Courts roundup: Hirshmark files to foreclose on $8.75M loan; $300K sought from AB Capstone, Arch
Courts roundup for Thursday, April 15, 2021: There were no New York City real estate bankruptcies and there was one commercial foreclosure.
Please note that court filings are the positions of one side of a dispute and are not necessarily accurate or complete.
Hirschmark files to foreclose on $8.75M Queens loan: Lender Hirshmark Capital, which made an $8.75 million loan in August 2018, filed to foreclose on the loan secured by the rental building 143-30 Sandford Avenue, with Vincent Garofalo as guarantor. The complaint alleges the borrower did not make water/sewer payments as far back as October 2019, and did not make monthly mortgage payments as of December 2019 and the lender declared the loan in default. The original loan matured September 1, 2020 and has not been repaid. LINK
$3.4M purchase dispute in Greenpoint: Plaintiff seeks to buy back its property at 1010 Lorimer Street in Greenpoint that it lost to its lender, but claims it had a contact to repurchase. The allegation is that the defendant, which is the prior lender and current deed holder, has repudiated that contract even after plaintiff arranged a payoff of the original debt. LINK
Former tenants seek $300K from AB Capstone, Arch: Two former tenants at a property set to be part of AB Capstone and Arch Companies’ Ridgewood, Queens mixed-use development, claim they have not been paid the remainder of lease buyouts, totaling $300,000. The former tenants are Jack Srour and Goran Milutinovic, who each had businesses in the building at 54-35 Myrtle Avenue. In separate but similar lawsuits, they each say they struck a deal in 2018 for a $350,000 lease buyout, and that the developers made payments totaling $200,000 but each is still owed $150,000 which should have been paid in 2019. The building is set to be part of a 284,000-square-foot, mixed-use project at 3-50 St. Nicholas Avenue, where Target and Burlington Coat Factory have signed leases. The project has $106 million in construction funding from Madison Realty Capital.
The defendants paid $200,000 but still owe $150,000, according to the complaint. In a related case brought by two tenants who had not yet struck buyouts, they included as an exhibit a 2019 email from Meir Babaev that states in part: “There were 13 commercial tenants in the building and we have signed termination agreements with all but 2 tenants, which I understand from them that you are now representing. With the above being said we would like to buy out the 2 tenants and offered thern to come back in to the new building under new long term leases. There seems to be a language barrier and it has proven difficult to talk to them. We offered both tenants $50,000 plus a chance to come in tot he new building.” LINK