BridgeCity Lends $51M on Brooklyn Office-to-Resi Conversion
By Andrew Coen May 30, 2024 1:30 pm
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Watermark Capital Group has sealed $50.6 million of acquisition financing for the purchase of ant Brooklyn office building slated to be converted into multifamily housing, Commercial Observer has learned.
BridgeCity Capital originated the loan on 175 Pearl Street, an eight-story building in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood that Watermark recently acquired for $66.5 million from Cannon Hill Capital Partners as an office-to-residential play. All tenants had either vacated or signed agreements to vacate in the immediate future, according to BridgeCity.
“The site is ripe for conversion with beautiful open floor plates and substantial light and air from three sides of the building,” said Jacob Friedman, chief financial officer of BridgeCity. “We are excited to see another great and much-needed addition to the Dumbo submarket, which is one of our favorite submarkets in the tri-state area.”
Friedman said Watermark, which is owned by Wolfe Landau, plans to convert the 1918-built property into a 14-story, 238-unit multifamily property consisting of 230,000 gross square feet. Landau has overseen a number of other residential conversion projects including transforming a former Catholic school at 17 Monitor Street in Greenpoint into apartments.
The site’s current 184,965-square-foot structure was renovated in 2017 and has housed law firm Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete, branding agency Thelab and coworking provider Spaces as tenants. It was not immediately known which tenants were still occupying the space.
A fund managed by Normandy Real Estate Partners acquired the property in 2017 before the firm was sold to Columbia Property Trust in January 2020 for $100 million. When Columbia was taken private by PIMCO in 2022, the fund was spun out as part of the formation of Cannon Hill Capital Partners.
Spokespeople at Watermark and Cannon Hill did not immediately return requests for comment.
Andrew Coen can be reached at acoen@commercialobserver.com.
