Northwind Group Lends $208M for 141 Willoughby Street Office-to-Residential Conversion

Northwind Group has originated a $208 million first mortgage construction loan for 141 Willoughby Street, a 24-story, 355,000 square foot Class A office tower in Downtown Brooklyn. The proceeds retire the property's existing debt and fund its partial conversion into 239 rental apartments, along with the lease-up of commercial space rebranded as 385 Gold.

Here's the part that makes this deal easier than most conversions. The building was completed in 2023 and never occupied. That means the joint venture behind the project, Capstone Equities and BH3 Fund Advisors, gets to skip the headaches that usually come with turning office space into housing. No tenant buyouts. No deferred maintenance. No structural rework to untangle. The Sponsor took control of the property in 2025 and spent the past year in predevelopment before this loan closed.

The residential conversion covers floors 8 through 23. Floors 1 through 7 stay commercial, with their own dedicated entrances and elevator bank, so there's no shared circulation between the two tenant groups.

The building's layout is doing a lot of the work here. Side-core configuration and nearly column-free floorplates roughly 30 feet deep, wrapped in four-sided glazing, are exactly the setup conversion teams hope for and rarely find. Slab-to-slab heights of 15 to 17 feet will give the residential units finished ceilings well above what typical new-build multifamily construction delivers.

Amenities across the cellar and second floor include a fitness center, entertainment lounge, co-working space, wellness center, golf simulator, sports court, games room, and children's playroom, plus landscaped terraces on the 10th and 20th floors.

The development team includes a construction manager who has converted more than 43 commercial buildings, totaling over 14 million square feet, into more than 14,500 apartments since 1997. Fogarty Finger, the original design architect for the tower, returns as executive architect for the conversion. Newmark will handle commercial leasing.

"141 Willoughby is an exceptional asset in a market where demand for high-quality apartments is strong," said Adam Falk of BH3 Fund Advisors, speaking on behalf of the joint venture.

Avi Kollenscher, Partner at Capstone Equities, called it "a truly unique opportunity in the market today."

Northwind Founder and Managing Partner Ran Eliasaf pointed to the building's condition as the reason the numbers work, noting the Sponsor can execute "a streamlined, largely interior scope of work without the tenancy and structural risks that typically accompany office-to-residential projects."

A never-occupied Class A tower converting straight to resi is about as clean a setup as this asset class gets. No tenant buyouts, no deferred maintenance, no structural rework to untangle before the real scope even starts. For subs bidding conversion work elsewhere, this is the version of the job everyone wishes they had, and it's worth remembering the next time a broker pitches a "simple" office-to-resi deal that isn't actually this clean.

Downtown Brooklyn's pipeline is thinning right as this project lands, with the forward delivery pipeline set to decline materially. Less competing supply typically supports stronger absorption over time, which is worth watching if you're pricing work or eyeing land in this submarket.

Keep an eye on how the commercial split gets sequenced. A fully separate entrance and dedicated elevator bank for seven floors of office space, with no shared circulation into the residential portion, is a meaningful piece of scope on its own inside a conversion this size. Worth flagging early if you're bidding either the residential or commercial trades, since the two sides will be built and finished on largely independent tracks.

🥾Want to advertise in TheJobWalk? Learn More🥾