Elliott Management Lends Madison $180M for Brooklyn Rentals

Madison Realty Capital has secured $180 million in construction financing for a multifamily project at 65 and 75 Dupont Street in Greenpoint.

Elliott Investment Management was the lender.

Located on a Superfund site once belonging to a plastics factory, the eight-story project will yield 400,000 square feet with 279 apartments at 65 Dupont Street and 194 apartments at 75 Dupont Street, where construction topped out in December. Hill West is the architect of record.

Madison took ownership of the troubled Brooklyn project in 2021 after Bo Jin Zhu’s DuPont Street Developers filed for bankruptcy. Zhu’s prospective sale of the 10-property assemblage to All Year Management, once one of Brooklyn’s biggest landlords, had fallen through. All Year, it turns out, had its own problems.

Madison became the senior lender on the project in 2017, replacing Maxim Credit Group one year before the attempt to sell to All Year began, and credit-bid its way to ownership. Maxim returned to the project last summer to provide a $40 million bridge loan to Madison.

It is the first time that Madison, typically a lender itself, has borrowed from Elliott, a firm better known for its bareknuckle, activist investing on Wall Street, but which is nonetheless active in real estate.

In July, Elliott refinanced a luxury rental building developed by MaryAnne Gilmartin’s MAG Partners at 243 West 28th Street, lending $196 million to retire Madison’s construction loan. A two-bedroom apartment at the Chelsea building is on the market for $15,000 a month.

Madison must complete the Greenpoint projects by June 2026 to qualify them for 421a. With time running out to snag the popular tax break, which is necessary for most market-rate rental projects in the city to pencil out, more developers may turn to condo development.