Bank of Italy Building Conversion, San Jose

San Jose’s tallest building for forty years is becoming apartments, two years after the developers first said they’d do it.

The Bank of Italy Building at 12 South First Street closed $74.1 million in financing in May 2026, arranged by Cushman & Wakefield’s Equity, Debt and Structured Finance team with Deutsche Bank as lender. Westbank and Urban Community are converting the 1926 tower’s roughly 126,000 square feet into 109 market-rate apartments plus ground-floor retail, with move-ins expected 12 to 14 months out.

Project Scope

Thirteen floors, studios through two-bedrooms, renting in the $2,400 to $3,500 range. The building is a designated City Landmark, so the facade and its architectural detailing are preserved under a historic rehabilitation scope rather than reworked.

Historic conversion in a seismic zone is its own discipline. A 1926 steel-frame tower in downtown San Jose carries retrofit obligations that a comparable building in the Midwest does not, and those obligations land on the same budget as the residential fit-out. The small floorplate that made the building obsolete as office space is the thing that makes it work as housing.

Why It Matters

The conversion has been in the works since 2024. It only started when the debt closed in May 2026, and that gap is the story of every Bay Area conversion currently on paper. Construction pricing was never the binding constraint; the lender was.

Downtown San Jose has spent five years watching announced projects sit. The Bank of Italy is a small building by the standards of the pipeline around it, and getting 109 units delivered on First Street matters less for the unit count than for proving the capital stack can be assembled at all. If it leases at the projected rents, the next several conversions get easier to finance. If it doesn’t, downtown’s office towers stay empty a while longer.

Project Team & Details