Bridge Investment Group Lends $120M for White Plains Redevelopment
By Liam La Guerre May 2, 2018 2:45 pm
reprints
A joint partnership of Ginsburg Development Companies and Robert Martin Company has secured a $120.3 million loan from Bridge Investment Group to purchase and redevelop a 571,000-square-foot office complex in White Plains known as the Westchester Financial Center, Commercial Observer has learned.
The floating-rate loan has a term of four years with an option to extend for one year, a source with knowledge of the deal told CO.
The developers are planning to redevelop the 15-story, 309,000-square-foot 50 Main Street and the 14-story, 262,000-square-foot 1-11 Martine Avenue, and rebrand the properties as City Square, according to Avison Young, which arranged the financing for the developers. The buildings are a block from the White Plains Metro North train station.
Ginsburg and Robert Martin purchased the property for $83 million from Mack-Cali Realty Corporation, as LoHud reported in April. The deal was an off-market transaction between the two parties without investment sales brokers on either side.
An Avison Young spokesman declined to comment on the overall cost of the development. And neither a representative for Bridge Investment nor Ginsburg Development immediately returned requests for comment.
“[The project] will reinvent these iconic buildings as a key component of the new 24-hour live-work-play environment envisioned by the City of White Plains at its gateway and train station,” Martin Ginsburg, the principal of Ginsburg Development, said in prepared remarks in April about the sale. “Given its strategic location, we are confident that City Square will be Westchester County’s premier business address.”
Aside from renovating the 50 Main Street building, the developers are adding a new lobby with art and sculpture displays, new amenities, a fitness center, a yoga studio, a game room, a lounge, outdoor seating for the café and a business center.
A portion of the office building at 1-11 Martine Avenue will be converted into luxury residential apartments, and Ginsburg Development and Robert Martin plan to renovate the lobby and elevators. Also the developers are adding a two-acre open space with new landscaping and sculptures and an outdoor lounge. The exact number of apartments has not yet been decided, according to an Avison Young spokesman.
The loan “provides our clients with the flexibility required to execute their business plan,” Avison Young’s David Krasnoff, who led a team with colleague Ryan Flannery to secure the financing for the buyer, said in a prepared statement.
