$19M bankruptcy filed at Aview Equities nearly vacant Midtown West apartment building

A bankruptcy specialist on behalf of Abraham Leifer’s Aview Equities, through the entity 19 W 55 LLC, on December 13, 2024, submitted a $19 million chapter 11 bankruptcy petition seeking to block the January foreclosure auction of the 28-unit, mixed-use building at 19 West 55th Street in Midtown West, Manhattan. Aview Equities, based in Borough Park, filed the petition in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn.
The petition values the property at $19 million, but states it has liabilities of more than $69 million, including senior lender Merchants Bank of Indiana seeking $49.5 million, and an unsecured lender seeking $17.75 million, which is at the address of developer Abraham Leser of the Leser Group.

Case 1-24-45220-nhl LINK
Merchants Bank of Indiana filed a pre-foreclosure action March 15, 2023, in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, 850114/2023. In that case, the referee through a notice of sale dated December 13, 2024, scheduled the property to be sold at auction on January 15, 2025. The filing says the total judgment is $49.4 million.

David Goldwasser, of FIA Capital Partners, a bankruptcy specialist, filed the bankruptcy petition. Goldwasser managed the bankruptcy process for another Aview Equities project, a nearly complete hotel at 291 Livingston Street in Downtown Brooklyn, which sold March 6, 2024, for $34.88 million.

The property

The elevator building with 28 residential units in Midtown West has 34,454 square feet of built space and 5,550 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 40,000 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 50 feet and is 100 feet deep with a total lot size of 5,000 square feet. The lot is irregular. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $7.5 million. The most recent loan totaled $36.8 million and was provided by Merchants Bank of Indiana on December 30, 2019.

Prior sales and revenue

This property was sold for $50 million on December 28, 2017.

The 34,454-square-foot property generated revenue of $1.4 million or $42 per square foot, according to the most recent income and expense figures.

Development

Jeffrey Harvey of Arep 19 Fifty-Fifth LLC submitted a new building construction project for a 378-unit, 99,961 square-foot hotel/dormitory/shelter (R-1) building at 19 West 55th Street. The plan was filed on February 1, 2013. It calls for the construction of a 176-foot tall, 17-story building and was filed with the New York City Department of Buildings under job number 121329623. The project is described in the filing as: propose to construct a new hotel building and install a tempporary fence as shown on drawings filed herewith.

Violations and lawsuits

According to city public data, the property has received eight DOB violations, $38,125 in ECB penalties, 33 housing violations, $42,325 in OATH penalties, and one housing litigation in the last year.

The property was involved in one lawsuit and zero bankruptcies over the past two years. The suit was a $36.8 million commercial foreclosure concerning a loan filed on March 15, 2023, by Merchants Bank of Indiana against Abraham Leifer and Aview Equities.

The neighborhood

In Midtown West, The majority, or 75 percent of the 75.9 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with hotel buildings next occupying 14 percent of the space. In sales, Midtown West has the 2nd highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $2.5 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Midtown West is the most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 27.2 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 36 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of 22 of the 35 commercial properties representing 1,458,530 square feet of the 1,597,691 square feet. The largest owner is Abraham Heby, followed by Assa Properties and then Aview Equities. There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The owner

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Aview Equities owned at least two commercial properties with 159 residential units in New York City with 34,454 square feet and a city-determined market value of $9.5 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $168.8 million in debt, with top three lenders as Parkview Financial, G4 Capital Partners, and Merchants Bank of Indiana respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 100 percent of the 34,454 square feet of built space are elevator properties, with development properties next occupying 0 percent of the space. They are all located in Manhattan.

The owners according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development includes Abraham Leifer, head officer and Marcos Ortiz, site manager. The business entities are 19 W 55 Llc and 19 W 55 Llc.

The surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 21 West 55 Street, PincusCo identified 17 commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months. Of those 17 items, one was in new building development. It was a new building permit issued on February 8, 2023 for a 152,689-square-foot residential (R-2) building with 96 residential units at 10 West 55th Street. Of those 17 items, two were for major renovation including a certificate of occupancy change. They were two permits with a total initial cost of $803,500. The most recent of these two items was the permit on February 2, 2023 for a 262,870-square-foot business (B) building with 11 residential units at 711 5th Avenue. Of those 17 items, 12 were sales above $5 million totaling $1.2 billion. The most recent of the 12 was Crown Ny 16b LLC which bought one condo unit in the zero-square-foot, 109-unit mixed-use building (RM) on 730 5th Avenue for $20.7 million from 730 Fifth Upper, LLC on August 20, 2024. Of those 17 items, two were loans above $5 million totaling $141.4 million. The most recent of the two was Emmes Asset Management Company in which borrowed $6.2 million from Genesis Holdings Management secured by the 9,447-square-foot, two-unit mixed-use building (K2) on 11 West 56th Street on October 15, 2024.

Direct link to the property’s ACRIS page and link to DOB NOW portal.