Bought Out of Foreclosure for $36M, 400 South Tryon Becomes 599 Apartments

The tax value was $115.3 million. Spandrel Development Partners bought it at a public foreclosure auction in April 2025 for $36 million.

That is what happens when a 587,000-square-foot uptown office tower runs into a 24.5% vacancy market and a $93.5 million loan the prior owners could not carry. The New York developer now plans the largest office-to-residential conversion Charlotte has seen.

Project Scope

The 32-story building went up between 1972 and 1974 as Wachovia Center. The plan puts up to 599 residential units on the top 25 floors and roughly 200 hotel rooms across the bottom eight, with more than 24,000 square feet of retail, most of it a restaurant.

Exterior work includes major facade improvements, two added levels atop the existing parking deck and a redesigned public plaza at the corner of Tryon and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. A land development construction permit was filed in April 2026. No architect, contractor or engineers have been publicly named and construction has not started.

Why It Matters

Early-1970s towers are the hardest conversion stock in the country. Deep floor plates, sealed curtain wall, and mechanical systems designed around a single central plant. Getting 599 units out of one means either a light well, an aggressive amenity strategy on the interior floor area, or both.

The acquisition price is what makes it possible. At 31 cents on the tax-value dollar the basis absorbs a lot of conversion cost, and that is the arithmetic every distressed uptown tower in the Southeast is now being measured against.

Project Team & Details