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A new Downtown Brooklyn hotel is almost ready to open after five years of construction — but the developers' lender is trying to swoop in and take control first.
Acres Capital is alleging that owners of the 100-key, 22-story hotel yet to open at 291 Livingston St. have defaulted on their $29.7M mortgage, The Real Deal reports. The building, slated to have a Wyndham-branded hotel and space for a possible beer garden, is 95% complete and was recently listed for sale.
Hello Living, a development group headed up by Eli Karp, acquired the site of a Wendy's in 2017 for $11.1M from Red Apple Group CEO John Catsimatidis, public filings show. Karp filed plans in the same year to build a hotel on the site, bringing on Gene Kaufman as the project’s architect, TRD reported.
Karp planned to put together a $70M assemblage sale including 291 Livingston for Aview Equities, owned by Abraham Leifer, but multiple lawsuits prevented the deal from taking place, according to TRD. Leifer stayed on as an investor in the hotel, and is listed as a managing member of the hotel ownership group from 2018 onward. Karp’s current stake in the hotel is unclear.
The asking price for the hotel is $40M, Birchwood Realty Group’s Jay Hershowitz told TRD, with a foreclosure sale set for Dec. 6.
Hotel performance has largely recovered in New York City following the rollback of pandemic restrictions, but many hotel owners are struggling with debt payments, leading to distressed sales and foreclosures. In Brooklyn, the Hotel Bossert went into foreclosure in September and the Williamsburg Hotel went into bankruptcy last year.
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