Jeffrey Gural, Eric Gural and Brian Steinwurtzel

GFP Real Estate has found its niche not only in Manhattan’s Garment District but also in office-to-residential conversions.

The family-owned firm led by patriarch Jeffrey Gural, with his son Eric Gural and nephew Brian Steinwurtzel as co-CEOs, makes a lot of headlines with its lease signings in the Garment District where the bulk of its portfolio lies, managing to keep Class B office space relevant in a world shifting toward Class A buildings.

But GFP also seems to be diversifying across the major asset classes with about 3,000 units of housing in its construction pipeline, most notably with the office-to-residential conversions at the iconic Flatiron Building as well as 25 Water Street — formerly known as the grim-looking Four New York Plaza — in the Financial District.

Now known as SoMA, 25 Water was originally designed to mimic an IBM punch card, which created a sort of Brutalist arrow-slit appearance from the outside, not exactly appealing for potential residents.

“I think one of the most complicated parts of that project was the removal of the majority of the brick on that building and the replacement of that brick with new, custom-made window walls throughout,” Steinwurtzel said. “The lines of the punchcard are still there. … The windows sort of jutted into the building and came back out, and that actually created these really interesting fenestration lines.”

What started as an eyesore that wasn’t likely to be repopulated after COVID-19 resulted in an undertaking with Metro Loft and Rockwood Capital that this year yielded 1,300 apartments and 100,000 square feet of amenities, making it one of the most amenitized buildings in the U.S., according to Steinwurtzel.

And, over the last five years, GFP has been shifting its narrative further away from just Class B office by developing the Hatch Life Sciences at 43-10 23rd Street and another Class A lab space at 45-18 Court Square, both in Long Island City, Queens.