Developers converting a century-old Financial District office tower into apartments have locked in a $44 million construction loan for the 31 Milk Street conversion, JLL Capital Markets announced on Sept. 29, 2026. The Residences at 31 Milk will deliver 110 units—including 22 affordable homes—with completion targeted for 2027, according to JLL and Multi-Housing News.
31 Milk Street Conversion: Financing Details
JLL said it arranged a three-year senior construction loan for Dinosaur Capital Partners and Mugar Enterprises from an affiliate of The Davis Companies—the first deal in Davis’s integrated credit platform—and S. USA Insurance Company. The capital stack also includes federal and state historic tax credit financing and subordinate MassHousing debt, JLL reported. Multi-Housing News said the project also received $4 million from Massachusetts’ Commercial Conversion program.
Dinosaur Capital acquired the roughly 95,000-square-foot building in 2025 for about $9.6 million from Liberty Bank, according to Multi-Housing News citing Yardi Matrix. TOCCI is construction manager and ICON Architecture is the architect. The U.S. Postal Service will keep using the ground floor, Multi-Housing News reported.
What the Residences at 31 Milk Will Include
JLL described the 1921 Beaux Arts, 11-story building as an adaptive-reuse project yielding studios plus one- and two-bedroom apartments—88 market-rate and 22 affordable units. Amenities listed by JLL include a club room, fitness and yoga rooms, a conference room, private work spaces, bike parking, and a pet wash. The site sits near Downtown Crossing, the Greenway, and multiple MBTA lines.
The loan advances one of the larger office-to-housing conversions already moving under Boston’s downtown conversion incentives. Related coverage includes the proposed 133 Federal Street conversion and the city’s stalled-project housing tax abatement push. Downtown real estate pressure also surfaces in our report on the 100 Summer Street foreclosure auction.
Our Take
Analysis: Closing a sizable construction loan for a downtown conversion is a concrete signal that some Boston office-to-residential deals can still clear financing when historic credits, state conversion aid, and city tax tools stack together. Most proposed conversions remain on paper; Milk Street’s funded path to a 2027 delivery date matters more than another concept filing.