Columbia University has cashed out of its Riverdale student housing building, but the students are not going anywhere just yet.
Fetner Properties and PGIM Real Estate have closed on a $65 million sale-leaseback of the Arbor, Columbia’s nine-story residence at 3260 Henry Hudson Parkway. The deal shifts ownership of the building to the investment partners while Columbia continues to lease the units on a short-term basis, keeping the current academic crowd in place for now.
The Arbor holds about 127 units and comes loaded with amenities that would not look out of place in a luxury rental: in-unit washers and dryers, a gym, a playroom, bike storage, on-site parking and a roof deck, plus a courtesy shuttle to Columbia’s Morningside campus. According to Columbia Residential, the building houses students, postdocs, faculty and staff in both private and shared apartments, which helps explain its longstanding popularity with off-campus residents linked to the university.
Sale Terms and Financing
Fetner and PGIM paid $65 million for the property in a structure that keeps Columbia on a short-term lease while the new owners work to stabilize the asset. The buyers also secured about $47.6 million in acquisition and bridge financing, with total capitalization for the transaction coming in at roughly $73 million, according to Commercial Observer. Newmark brokered the deal and arranged the financing package.
What Comes Next
The investors plan to use the bridge loan to upgrade and stabilize the property, then shift the Arbor from student housing to more traditional residential use once Columbia’s lease runs out. Columbia originally bought the then-new building in 2008 for about $67.6 million from L+M Development Partners, as reported by The Real Deal, and has since decided the asset is no longer strategic to its portfolio. The plan now is to reposition the tower for the wider rental market instead of keeping it as dedicated university housing.
Buyers’ Track Record in the City
Fetner and PGIM have already shown a taste for short-term capital plays in New York, using bridge loans and joint ventures to stabilize and reposition newer buildings. Hoodline previously covered a $111M lifeline tied to a Fetner-backed Long Island City tower, a signal of the partners’ comfort with this style of deal. That track record likely helped open the spigot for institutional capital behind the Riverdale purchase.
For now, Columbia’s lease means day-to-day life at the Arbor should remain mostly unchanged for residents. Longer term, the planned conversion would chip away at the supply of student-specific housing in Riverdale while adding more market-rate rental stock to the Bronx. Neither Fetner, PGIM nor Columbia commented on the transaction, Commercial Observer reports, and Newmark also declined to weigh in. Local officials and tenants will be watching how upgrades and any eventual conversion affect pricing and availability in the surrounding neighborhood.
