Tim Ziss of Allied Properties puts $10.7M retail building into bankruptcy

By Adam Pincus

Tim Ziss of Brooklyn-based Allied Properties put a 32,000-square-foot retail building into bankruptcy following a two-year battle to evict a grocery store tenant. Ziss bought the property at 1769 86th Street in Bensonhurst in July 2017 for $10.7 million from Santander Bank. At the time, he borrowed $6.8 million from an affiliate of the Bridge Investment Group.

This is the third property Ziss has placed iton bankruptcy over the past two years. The other two are smaller residential assets in Bay Ridge: 552 Ovington Avenue, which is land with 3,500-square-foot buildable, and 464 Ovington Avenue, a two-unit rental.

A lease dispute led to the recent bankruptcy filing by his company 1769 LLC. In October 2018, Ziss’s company 1769 LLC, notified one of the tenants in the building, Fong & Zhou Supermarkets, that it was in violation of the lease for several reasons including not having the required insurance. The grocer sued in November that year, seeking a temporary retraining order, but the judge denied that.

However, the lawsuit continued for nearly two more years. On September 10, 2020, a judge issued an order for the removal of the tenant. But then on October 15, the tenant filed a motion to appeal, and four days later, on October 19, Ziss’s company filed for bankruptcy protection.

Ziss, who is also known as Efthimios Zisimopoulos, owns Allied, a real estate investment firm with approximately 15 properties in New York City and additional assets in the tri-state area and Florida.