BLDG, David Werner land FiDi office-to-resi conversion loan

Another office-to-residential conversion has landed a construction loan from Ran Eliasaf’s Northwind Group.

The private lender provided a $219 million construction loan for 100 Wall Street, a 29-story, 463,000-square-foot Financial District office building that is being partially converted into apartments by Lloyd Goldman’s BLDG Management and David Werner Real Estate Investments. 

The joint venture is converting floors 2 through 11 into 168 rental apartments. Floors 15 through 29 will remain office space and are more than 95 percent leased, according to Northwind. Amenities at the residential portion will include a pool, fitness center, sports simulator, theater and rooftop deck with an outdoor kitchen. Gensler is the architect.

The loan marks an expansion of an earlier $95 million predevelopment loan Northwind provided for the project. This is the eighth conversion project Northwind has financed in the city. The firm sealed the deal the day after it closed on a $208 million loan for an office-to-residential conversion at 141 Willoughby Street in Downtown Brooklyn. Both projects will use the 467m tax incentive program, which requires at least 25 percent of the units to be affordable.

“I think the city is in dire need of additional housing, and this is a great way to deliver that with a mix of affordable and free market in good buildings, good locations with good sponsors,” Eliasaf said, adding that Northwind has term sheets out on two more conversions in the city.

Eliasaf said both conversions do not require opening up the buildings’ cores or adding floors to the existing structures.

The deals come as office-to-residential conversions are facing increased scrutiny in the wake of the partial collapse at the former Pfizer headquarters in Midtown. In July, the Department of Buildings issued stop-work orders on two more office-to-residential conversions. The next month, the city conducted an inspection sweep of 180 work sites, including 24 office-to-residential conversions, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

David Werner and BLDG bought the tower from Barings in 2024 for roughly $116 million. The partners moved quickly into planning and predevelopment, including relocating office tenants from the lower floors into space higher in the building.

Barings, the investment arm of MassMutual, bought 100 Wall Street in 2015 for $270 million, or about $528 per square foot. The deal set a Downtown record at the time for an office building east of Broadway.

Nearly a decade later, Barings put the property on the market with a roughly $125 million price target. At the time, it was about 75 percent leased and was marketed as a potential office-to-residential conversion. BLDG subsequently took over management of the property after acquiring it.

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