$9.6M bankruptcy for Lenox Hill mixed-use, family-owned for 60 years

The owner of a 4,742-square-foot townhouse at 19 East 75th Street in Lenox Hill, Manhattan, valued at $9.6 million that has a single residential unit and ground floor commercial space, filed to place it in bankruptcy to block a foreclosure auction initiated by Goodman Capital that was scheduled for April 10, 2024.
Carl Thomson Jr. through the entity CLST Enterprises, LLC, filed the petition in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan on April 8, 2024, stating the property was valued at $9.36 million and was subject to a judgment lien totaling $7.34 million, according to the state court’s notice of sale. The lender Goodman Capital filed the pre-foreclosure action in January 2021 against owners Carl Thomson Jr. and his wife.
Bankruptcy 24-10596 LINK

Foreclosure 850001/2021 LINK

Goodman Capital, led by Eric Goodman, is an active note buyer and lender in New York City.

The petition describes the property as a 4,742-square-foot mixed-use building with a residence and with commercial retail or office space rentals.

The late art dealer Carl L. Thomson and his wife Dona Thomson acquired the building in 1964. Carl died in 2007 and Dona died in 2008, leaving the building in a tenant in common structure to their children, Carl L. Thomson Jr. and Nanci Thomson.

Carl bought out Nanci’s interest in 2013 for $4.05 million, and Carly Jr. then transferred ownership to the current owner entity. In June 2014, Carl Jr. borrowed $5.3 million from Sterling National Bank. Sterling sold the loan in February 2020 to Goodman Capital, which filed the pre-foreclosure action in January 2021.

The property

The mixed-use building with 1 residential units in Lenox Hill has 4,742 square feet of built space and 3,679 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 8,420 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 31 feet and is 27 feet deep with a total lot size of 842 square feet. The zoning is C5-1 which allows for up to 4 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 10 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The property is in the Upper East Side Historic District. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $9 million.

Development

Over the past five years, there has been no NYC Department of Buildings new building, demolition, or alteration permit application valued at more than $20,000 filed for this parcel.

The neighborhood

In Lenox Hill, The bulk, or 35 percent of the 52 million square feet of commercial built space are elevator buildings, with specialty buildings next occupying 28 percent of the space. In sales, Lenox Hill has the highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $4 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Lenox Hill is the 10th most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 4.8 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 9 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of five of the 19 commercial properties representing 169,837 square feet of the 517,633 square feet. The largest owner is Croman Real Estate, followed by Liu Yun Chen and then MRR Development. There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 19 East 75 Street, PincusCo identified 11 commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months. Of those 11 items, six were sales above $5 million totaling $117.9 million. The most recent of the six was 10e75th LLC which bought the 7,807-square-foot, one-unit townhouse (A7) on 10 East 75th Street for $23.4 million from Cayne, Alison on January 26, 2024. Of those 11 items, five were loans above $5 million totaling $98.5 million. The most recent of the five was Sharon Sternheim and Robert Sternheim in which borrowed $15 million from Bank of America secured by two condo units in the 10,082-square-foot, 32-unit mixed-use building (RM) on 32 East 76th Street on April 1, 2024.

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