Developer sues to enforce agreement over LIC parcel valued at $29M

Developer Yoel Teitelbaum alleges his plans to build apartments on a potential development site in Long Island City, Queens, worth an estimated $29 million, are being scuttled by the would be ground lessor, a church which Teitelbaum claims has not obtained required government permission so that the project can move forward. Teitelbaum is suing the ground lessor as well as a California company, in order to get the original agreement back on track.

Court filings represent the position of one party, and are not necessarily accurate or complete.

Case LINK

Yoel Teitelbaum alleges he signed an agreement August 26, 2024, as tenant for a 99-year ground lease of the property 39-21 Crescent Street, with the property owner, the religious organization, the Evangel Church. The agreement was signed with the expectation that the church would obtain permission to ground lease the property from the New York State Attorney General or from the courts, as required. Instead, the complaint alleges, after Teitelbaum had made $1.5 million in downpayments, the church has pursued a different plan, to transfer ownership through a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, to an opaque California-based entity, Kingdom Equities LLC, which bought a $2.9 million note secured by the building. (This does not appear to be the same as the Queens-based Kingdom Equities.) The complaint alleges the church’s motivation is in part to avoid government scrutiny in its finances. The complaint supports that claim by noting the NYAG rejected a prior petition by the church to obtain a loan.

The California-based Kingdom Equities initiated a foreclosure case in early April 2025, but the case was discontinued several weeks later.

Teitelbaum’s attorney, in a letter to the church, alleges, “Landlord has entered into a deed-in-lieu transaction with Kingdom, pursuant to which it plans to voluntarily deed the Property to Kingdom in settlement of the foreclosure action, which would purportedly enable Kingdom to enter into the Ground Lease with Tenant without the need to obtain the Government Approvals. We believe that the transaction with Kingdom is a fraudulent transaction intended to allow Landlord to lease the Property without obtaining the Government Approvals in order to avoid a scenario whereby the Attorney General is likely to impose restrictions and/or reporting requirements regarding the application of the Ground Lease payments.”

The broker for the ground lease transaction was identified in the lease agreement as Ecclesiastical Realty Advisory Services.

The property

The property in Long Island City has 95,705 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has two buildings with frontage of 277 feet and is 202 feet deep with a total lot size of 57,639 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is M1-2/R5B which allows for up to 2 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing and up to 1.35 times FAR for residential. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $28.4 million. Teitelbaum is working to get the property rezoned.

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.

Violations and lawsuits

According to city public data, the property has received $3,600 in OATH penalties in the last year.

The property was involved in one lawsuit and zero bankruptcies over the past two years. The suit was a $3 million commercial foreclosure concerning a loan filed on April 4, 2025, by the California-based Kingdom Equities against Evangel Church.

The neighborhood

In Long Island City, The bulk, or 32 percent of the 60.1 million square feet of commercial built space are industrial buildings, with elevator buildings next occupying 31 percent of the space. In sales, Long Island City has near average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $986.1 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the highest in Queens. For development, Long Island City is the 9th most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 6.5 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 11 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of two of the nine commercial properties representing 23,980 square feet of the 62,324 square feet. The two identified owners are George Stavroulakis and Lanbaos Vafeas. There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The owner

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Evangel Church owned at least one commercial property in New York City with 95,705 square feet and a city-determined market value of $26.2 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio consists of at least a single M9 property. It is located in Queens.

The surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of Evangel christian center, PincusCo identified two commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months. Of those two items, one was in new building development. It was a new building permit application filed on September 2, 2025 for a 16,330-square-foot residential (R-2) building with 13 residential units at 39-36 28th Street. One of those two items was a sale which Galinda Wang bought the 25,125-square-foot, 40-unit rental (C1) on 27-08 39th Avenue for $7.3 million from George Lambadis Inc. on September 22, 2025.

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