The permanent financing, reported by Connect CRE, is a Freddie Mac 9% LIHTC Unfunded Forward loan facilitated by Cinnaire with additional support from the Michigan State Housing Development Authority; at $8.018 million, it covers roughly a quarter of the total project cost, leaving the balance to tax-credit equity and state support.

The unfunded-forward label means the permanent loan is committed now and funds when the project converts, giving the construction lender a known exit instead of open-ended lease-up risk. That forward commitment is what makes the stack credible; without it, the construction piece would carry the burden of proving the project works before a unit is built. The catch is the underwrite is set against rents that will not be tested until 2027.

Riverbend at Capital is the first phase of a broader redevelopment of the roughly 10-acre site, with future phases anticipated to add mixed-income housing, retail, and small-scale commercial space — the same play as the Pasco County, Florida, affordable deal this publication covered in August, where Wells Fargo took three seats at one table — tax-credit equity, construction debt, and the Freddie Mac permanent. Battle Creek runs that play at a different scale, but the logic is identical: the permanent piece, locked in early, is what lets a long-vacant big-box site become phase one of a neighborhood.

The permanent loan will not fund until 2027, but the commitment is already the project's most important piece of paper — the document that turns the construction lender's exit from a hope into a date.