Centurion Lands $171M Loan for Converted Manhattan Condos
JLL arranged the financing, which was provided by Macquarie Principal Finance.
The converted luxury condos are located on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Image courtesy of JLL
Centurion Real Estate Partners has secured debt backing its condominium conversion project on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Macquarie Principal Finance provided a joint venture led by Centurion with a $171 million loan for the property at 212 W. 72nd St. JLL’s Michael Gigliotti, Peter Rotchford, Jeffrey Julien and Rob Hinckley arranged the loan, which is collateralized by the remaining move-in ready units and will also be used to repay a construction loan that was provided by KKR.
While 212 W. 72nd St. was originally developed as a 19-story rental building with 196 units, Centurion later acquired the community with plans to convert the community into luxury condominiums. The redevelopment, which was designed by CetraRuddy, included unit renovations, combining smaller units and amenity enhancements.
The building is now home to 108 units in studio and one-, two-, three-, four- and five-bedroom floorplans ranging from 450 to 2,834 square feet, with two options for penthouse apartments up to 3,677 square feet, according to Yardi Matrix data. The units were rebuilt with noise-reducing windows, white oak plank floors, quartzite countertops, Miele appliances and soaking tubs, while select units also have wine refrigerators and full-height pantries. The community is 91.8 percent occupied, according to Yardi Matrix data.
The community’s amenities include an outdoor kitchen, fitness center, residents lounge, children’s playroom, and terraces on the rooftop and third floors. At the ground floor, 212 W. 72nd St. hosts retail space that is currently leased to Trader Joe’s, Duane Reade and Bank of America. The community’s location puts it between Central Park and Riverside Park, but residents are also within walking distance to the area’s cultural attractions like the Beacon Theatre, American Museum of Natural History and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
New York City’s residential conversions
John Tashjian, principal at Centurion, previously spoke to Multi-Housing News about the conversion process at 212 W. 72nd St., explaining that it would be one of the last of these kinds of conversions in New York City. With the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019, property owners are required to get 51 percent of the existing residents in the building to agree to buy apartments before securing approvals for the conversion.
While that new law has made rental-to-condo conversions difficult, New York City has been seeing residential conversions of other types. CetraRuddy is working on one of the largest office-to-residential conversions in the city at 55 Broad St., which will transform a 30-story office tower into a 571-unit luxury community. Further north in Manhattan, Northwind Group recently provided $100 million in financing for the conversion of the historic Hudson Hotel into a 441-unit community.
