Borrower, lender agree to permit $39.7M LIC hotel foreclosure sale

The borrower that owns a Long Island City, Queens, hotel at 39-05 29th Street, and its lender, a group of investors through the entity STN Funding LLC, agreed to permit a $39.7 million foreclosure auction to take place to dispose of the asset. The consent judgment of foreclosure and sale was signed September 27, 2024, and entered on October 10, 2024. The consent is a settlement between the parties and it may speed the resolution of this complex case that includes the state court filing, a lawsuit filed in federal court, and a bankruptcy. The auction is to take place at the Queens County Courthouse but the date has not yet been set.

The individuals identified as guarantors in the 2022 pre-foreclosure case that led to this settlment are Hafeez Choudhary, Mark Farruqui, and Delwar Hussain. The $39.7 million is composed of an original loan of $21 million, that with interest through February 2023 was $29.8 million. To that $7.3 million in additional interest was added, as well as $2.58 million contributed by the STN Funding LLC.

The complex case involves a pre-foreclosure action filed by the securitized lender COMM 2015-CCRE23 in March 2022, (705262/2022), a bankruptcy case filed by owner Hafeez Choudhary’s note buying entity 39-05 29th St Hotel LLC, (8-23-72250-reg) and later another case, in which the lender COMM 2015-CCRE23 is suing the note buying entity 39-05 29th St Hotel LLC for $1 million deposit as liquidated damages related to a previous attempt to sell the note. 654401/2023.

On April 30, 2024, STN Funding LLC, with members Amran Niazi, Arif Soni and Tariq Mahmud, bought the $21 million note secured by the hotel at 39-05 29th Street Three investors under the name STN Funding LLC bought a note with an original principal of $21 million , Queens, owned by Hafeez Choudhary’s Queens Plaza North, LLC.

The hotel building in Long Island City has 63,839 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 100 feet and is 100 feet deep with a total lot size of 12,509 square feet. The zoning is M1-2/R5D which allows for up to 2 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing and up to 2 times FAR for residential. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $13.7 million.
This property was sold for $21.9 million on December 31, 2014.

Direct link to the property’s ACRIS page.