Courts roundup: $31.5M condo lender suit, $5M dev site bankruptcy in Bay Ridge

Lender seeks $31.5M tied to Centrale condo project in Grand Central: A lender, the Cayman Islands company Dragons 516 Limited, alleges it provided a $30 million facility for the development of the condominium project the Centrale at 138 East 50th Street in Grand Central. Dragons filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to obtain a judgment it said it was awarded in a related case filed in 2019.  LINK

Tim Ziss, also known as Efthimios Zisimopoulos, who leads the development company Allied Properties, filed a Chapter 11 petition to place his stalled development site at 7614 4th Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, under bankruptcy protection. He is seeking the protection for the parcel he values at $5 million in order to refinance a $3.5 million loan that will come due later this year, the petition says.
A prior developer filed plans in 2007 for a 28-unit residential building.
The property was acquired out of foreclosure in 2015, and Ziss was given a referee’s deed “following the assignment of a credit bid made by a prior lender,” the petition says.
The parcel is involved in two lawsuits, according to the filing. The prior developer, Nizer Khoury, claims a “disputed fifteen percent interest based upon an agreement that never became effective.” Case link: 515402/2018

In a separate suit, Ziss sued a neighboring property owner, a church, for “breach of contract to acquire certain additional air rights.” The petition states Ziss obtained a judgment against the owner. (Case title: Axion Mgt LLC and 7614 LLC vs. United Korean Church of New York)

Ziss filed the petition since he must refinance a $3.5 million loan “at the end of the year” but cannot with the ongoing litigation which has also stalled development.
Ziss filed in order to obtain “a more expeditious resolution of the litigation claims… [and] to remove the litigation with the prior developer to the Bankruptcy Court shortly after the Chapter 11 filing so that the ownership dispute can be addressed immediately.”

The 7616 4th Avenue parcel has frontage of 90 feet and is 110 feet deep with a total lot size of 9,937 square feet. The zoning is R7B which allows for up to 3 times floor area ratio (FAR) for residential. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $1.2 million.

According to city public data, the property has received two DOB violations, $8,750 in ECB penalties, and $8,750 in OATH penalties in the last year.

On this parcel, Khalil Mousa of 7614 Fourth Real Estate Devel. submitted a new building construction project for a 28-unit J-2 building at 7614 4 Avenue. The plan was filed on June 27, 2007 and was permitted on June 2, 2008. It calls for the construction of a 75-foot-tall, seven-story building and was filed with the New York City Department of Buildings under job number 302362413.

Within a 400-foot radius of 7616 4 Avenue, Pincusco identified four commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months. Of those four items, one was in new building development. It was a new building permit issued on May 24, 2022 for a 19,320-square-foot R-2 building with 17 residential units at the adjacent parcel at 7604 4th Avenue. One of those four items was a sale which William Lerner bought the 24,000-square-foot, three-unit office building (O7) on 7601 4th Avenue for $24 million from Shahrokh Abiri on January 6, 2021. Of those four items, two were loans above $5 million totaling $45.1 million. The most recent of the two was Imperial Parking Systems which borrowed $28.5 million from Valley National Bank secured by the 5,400-square-foot, three-unit office building (O7) on 7601 4th Avenue and six other properties on March 1, 2021.

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