$111M pre-foreclosure filed at CIM Group Brooklyn Heights office building
16 Court Street (Credit - Google)
LNR Partners as special servicer for a $111 million loan filed a pre-foreclosure action yesterday alleging a payment default on the debt secured by CIM Group‘s 290,440-square-foot Brooklyn Heights office building at 16 Court Street. LNR filed the action in New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on July 29, 2025.
Court filings represent the position of one party and are not necessarily accurate or complete.
Case 525413/2025 LINK
Crain’s New York reported earlier this month that CIM Group had fallen behind on its mortgage. That followed on prior reporting from The Real Deal in August 2024, that the loan had been sent to special servicing.
According to the complaint, “Borrower failed to comply with the terms and conditions of the Loan Agreement by, inter alia, failing to pay the monthly debt service payment due on April 1, 2025. By letter dated April 8, 2025, Plaintiff gave Borrower written notice of its default… No payment of monthly debt service has been made since Borrower’s failure to pay the monthly debt service payment due April 1, 2025.”
CIM Group through the entity 16 Court St Brooklyn Owner LLC, bought the building from SL Green Realty on October 10, 2017, for $171 million, borrowing $111 million from Barclays and Citibank at the time. That debt was then packed in a securitized trust, Wells Fargo Commercial Mortgage Trust 2017-C42, Commercial Mortgage Pass-Through Certificates, Series 2017-C42, which filed the pre-foreclosure complaint.
CIM Group NYC portfolio
$2.5 billion* – office 48%, condo 45%, D6 3%; Manhattan 54%, Brooklyn 45%
72nd largest portfolio by dollar value
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The property
The office building in Brooklyn Heights has 290,440 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 100 feet and is 125 feet deep with a total lot size of 12,500 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is C5-2A which allows for up to 10 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 10 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The property is in the Borough Hall Skyscraper Historic District. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $69.8 million.
Prior sales and revenue
This property was sold for $171 million on October 10, 2017.
Violations and lawsuits
According to city public data, the property has received one DOB violation, $12,500 in ECB penalties, and $24,875 in OATH penalties in the last year.
There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property for the past 24 months.
The neighborhood
In Brooklyn Heights, The bulk, or 26 percent of the 12.1 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with elevator buildings next occupying 23 percent of the space. In sales, Brooklyn Heights has near average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $633.7 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 8th highest in Brooklyn. For development, Brooklyn Heights has near average amount of major developments among other neighborhoods and is the 15th highest in Brooklyn. It had 1.2 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 10 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.
The block
On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of nine of the 12 commercial properties representing 631,272 square feet of the 1,262,899 square feet. The largest owner is Aurora Capital Associates, followed by Bonjour Capital and then Chris Rio. On the tax block, there was one new building construction project filed totaling 110,000 square feet. It is a 121-unit, 110,000 square-foot residential (R-2) building submitted by Aurora Capital Associates and Midtown Equities and filed by Matthew Abreu with plans filed April 1, 2019 and permitted February 5, 2021.
The surrounding
Within a 400-foot radius of 20 Court Street, PincusCo identified one commercial real estate item of interests occurred over the past 24 months. It was a loan which Treeline Companies borrowed $30 million from JPMorgan Chase secured by the 129,520-square-foot, 24-unit office building (O6) on 175 Remsen Street on October 1, 2024.
Direct link to the property’s ACRIS page and link to DOB NOW portal.