The Kesler Building: Floor-Plate Feasibility for an Office-to-Residential Conversion

The Deal

You are an underwriting associate at Cascade Bridge Capital, a regional balance-sheet lender evaluating a construction-to-permanent loan request from Kesler Reuse Partners, LLC. The sponsor has a signed contract to buy The Kesler Building, an 11-story, 72%-vacant 1978 office tower at 720 Ridgeway Avenue in Bellweather, OH, for $13,500,000 (expiring November 30, 2026), and plans to convert Floors 2 through 11 into 180 market-rate apartments while Floor 1 remains retail and lobby space. Before you can recommend the deal for the November 12, 2026 credit committee meeting, you need to independently test three of the sponsor's assumptions: whether the building's floor plate can physically deliver the 180 units the sponsor is underwriting to, given the depth of the floor plate and the code's natural-light rule for bedrooms; whether the resulting cost per unit is genuinely competitive with new construction in the submarket; and how much the city's adaptive reuse property tax abatement is actually worth to the deal's stabilized cash flow — since your credit memo has to show whether the proposed permanent loan clears its minimum DSCR covenant using the abated tax expense.