Bridgeton Holdings secured a $57 million construction loan to complete its conversion of a Tribeca office building into the boutique Walker Hotel.
BofI Federal, the lender formerly known as Bank of Internet, issued the debt for Bridgeton’s 171-key conversion of the 10-story building at 396 Broadway, brokers who arranged the financing told The Real Deal.
The Walker Hotel, set inside a landmarked building at the corner of Walker Street and Broadway, will feature amenities like a speakeasy bar in the cellar and will resonate “with the downtown-oriented demographic that will fill the hotel,” said Newmark Knight Frank’s by Jordan Roeschlaub, who arranged the financing with his colleagues Dustin Stolly, Nick Scribani, Chris Kramer and Bob Tonnessen.
A Blue Bottle coffee it also set to open inside the hotel’s ground floor.
NoMad-based Bridgeton Holdings, headed by CEO Atit Jariwala, bought the 61,000-square-foot building from Isaac Chetrit in 2013 for $42 million.
The conversion hit a snag earlier last year, when Bridgeton and the project’s general contractor, Atlantic State Development Corp., traded lawsuits in Manhattan State Supreme Court. Westchester County-based Atlantic claimed Bridgeton failed to secure financing for the project on time, which led to delays and Atlantic’s ultimate removal from the project. The case is still pending.
This will be Bridgeton’s second Walker Hotel in the city after they rebranded the former Jade Hotel in Greenwich Village under the flag in 2016.
BofI Federal, headquartered in San Diego, has only recently gotten into commercial real estate lending in New York, but has carved out a niche for itself, particularly in backing projects from some of Brooklyn’s most active Orthodox Jewish developers.