The Middle Rio Grande Housing Collaborative (MRGHC) recently released a list of projects it thinks are primed and ready to help increase the availability of affordable housing in the Albuquerque metro area. One of the more intriguing prospects on the list is an office-to-apartment conversion at the Wells Fargo Bank building Downtown.
The 17-story office tower at 200 Lomas Blvd. NW was built in 1973 and has about 145,500-square-feet of available office space along with hundreds of parking spaces. The Albuquerque office of Colliers International has the property listed as an “excellent redevelopment opportunity.”
An MRGHC analysis found that $15 million in gap funding would be needed to get the project rolling. Gap funding is used as an incentive to get an investor or developer to close a deal.
“We’re figuring out what projects might be the most practical and quickest to focus on,” MRGHC Chair Talia Freedman said. “I think that conversions will definitely be a priority.”
The city-county collaborative was launched last year as a way to speed up housing projects by pooling city and county funds and leveraging property and resources.