David Brecher moving ahead with Vinegar Hill office conversion

Brecher signed a 20-year lease on the warehouse at 84 Hudson Avenue in 2015

David Brecher and 84 Hudson Avenue
David Brecher and 84 Hudson Avenue

David Brecher and partner JBS Project Management filed construction plans Thursday to convert a Vinegar Hill warehouse at 84 Hudson Avenue to offices.

Construction plans for 84 Hudson Avenue call for a 68,434-square-foot conversion, with seven floors of office space, including first floor retail. John Saracco is the project’s architect of record.

Brecher, the founder and CEO of FM Home Loans, signed a 20-year lease on the property from the Cibrano family in 2015.

At the time, he told The Real Deal he was looking for a top-notch tech tenant to fill the future office space, describing the plans as a “definite tech-play.”

Brecher has since widened the net of possible occupants. “We’re looking for traditional office tenants who are probably priced out of DUMBO and who are looking for something a little bit more reasonable,” Brecher said Thursday. “We’re looking across the board.”

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Pricing for the offices will likely be in low $40s per foot, Brecher said. Brecher said he and partner JBS were currently self-financing the project, but were looking into construction loan opportunities.

Kushner Companies and partners have had some success with tech-y tenants at nearby Dumbo Heights, where WeWork, Etsy and Frog Design have all signed leases. Building 77 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which is owned by the City of New York, lured in a key tech tenant last year, with the signing of incubator and seed fund 1776 to a 30,000-square-foot lease.

Brecher, who operates a mortgage lender, once had a licensing deal with Donald Trump, and briefly changing the name of his Brooklyn-based mortgage company to “Trump Financial.”

FM Home Loans was founded in 1996 as a spin-off of the commercial brokerage Meridian Capital.

(To see a selection of filed, Brooklyn properties, click here)