Feil Organization gives Gramercy retail bought for $16.1M back to lender

The Feil Organization turned over a retail condominium unit at the Tempo Condominium at 300 East 23rd Street in Gramercy, Manhattan, to the bondholders through the entity Comm 2014 UBS2 East 23rd Street, LLC. Jeffrey Feil’s Feil Organization bought the unit in August 2013 for $16.1 million. This transfer appears to be a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure but the deed does not state that.

The transfer closed on June 20, 2024 and was recorded on July 8, 2024. The property has 10,622 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The transfer price per built square foot is $1,073 per the PincusCo analysis. (The price per square foot analysis is the transaction price divided by square feet as reported in public records and assumes no air rights have been sold.)
The signatory for Feil Organization was Jeffrey J. Feil. The signatory for Series 2014-UBS2 was Arnold Shulkin.
In this transfer, the borrower is giving back the property to the lender following a pre-foreclosure filing 850074/2024 which did not advance beyond the filing and a notice of pendency.

PincusCo reported on the pre-foreclosure filing in March. The Feil Organization, led by Jeffrey Feil, bought the condo unit in August 2013 for $16.14 million from the Tempo’s developer, Menolly Group of Ireland. Several months later, in February 2014, Feil borrowed $12 million from UBS, and that loan was later transferred into COMM 2014-UBS2.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer Series 2014-UBS2 had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Feil Organization had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period.

The property

The retail condo in Gramercy has 10,622 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has a total lot size of 10,622 square feet. The property has a 421A exemption that started in 2013 and expires in 2023. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $6.1 million.

Violations and lawsuits

The property was involved in one lawsuit and zero bankruptcies over the past two years. The suit was a $10.5 million commercial foreclosure concerning a loan filed on March 14, 2024, by Comm 2014-UBS2 Mortgage Trust and LNR Partners against Feil Organization and Jeffrey J. Feil. In addition, according to city public data, the property has not received any significant violations in the last year.

Development

For the tax lot building, it received its initial certificate of occupancy on August 2, 2012. There are no active new building construction projects or major alteration projects with initial costs more than $1 million on this tax lot.

The neighborhood

In Gramercy, The bulk, or 31 percent of the 11.3 million square feet of commercial built space are elevator buildings, with specialty buildings next occupying 24 percent of the space. In sales, Gramercy has 1.4 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $374.9 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 21st highest in Manhattan. For development, Gramercy has 1.8 times the average amount of major developments relative to other neighborhoods and is the 17th highest in Manhattan. It had 1.9 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 17 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of two of the eight commercial properties representing 46,517 square feet of the 327,319 square feet. The two identified owners are Lalezarian Properties and Bin Yu Wang.
On the tax block, there was one new building construction project filed totaling 19,747 square feet. It is a nine-unit, 19,747 square-foot residential (R-2) building submitted by Sam Suzuki with plans filed August 7, 2014 and permitted April 12, 2018.

The majority, or 78 percent of the 327,319 square feet of built space are elevator buildings, with walkup buildings next occupying 14 percent of the space.

The seller

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Feil Organization owned at least 39 commercial properties with 1,647 residential units in New York City with 7,899,261 square feet and a city-determined market value of $1.8 billion. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $433.2 million in debt, with top three lenders as Capital One, Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 51 percent of the 7,899,261 square feet of built space are office properties, with elevator properties next occupying 23 percent of the space. The bulk, or 63 percent of the built space, is in Manhattan, with Queens next at 19 percent of the space.

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