$67M June auction set for Urban Edge’s Kingswood Center mall

The court-appointed referee for the foreclosure case related to Urban Edge Properties’ retail and office property, the Kingswood Center at 1630 East 15th Street in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, set June 27, 2024, as the date for the auction for the asset with a judgment of $66.9 million, according to court records published yesterday. The auction is set to take place at the Kings County Supreme Courthouse, at 360 Adams Street, in Downtown Brooklyn.

In June 2023, the trustee for a $65.5 million CMBS loan filed a pre-foreclosure action against an affiliate of Urban Edge Properties seeking the sale of the retail and office building Kingswood Center at 1630 East 15th Street in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, which Urban Edge Properties bought in February 2020 for $88 million.
The lender, a CMBS loan owned by bondholders of COMM 2018-COR3, in care of trustee Wells Fargo, and Midland Loan Services, alleges the borrower did not make the May 6, 2023, payment and declared the loan in default by notice May 12, 2023.

The initial case, 516996/2023, was closed and replaced with 503913/2024.

The retail and office building in Sheepshead Bay has 229,926 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 126 feet and is 200 feet deep with a total lot size of 47,999 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is C4-4A which allows for up to 4 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 4 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $35.5 million.

Urban Edge Properties in 2020 bought the mixed-use building from Nightingale Properties and Steven Kassin and Ike S. Franco’s Infinity Real Estate, now known as The Real Co. The purchase contract was dated October 28, 2019.

Urban Edge Properties bought Kingswood Center in conjunction with the purchase of Kingswood Crossing at 1715 East 13th Street for $76 million, but that property has no debt and is not part of this action.

Urban Edge Properties is a spinoff of Vornado Realty Trust, with the formation of the separate company completed in 2015.

The owner

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Urban Edge Properties owned at least three commercial properties in New York City with 471,055 square feet and a city-determined market value of $77.1 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $38 million in debt, borrowed from Apollo Global Management. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 49 percent of the 471,055 square feet of built space are office properties, with retail properties next occupying 27 percent of the space. The bulk, or 73 percent of the built space, is in Brooklyn, with Bronx next at 27 percent of the space.

The surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 1621 East 14 Street, PincusCo identified two commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months. Of those two items, one was in new building development. It was a new building permit issued on November 1, 2023 for a 15,636-square-foot residential (R-2) building with 19 residential units at 1652 East 14th Street. One of those two items was a loan which Betty Bandari borrowed $5.7 million from Popular Bank secured by the 2,969-square-foot, three-unit three-family building (C0) on 1652 East 14th Street on April 8, 2024.

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