- Northwind Group provided a $219 million construction loan for the office-to-residential conversion of 100 Wall Street, a 463,000-square-foot Financial District tower.
- George Soros’s Soros Fund Management listed the 140,000-square-foot Argonaut building on Billionaires’ Row for about $100 million, pitched as a conversion candidate.
- Manhattan’s office leasing market is its healthiest since the pandemic, yet lingering vacancy risk keeps pushing owners of older buildings toward residential conversion.
New York’s office-to-residential conversion wave shows no signs of slowing, even after July’s structural scare at the former Pfizer building in Midtown, according to The Real Deal. This week, Ran Eliasaf’s Northwind Group provided a $219M construction loan for 100 Wall Street, a 29-story Financial District office tower being partially converted into apartments.
The loan builds on an earlier $95 million predevelopment loan Northwind provided for the project, a sizable step-up that reflects growing lender confidence as the project has moved from planning into construction.
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The Deal at 100 Wall Street
Lloyd Goldman’s BLDG Management and David Werner Real Estate Investments are converting floors 2 through 11 of the 463,000-square-foot building into 168 rental apartments, while floors 15 through 29 remain office space. Planned amenities include a pool, fitness center, sports simulator, theater and rooftop deck with an outdoor kitchen.
“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,” said Northwind’s Eliasaf.
The Details
Around the same time the loan closed, George Soros’s Soros Fund Management put the 140,000-square-foot Argonaut building at Broadway and West 57th Street up for sale, seeking about $100 million. Newmark’s offering memo pitches the 1909 building as a candidate to become “best-in-class residences” in a supply-constrained submarket.
Zooming Out
Financing tools are also evolving to support these deals. A recent C-PACE financing overhaul in New York now allows for larger loans on qualifying retrofit and conversion projects, giving owners more capital options as they weigh repositioning older office stock.
Manhattan’s office leasing market is in its best shape since the pandemic, but the sector’s fragility, laid bare by COVID, keeps giving converters an opening. Investors continue targeting older, less competitive buildings for residential reuse rather than betting on an office leasing rebound.
The Argonaut, built in 1909 at Broadway and West 57th Street, is a case in point: rather than re-lease the 140,000-square-foot office building, Soros Fund Management is testing whether a landmarked, well-located asset commands a premium as a conversion play instead.
Why It Matters
The conversion trend is reshaping New York’s housing pipeline as the city grapples with an acute shortage. Marriott International and SomeraRoad’s ongoing transformation of the historic Hotel Bossert into the 50th Ritz-Carlton Residences shows how adaptive reuse extends beyond office buildings to hospitality assets too.
For lenders and investors, deals like the 100 Wall Street loan and the Argonaut listing signal confidence that conversion economics still pencil even at higher interest rates, so long as sponsors have strong track records and well-located assets.
The 100 Wall Street deal also shows lenders are comfortable financing partial conversions, where a building keeps some floors as office space while converting others to residential, rather than requiring a full gut renovation to residential use.
What’s Next
Watch for more Financial District and Midtown office owners to test the conversion market as leasing fundamentals remain uneven. The Argonaut sale, in particular, could set a benchmark price for Billionaires’ Row conversion candidates once it trades.
Construction on the 100 Wall Street apartments will be one to watch as an early test of how a mixed office-residential building performs once the new units come online.
