Gaia gets $123M loan for St. Vincent’s Midtown deal

Gaia Real Estate secured a $122.8 million loan from TPG Real Estate Finance for its acquisition of a vacant, 160,000-square-foot Midtown apartment building. 

The investment firm bought the property at 416 West 52nd Street, the site of the former St. Vincent Midtown Hospital from the Chetrit Group, for $156.5 million on Aug. 20, according to property records.

Meridian Capital Group’s Ronnie Levine and Jeff Berkes brokered the financing. Commercial Observer first reported the loan.

“Meridian’s team is very familiar with this property and previously arranged the acquisition and renovation financing for it on behalf of a different ownership group,” Levine said in a statement.

The lender, TPG Real Estate Finance, is a division of Texas-based private equity giant TPG, which recently bought Cushman & Wakefield for $2 billion.

The Chetrit Group, headed by the notoriously secretive Joseph Chetrit, bought two former hospital buildings at 416 and 432 West 52nd Street in partnership with Tessler Developments for $88.7 million in 2007, with plans to convert them into rentals. The plans stalled in the aftermath of the recession, until work on the conversion finally began in 2012. In June 2014, Chetrit sold one of the buildings, 432 West 52nd Street, to a partnership between JVL Property Group, Okada Acquisitions and Zion Enterprises, which then converted it into condos. Chetrit held on to the second property, until last month.