Partners Plan to Convert 25 Water Street to Apartments
Tower once anchored by JPMorgan will become NYC's largest conversion.
In what could become the largest office-to-residential conversion project in NYC, GFP Real Estate, Metroloft and Rockwood Capital have disclosed plans to convert 25 Water Street into 1,200 rental units.
The partners reportedly are in negotiations with MSD partners on a $500M construction loan on the project.
In June, GFP and Metroloft entered an agreement earlier this year purchase 25 Water Street, a 1.1M SF office tower formerly known as 4 New York Plaza. The building is owned by Edge Funds, which acquired the property for $270M in 2012 from Harbor Group, holds a $250M mortgage on the building.
Newmark negotiated the transaction, which is expected to close this year and involves a deed in lieu of foreclosure deal. The building’s anchor tenant and former owner, JPMorgan, listed for subleasing 500K SF of the 700K SF it has leased at 25 Water.
JPMorgan is consolidating its offices at its new 2.5M SF headquarters tower at 270 Park Avenue, which is scheduled to open in 2025. The bank’s lease at 25 Water expires in January 2025.
In June. two New York developers who acquired an aging office tower in NYC’s financial district revealed their plans to convert the 30-story building into 571 market-rate apartment units.
A joint venture of Silverstein Properties and Metro Loft agreed in May to purchase 55 Broad Street, which opened in 1967, for $180M from Rudin Management.
The partnership said the building will be converted to apartments during the next three years, the largest office-to-apartment adaptive reuse project in NYC thus far this year.
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, a third of the office space at 55 Broad currently is empty. Tenants in the building are primarily financial services and tech firms.
The conversion to apartments is “the right evolution of these struggling, underperforming older office assets that are approaching their obsolescence,” Nathan Berman, Metro Loft founder and managing principal, told WSJ.
Silverstein and Metro Loft are planning to convert the 425K SF 55 Broad building into apartments ranging from studios to three-bedroom units.