Naftali Group Nabs Loan to Build Upper West Side Condos

With a holdout tenant out of the way, and after knocking down almost 130 rental apartments, Miki Naftali snagged financing to build a condominium on the Upper West Side.

Naftali Group closed on a $129 million construction loan from Israel’s Bank Hapoalim for 215 West 84th Street, where it plans a 230,000-square-foot building with 45 new units, records show.

The project, across the street from the AMC theater, will yield 18 stories of residences on the northeast corner of West 84th Street and Broadway, and a seven-story building that extends eastward along West 84th.

The taller, corner portion of the project has received a zoning bonus of 17,000 square feet of residential space through the city’s Voluntary Inclusionary Housing scheme, filings show.

In exchange, Naftali must preserve the affordable housing at the site as rent-stabilized and affordable to households earning below 80 percent of the area median income. The smaller, 7-story building has no bonus.

The developer bought the project site in 2021 for $70 million. It was home to a farmhouse where Edgar Allen Poe wrote “The Raven” in the mid-1800s, when the Upper West Side was rural. Hill West is the architect of record.

Naftali was recently called one of the nation’s most enviable condo developers, with a luxury product that has sold well and a robust development pipeline.

After a string of projects on the East Side of Manhattan, including a 69-unit residence in Kips Bay, Naftali is branching out to the Upper West Side, north Brooklyn and Miami.

Naftali is developing a mini-neighborhood in Williamsburg, where he plans five buildings and almost 1,000 apartments. Naftali has secured $385 million in construction financing for one part of the project.

In Miami, Naftali is perhaps a late arrival, having avoided the wave of migration of New York condo developers to the sixth borough during the mid 2010s. Instead, he jumped in during the post-Covid boom, believing the city lacked New York’s level of quality in luxury construction.