UPDATED: July 26 10.35 a.m.: Gary Barnett’s Extell Development landed a $140 million construction loan for the development of two, seven-story mixed-use buildings at 500 and 524 East 14th Street.
Wells Fargo and German commercial bank Helaba provided the financing via two separate loan agreements — a $103.75 million project loan leasehold mortgage and a building loan leasehold mortgage worth $36.25 million, property records show.
Wells Fargo financed $90 million of the loan, while Helaba provided approximately $50 million, according to a Helaba spokesperson.
Extell has been planning the project since 2012, when it inked a ground lease for the properties, along with three others, from Solil Management [TRData].
The deal, valued at $35.1 million, was a rare transaction at the time for Solil, which manages properties owned by the estate of real estate magnate Sol Golman. It had rarely developed its sites until that point.
When completed, the buildings, on the corner of East 14th Street and Avenue A, are slated to hold 150 residential units and more than 50,000 square feet of retail space. It’s not clear whether the properties, directly across the street from Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, will be rental or for-sale. If Barnett wants to sell the units, he would likely have to build condops, since condos are prohibited on a ground lease.
Representatives for both Extell and Wells Fargo were not immediately available for comment.
Barnett has been wooing lenders for several residential projects in recent months and recently scored a $54.9 million acquisition loan from Bank of the Ozarks for its latest Upper East Side condominium development at 350 East 86th Street.
Extell also recently received demolition permits to tear down 10 West 47th Street, which will allow Barnett to raze a total of 10 buildings on a Diamond District block.