Redevelopment of Wells Fargo building inches forward with sale finalized

One of Albuquerque’s most well-known towers is ending the year with a new owner and one step closer to transformation.

The sale of Downtown’s old Wells Fargo building, situated at Third Street and Lomas, has gone through, officials confirmed on Monday.

The acquisition closed on Dec. 5, marking a significant step in allowing the tower’s new owners — local real estate firm Geltmore LLC and California-based affordable housing developer Lincoln Avenue Communities, a subsidiary of Lincoln Avenue Capital — to get busy with their plans to redevelop the structure into mixed-use housing.

“It was critical,” Geltmore Vice President Adam Silverman said of the sale’s completion.

The finalized acquisition allowed the developers to access the building, seal off the ground floor and begin some interior demolition and asbestos abatement work as they secure funding and tax credits over the next several months. The structure is expected to be prepped and ready for construction by early summer 2026, said Rusty Snow, regional project partner for Lincoln.

“It’s great to take that next step,” Snow said. “We obviously have several more important steps to take but it’s great to get that initial milestone done.”

Silverman declined to share the acquisition cost but joked that the asbestos work will cost more than the building itself.

The prep work is the first tangible step in the transformation of the 13-story banking and office building into roughly 100 workforce affordable housing units.

Half of the one- and two-bedroom apartments will be priced for those who make 70% or below Albuquerque’s median income and the other half will go to those who make 50% or below the area’s median income, according to Snow.

The second floor will include community amenity rooms and a fitness room for residents, while the ground floor will feature publicly accessible commercial, retail and office uses. Lincoln owns and will handle the residential portion of the project, while Geltmore owns the ground floor and land and will handle the commercial components, Silverman said.

The transaction comes as Albuquerque faces a significant shortage of units for low-income renters, a recent study by Root Policy Research found. It estimated that Albuquerque is 13,000 to 28,000 units short of meeting the demand for housing.

The Wells Fargo building redevelopment is a “21st century solution” to tackling Albuquerque’s housing issues, Silverman said, by repurposing a vacant asset and delivering residential units faster than if the developers were building from the ground up.

“We do need density in our town. There's only so many places we can grow horizontally,” Silverman said. “As we move into the next decade of the 21st century, thinking about how we occupy our city and make it more dense is going to be really important. I think (the Wells Fargo project) is a really good first step to have a proof of concept that this can be done in New Mexico.”

Geltmore first signed the purchase agreement for the Wells Fargo building in July 2024 and Lincoln joined the project shortly after. Silverman said the due diligence period was a little longer than normal but was needed due to the complexities of converting such a large office building into residential property.

“Based upon my research, if we pull this off — which we will — it will be the largest one ever done in our state,” Silverman said of the office-to-residential conversion.

Part of the push to break ground by summer is to meet a deadline set by funding sources, which include the city, county and state.

The city has awarded the project a $2 million grant from the Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency but developers have to put together a development agreement to access that funding, agency director Terry Brunner said. Silverman said the developers hope to produce the agreement by January or February.

The project was also one of several that received state funding in August as a part of a $120 million statewide push to address housing and homelessness.

The Wells Fargo building project received $10 million of the roughly $80 million the state allocated for housing and homelessness projects in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County.

Project revenue bonds valued at $35 million are also pending final approval from the county. The developer is in the process of securing project approvals from the state Board of Finance, which must be done before the county can approve the bonds, Silverman said. He hopes to have those approved early next year.

All in all, the project will cost somewhere between $50 and $65 million to build, Silverman said. Securing funding and asbestos remediation are the biggest challenges standing between the developers and a summer groundbreaking, followed by 18 months of construction.

If successful, the Lomas Tower Apartments will be “an important addition to our housing stock in the Downtown area,” Brunner said.

“I think everybody in the county, in the city and the state, (is) interested in seeing Downtown be turned around,” Silverman added. “And this is a very great way to do it.”

Kylie Garcia covers retail and real estate for the Journal. You can reach her at kgarcia@abqjournal.com.