$55M pre-foreclosure filed at Winter Properties loft building in Greenwich Village

The special servicer for $55 million in debt secured by Winter Properties 10-story commercial loft building at 57-59 East 11th Street in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, alleged the loan is in default. The servicer, LNR Partners, filed the pre-foreclosure action yesterday in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.
Case LINK

Court filings represent the position of one party and are not necessarily accurate or complete.

Members of the Winter family have owned a stake of the building since at least the 1940s. Winter Properties is led by David Winter and David Millstone, and is a division of a broadly based investment company called 40 North Management. In a New York Times interview in 2015, Winter said the family formed Winter Properties as a generational shift from Winter Organization, which his grandfather Benjamin Winter Sr. formed in the 1900s.
The firm invested capital in the building to attract TAMI tenant, tech, advertising, media and information, expecting to signed leases at as much as $80 per foot, Winter said in the interview.

In April 2019, the Winter Properties entity Namor Realty Company L.L.C. obtained a $55 million loan from Citibank, which was packaged into a securitized trust called GS Mortgage Securities Trust 2019-GC40, Commercial Mortgage Pass-Through Certificates Series 2019-GC40. According to the complaint, “Events of Default have occurred under the Loan Documents as a result of, among other things, Borrower’s failure to timely pay Plaintiff the Monthly Payment due under the Loan Documents on December 6, 2023 (the “Payment Default”).”

The property

The office building in Greenwich Village has 56,952 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 54 feet and is 103 feet deep with a total lot size of 5,575 square feet. The zoning is C6-1 which allows for up to 6 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 3.44 times FAR for residential. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $28 million.

Development

For the tax lot building, it received its initial renovation certificate of occupancy on September 23, 2015.

Violations and lawsuits

According to city public data, the property has received one DOB violation in the last year.

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property for the past 24 months.

The neighborhood

In Greenwich Village, The bulk, or 24 percent of the 22.4 million square feet of commercial built space are specialty buildings, with hotel buildings next occupying 17 percent of the space. In sales, Greenwich Village has near average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $907.5 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 8th highest in Manhattan. For development, Greenwich Village has near average amount of major developments among other neighborhoods and is the 11th highest in Manhattan. It had 3 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 13 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of five of the 10 commercial properties representing 196,872 square feet of the 524,839 square feet. The largest owner is Bijan Nassi, followed by Magnum Real Estate Group and then Minoo Shaoul. On the tax block, there was one new building construction project filed totaling 30,000 square feet. It is a 40-unit, 30,000 square-foot residential (R-2) building submitted by Magnum Real Estate Group and filed by Alexander Laszlo with plans filed December 28, 2020 and it has not been permitted yet.

The surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 59 East 11 Street, PincusCo identified six commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months. Of those six items, one was for major renovation including a certificate of occupancy change. It was a permit issued on July 12, 2023 for the $807,200 renovation of 36,157-square-foot educational (E) building with zero residential units at 821 Broadway. One of those six items was a sale which GD Capital bought the 14,897-square-foot, one-unit mixed-use building (K4) on 84 University Place for $11.2 million from Alan Wachman and Stephen Wachman on July 12, 2024. Of those six items, four were loans above $5 million totaling $59.6 million. The most recent of the four was Ariel Rom in which borrowed $14.4 million from Bank Hapoalim secured by three condo units in the 26,429-square-foot, three-unit mixed-use building (RC) on 809 Broadway on July 23, 2024.

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