LCOR completes 25 Broad conversion after Swig’s stumble

Updated, 12:00 p.m., Sept. 10: LCOR’s face-lift and rental conversion of the Broad Exchange Building will wrap up next month, after a previous conversion attempt by Kent Swig fell through following the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

In 2012, LCOR paid $170 million for the 521,000-square-foot, 21-story building at 25 Broad Street and gave new life to the conversion plans, after developer Kent Swig was forced to give up the building after defaulting on payments, as The Real Deal reported . “What happened to the building parallels what happened to downtown after the last real-estate crash,” David Sigman, a principal at the development firm, told the Wall Street Journal.

The city’s 421-g tax-abatement program for Downtown conversion projects ignited interest in the property, now known as 25 Broad, Sigman added. The building’s 308 rental units are almost at full occupancy, he said.

More than 2,200 residential units are slated for eight upcoming Lower Manhattan buildings, according to data from the business improvement association Downtown Alliance seen by the newspaper. But Sigman told the Journal that there was still plenty of scope for new residential projects.

“There’s 10 million square feet of new commercial space going up, plus two new transit hubs,” Sigman said, referring to the Fulton Center and PATH complexes. “So there’s a huge investment in infrastructure down here and not a lot of residential.” [WSJ] – Hiten Samtani