HFZ files to raze storied Bancroft Building in NoMad

Developer Ziel Feldman’s HFZ Capital filed permits last week to tear down the first of three buildings in NoMad to make way for a proposed 350,000-square-foot mixed-use tower, according to Department of Buildings records.

The Bancroft Building is a 10-story, 61,230-square-foot office building at 3-7 West 29th Street, Between Broadway And Fifth Avenue, with nine units. Founded in 1896, it notably housed photographer Alfred Stieglitz’s Camera Club of New York, which is now located at 336 West 37th Street.

The Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church sold the building in October for $26.2 million, along with two other properties, to HFZ. Those sites — a four-story mixed-use building at 11 West 29th Street and a 12-story, 108,750-square-foot commercial property at 8-14 West 30th Street – changed hands for $8.8 million and $35.1 million, respectively, property records show.

Records show that on the same date as the sales, HFZ acquired a $15 million loan from Banco Inbursa, a Mexican-based bank. Tenants at the Bancroft Building include post-graduate psychiatric school the Blanton-Peale Institute and Counseling Center.

HFZ and Collegiate Asset Management, the real estate arm of Collegiate Church, entered talks to form a joint partnership about a year ago, as The Real Deal reported. The developers were looking at a number of possible plans, including constructing a hotel or residential units, a source said. The site has been in play at least as far back as 2006, when the church began acquiring the buildings.

Feldman declined to comment on the project or when the demolition is slated to occur. Collegiate could not be immediately reached.