

Wells Fargo Bank, TD Bank and Bank United have originated a $191 million construction loan on behalf of GFP Real Estate to fund the construction of new office space for The Legal Aid Society at 40 Worth Street in New York City’s TriBeCa submarket. Newmark arranged the financing.
Wells Fargo led the seven-year, interest-only financing for the planned 198,000-square-foot project, which is part of an 800,000-square-foot building that occupies a full block between West Broadway and Church Street. The initial funding totals about $155.7 million, with the remainder to be drawn over the next 18 to 24 months as New York-based GFP builds out the site.
The Legal Aid Society, a New York-based non-profit, will occupy about 125,000 square feet of the building by August 2022 while the remainder will come online in March 2023. The non-profit signed a 30-year lease at the building last year, expanding its previous footprint of 75,000 square feet in order to consolidate its offices space into one building. Previously, Legal Aid leased space at 199 Water Street and 80 Pine Street, noted Paul Talbot, a senior managing director at Newmark, which represented GFP.
“Arranging a loan that required both construction and permanent funding for an office building in New York made it imperative that the lenders understood the makeup and structure of the building’s tenants, as well as the strong, long-term ownership of GFP Real Estate,” Talbot said.
Other tenants that occupy the neo-classical 1929 building include The Gap, The Acumen Fund, The Innocence Project, Legal Services NYC, Public Health Solutions, Weill Cornell and The Center for Family Representation. “Despite challenges faced by the pandemic, the building has remained an incredibly stable asset,” said Jeffrey Gural, chairman and principal of GFP Real Estate.