$74M Walter & Samuels pre-foreclosure in Chelsea

Special servicer LNR Partners filed a pre-foreclosure action alleging a $74 million loan secured by Walter & Samuels’s office buildings at 214 West 29th Street and 226 West 29th Street in Chelsea, Manhattan, was in default. The case was filed January 8, 2025, in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. The lender trust is Series 2019-BNK-20 and the borrower entity is Walsam New 29 LLC. WeWork is a tenant in 214 West 29th Street.

Case 650080/2025 LINK

Court cases represent the position of one party and are not necessarily accurate or complete.
David Berley, Walter & Samuel CEO, was named as a guarantor on the loan. Bank of America originated the loan June 27, 2019, then securitized it into the trust. According to the complaint, “Borrower has defaulted under the Note and Mortgage by, among other things, failing to pay the principal, interest and other payments due under the Loan.” The complaint does not identify a specific default.

Walter & Samuels has sold at least six properties in the past two years, and this is the second pre-foreclosure action targeting a Walter & Samuels property in two years. The first was for a $77 million loan secured by 315 West 36th Street, a case that remains active.

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Walter & Samuels owned at least nine commercial properties with five residential units in New York City with 535,197 square feet and a city-determined market value of $126.8 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $112.1 million in debt, borrowed from Bank of America and Citibank. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 82 percent of the 535,197 square feet of built space are office properties, with specialty properties next occupying 14 percent of the space. They are all located in Manhattan.

The properties

The office building 214 West 29th Street in Chelsea has 125,042 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 99 feet and is 98 feet deep with a total lot size of 10,340 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is M1-6D which allows for up to 10 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $17.8 million. The most recent loan totaled $74 million and was provided by Bank of America on June 27, 2019.

In April 2021, Walter & Samuels sued tenant WeWork but that case was quickly dismissed after WeWork became current on the rent. The judge said in a ruling in May 2021, “It is now undisputed that the tenant [WeWork] is current with respect to all of the tenant’s obligations under the lease. The tenant has reaffirmed its commitment to the terms of the lease and further agreed to advance to the landlord three months of advance lease payments.”
Direct link to the property’s ACRIS page

The office building 226 West 29th Street in Chelsea has 45,211 square feet of built space and 410 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 45,620 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 49 feet and is 68 feet deep with a total lot size of 4,562 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is M1-6D which allows for up to 10 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $6.9 million. The most recent loan totaled $74 million and was provided by Bank of America on June 27, 2019.
Direct link to the property’s ACRIS page

The neighborhood

In Chelsea, The bulk, or 35 percent of the 52.5 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with elevator buildings next occupying 28 percent of the space. In sales, Chelsea has the 6th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $1.3 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Chelsea has near average amount of major developments among other neighborhoods and is the 20th highest in Manhattan. It had 1.8 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 4 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of eight of the 21 commercial properties representing 963,926 square feet of the 1,660,370 square feet. The largest owner is Edison Properties, followed by GDS Development and then Joyland Management. On the tax block, there were four new building construction projects totaling 880,958 square feet. The largest is a 480-unit, 351,185 square-foot residential (R-2) building submitted by MAG Partners and filed by Susi Yu with plans filed September 16, 2019 and permitted May 18, 2021. The second largest is a 112-unit, 228,989 square-foot residential (R-2) building submitted by HAP Investments and filed by Lawrence Gerstein with plans filed September 8, 2016 and permitted May 15, 2019.