Courts roundup: Heritage sues lender Be-Aviv, Sean Ludwick sues for $3.8M, more

Courts roundup for Tuesday, March 16, 2021: There were no New York City bankruptcies of note. There were three small commercial foreclosures.

Please note that court filings are the positions of the plaintiffs and are not necessarily accurate or complete.

Heritage Equity sues lender Be-Aviv for $50M: Toby Moskovits and Michael Lichtenstein’s Heritage Equity Partners filed a suit claiming lender Be-Aviv did not fund a construction loan for 875 4th Avenue in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, even after city agencies had signed off on the loan. In addition, the suit claims the lender has not funded the construction project at 286 Rider Avenue in the Bronx, as the parties had allegedly planned. Heritage seeks money judgments of $50 million and/or specific performance of the alleged loan agreement. According to the filing, “As to [the project at] 286 Rider, the failure to fund the $34,000,000 ‘Phase 3’ construction loan has resulted in immeasurable damages, as Heritage is currently unable to find another lender to fund the 286 Rider development of residential units in the current market – a loan which would have been easily attainable for Heritage prior to the COVID-19 pandemic when the deal was arranged with Be-Aviv.” The 875 4th Avenue project was ultimately funded with $53 million from Madison Realty Capital. LINK

Sean Ludwick seeks repayment of $3.8M Hudson Yards loan: Sean Ludwick partnering with Siras Development and Chinese developer Kuafu Properties through the company Bifrost Land LLC, purchased the parcel at 470 11th Avenue at 38th Street in Hudson Yards. The parties could not agree on development, and filed a petition asking the court to dissolve the partnership.  Last year, Ludwick lent the owner LLC $3.825 million in February 2020, which was recorded in June 2020. The borrower entity was signed for by Siras Development’s Ashwin Verma. The note was due, according to the complaint, on October 30, 2020, and a default notice was sent on November 2, 2020. The case is Ludwick China LLC v. Reedrock Kuafu Development Company LLC LINK

There were three small commercial foreclosures, all less than $600,000: 106 Forbell Street, Brooklyn; 110-33 207th Street, Queens;
and a third loan secured by two properties at 7 West 126th Street, New York and 983 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn.