A 95-year-old office building at the corner of East 57th Street and Lexington Avenue is getting a new life as luxury housing. CSC Real Estate has landed $83.5 million in acquisition and construction financing to convert the 20-story tower at 136 East 57th Street into 136 apartments, with the deal closing on October 13.
The financing came from BridgeCity Capital, which provided the loan for CSC's planned 136-unit project, according to Commercial Observer. The 92,582-square-foot property sits at the corner of East 57th Street and Lexington Avenue, a stretch of Midtown East where office towers are increasingly being eyed for residential makeovers. CSC acquired the building for $10 million from Cerco Funding back in March, per the outlet's reporting.
A Tower With a Long History Gets a New Chapter
The building at 136 East 57th Street was constructed in 1931 and renovated in 1987, the report notes. Before CSC's purchase, the property had already seen financial activity: Genesis LLC secured a $28.5 million recapitalization loan for the office there, according to Traded. EJ Ehrlich, director of originations for BridgeCity, said in comments carried by the same report that the lender was drawn to the deal because of the property's location and business plan, calling it an opportunity to reposition a well-located Manhattan asset as a premier luxury residential property. CSC Real Estate did not immediately respond to a request for comment, the outlet said.
The project has a close neighbor undergoing a similar transformation. The building is across the street from another office-to-residential conversion at 135 East 57th Street, known as Tower 57, where TF Cornerstone is executing the redevelopment. Multi-Housing News describes it as a 397,354-square-foot tower becoming 350 units. Multi-Housing News reports that completion is slated for 2028.
Part of a Citywide Scramble to Turn Offices Into Homes
The 136 East 57th Street deal lands amid a broader surge of similar projects across Manhattan. Manhattan's office-to-multifamily pipeline grew 59 percent year over year as of February, reaching 8,310 units under construction, per the same Multi-Housing News account. New York City issued permits in 2026 for 74 office-to-residential conversion projects expected to create roughly 10,100 homes, according to The New York Times, which notes that figure amounts to about a third of all new housing permitted citywide during that period. The Times also reports the city has permitted at least 19,700 units through conversion projects since 2023.
The trend is being driven by a mix of pressures. Office conversions have gained traction as the country's housing supply has been stretched thin and offices have sat vacant with more people working remotely, the Times reports in a separate explainer. Manhattan's overall office vacancy rate stood at 12.4 percent in the first quarter, according to CBRE figures cited by CNN, which also notes these projects often require extensive structural, plumbing, mechanical and redesign work that makes them more complicated than building new housing from scratch.
Bigger Conversions Reshaping the Skyline
Several far larger conversions are underway nearby. Metro Loft Developers and David Werner Real Estate Investments are turning the former Pfizer headquarters into a 1,602-unit community, a project CNN describes as the largest office-to-apartment conversion in New York City history, with completion slated for 2027; a partnership tied to that site and an adjoining building at 235 and 219 East 42nd Street secured a $720 million loan for the effort, according to Multi-Housing News. RXR, SL Green and Apollo Global Management are meanwhile converting 5 Times Square into more than 1,200 apartments, per Bisnow.
Closer in scale to the 136 East 57th Street project, a joint venture between Namdar Realty Group and Empire Capital Holdings secured a $93.5 million construction loan to convert 830 Third Avenue's 139,980 rentable square feet of office space and 7,121 square feet of ground-floor retail into 188 apartments, according to Multi-Housing News. Together, the projects reflect a Midtown East corridor increasingly defined by cranes, converted lobbies and the promise of new leases rather than new tenants signing office space.
