Apollo funds $74.5M Stamford office-to-condo conversion

Apollo Global Management is funding a Stamford office conversion. Walker & Dunlop arranged the $74.5 million acquisition-and-redevelopment loan, extended by an Apollo affiliate on behalf of Sun Homes and Hudson Bay Capital.

The Caspian is the seven-story office building at 68-70 Seaview Ave. It holds 241,000 square feet. The plan turns that into 63 condominiums, a mix of one-, two-, and three-bedroom residences and townhomes. Plans also include a 57-slip marina, rooftop terraces and structured parking. The square footage works out to about 3,800 per residence, a footprint suggesting full-floor layouts and townhome product rather than stacked small apartments.

The loan itself pencils to about $1.18 million per planned residence. For an acquisition-and-redevelopment facility, that number reflects projected sellout values more than the office income stream. 'Fairfield and Westchester counties remain highly supply-constrained residential markets,' said Walker & Dunlop's Jonathan Schwartz, 'particularly for new waterfront product given limited developable shoreline and complex entitlement processes.'

The structure puts Apollo's loan ahead of the equity on both the acquisition basis and the redevelopment budget. Walker & Dunlop's capital markets institutional advisory group arranged the financing.

The financing joins two other debt deals from the morning's coverage. One is a $672 million industrial outdoor storage refinancing involving Starwood and Realterm. The other is a $125 million Credit Agricole loan for the Miami Design District. The collateral could hardly differ more from a Stamford condo conversion, but the underwriting posture is similar: lenders are pricing transition risk rather than sitting out repositioning deals.

At $1.18 million per residence, Apollo's loan likely assumes a sellout comfortably above the debt level — a bet that waterfront scarcity in Fairfield County can carry the conversion. The Caspian's future closings will put a real number on that bet.