Gotham Assets buys $65M note on Chetrit Group Garment District office building

UPDATED 6:10 a.m., November 4, 2025: Sami Souid’s Gotham Assets through the entity 404 Holding LLC bought a note with an original principal of $65 million from Blackstone Group secured by Chetrit Group’s office building (O6) at 404 Fifth Avenue in Garment District, Manhattan.
The deal closed on June 27, 2025 and was recorded on July 14, 2025. The prior lender was Blackstone Group which held debt that had an original loan amount of $65 million.The property has 83,278 square feet of built space and 16,342 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 99,650 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The loan price per built square foot is $zero and the price per buildable square foot is $zero 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 Chetrit Group was Meyer Chetrit . The Chetrit Group’s Joseph Chetrit bought the building in 1998 for $16,330,000 according to a PincusCo analysis of transfer tax records. In May 2016, the Chetrit Group upped the debt by nearly $40 million from the remainder of an older loan, to $65 million, from Signature Bank. Blackstone Group bought this loan after Signature Bank was shuttered.

The property

The office building in Garment District has 83,278 square feet of built space and 16,342 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 99,650 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 65 feet and is 141 feet deep with a total lot size of 9,965 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is C5-3 which allows for up to 15 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 10 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The property is in the Individual Landmark. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $35.9 million.

Violations and lawsuits

The property was involved in one lawsuit and zero bankruptcies over the past two years. The suit was a $65 million commercial foreclosure concerning a loan filed on January 29, 2025, by Blackstone Group and Rialto Capital Advisors against Meyer Chetrit, Judah Chetrit, and Chetrit Group. In addition, according to city public data, the property has received two DOB violations, $1,250 in ECB penalties, and $8,155 in OATH penalties in the last year.

Development

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 Garment District, The majority, or 69 percent of the 52.3 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with hotel buildings next occupying 13 percent of the space. In sales, Garment District has the 10th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $1.2 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Garment District is the 6th most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 9.4 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 18 percent of the neighborhood’s built space. There were five pre-foreclosure suit filed among other office buildings in the past 12 months.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of 11 of the 29 commercial properties representing 1,014,073 square feet of the 1,676,094 square feet. The largest owner is Vanbarton Group, followed by Empire Management and then Chandrakant Patel.
On the tax block, there was one new building construction project filed totaling 46,824 square feet. It is a 143-unit, 46,824 square-foot hotel/dormitory/shelter (R-1) building submitted by Richard Fung with plans filed December 4, 2014 and permitted March 9, 2017.

The majority, or 65 percent of the 1.7 million square feet of built space are office buildings, with elevator buildings next occupying 27 percent of the space.

The borrower

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Chetrit Group owned at least 38 commercial properties with 2,494 residential units in New York City with 4,693,964 square feet and a city-determined market value of $875.7 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $1.6 billion in debt, with top three lenders as Bank of Montreal, Starwood Mortgage Capital, and G4 Capital Partners respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 49 percent of the 4,693,964 square feet of built space are elevator properties, with office properties next occupying 27 percent of the space. The bulk, or 74 percent of the built space, is in Manhattan, with Queens next at 26 percent of the space.

Correction: A prior version of this post incorrectly identified the note buyer as Hirshmark Capital. In fact, the note buyer was Gotham Assets.

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