Tishman Speyer lands $301M refi on historic Macy’s building in Downtown Brooklyn

Tishman Speyer scored a $301 million refinancing deal on its project at the historic Macy’s building in Downtown Brooklyn, where it erected 10 floors of offices on top of the original Abraham & Straus department store.

Starwood Property Trust provided the financing for the development centered around the 143-year-old office-and-retail building at 422 Fulton Street. Macy’s occupies the first four floors of the building. It partnered with Tishman to redevelop the property.

The development incorporates the store’s original cast-iron facade into an office building called the Wheeler, where Tishman built 622,000 square feet of Class A office space, adding to the glut of luxury office buildings in the borough.

St. Francis College inked a lease in 2021 for the fifth, sixth and seventh floors of the building, and is the only tenant.

“Tishman Speyer and Starwood Property Trust have worked collaboratively on a refinancing for the Wheeler,” a company spokesperson said. The refi replaces a 2021 loan from the same lender for the same amount.

Tishman purchased the upper floors of the 838,000-square-foot building in 2015 for $270 million, a sum that helped to pay for a proposed $100 million renovation of the store. Bank of the Ozarks provided a $194 million construction loan in 2017 for the build out of office space.

The Real Deal reported that year that Tishman was seeking $60 million in EB-5 financing for its planned renovation and was looking to raise $491 million for the project. 

Abraham & Straus was the reigning queen of Brooklyn department stores for more than a century. It grew to become the fourth largest department store in America and was once “ as integral to the borough’s identity as the Brooklyn Dodgers and The Brooklyn Daily Eagle,” according to The New York Times.

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