NEW YORK — Vanbarton Group has received $250 million in financing to convert the former Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York headquarters into 420 multifamily units. Eldridge Real Estate Capital Management provided the acquisition and construction loan. The financing included the $103 million acquisition cost.
CBRE’s Doug Middleton and Pierre Hills advised the archdiocese on the sale of the property, and Greenberg Traurig represented Vanbarton Group.
The 20-story, approximately 400,000-square-foot building in the Sutton Place neighborhood had been the headquarters for the archdiocese since 1973 and was known as the Cardinal Terrence Cooke Center. Vanbarton plans to convert the property to a 26-story, 420-unit community that will include 105 affordable housing units, about 8,000 square feet of ground-floor retail and 55,000 square feet of amenities.
While the developer didn’t release details on the capital stack or funding sources and rent caps on the affordable units, the project is being delivered under New York state’s 485‑x program, which requires developers to reserve a minimum of 25 percent of units as affordable in order to qualify for a property tax exemption.
A construction timeline was not disclosed. The archdiocese has moved its headquarters to 488 Madison Ave., adjacent to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. A final mass was held at 1011 First Ave. in May.
Vanbarton recently led another office-to-residential conversion in the Financial District with the completion of Pearl House at 160 Water St. last year. Vanbarton also is working on or has completed three additional Manhattan adaptive reuse projects as well as one in Seattle.