Williamsburg has chewed up and spit out more than its share of developers whose backs were against the wall when the market got tough.
But the owners of the Kent House rental building, which a year ago looked like it was headed to foreclosure, have avoided that fate.
Cheskie Weisz and Yaakov Klein refinanced their positions at the 96-unit building at 187 Kent Avenue with $115 million in new mortgages — a coda to the struggle for control of the North Williamsburg property, which opened in 2020.
Klein, who purchased a leasehold on the property from Weisz’s development firm CW Realty in November, closed on a $53 million loan from Bank of America last week, a spokesperson for the developers told The Real Deal.
Weisz got a 35-year, $61.7 million loan from Nuveen TIAA in July on the fee position, which paid off the project’s construction loan.
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New York
Invictus purchases $88M loan on Kent House
Development
New York
Cheskie Weisz lands $78M construction loan for Williamsburg development
That construction loan became a headache for Weisz last year when Invictus Real Estate Partners, which had purchased the $88 million non-performing note from Austin-based hedge fund Prophet Capital, moved to foreclose on the property.
Weisz sued to stop the proceedings, arguing that Invictus had interfered with his attempt to refinance the property as part of a ploy to foreclose and snap up the real estate at a “bargain-basement price.”
A foreclosure auction was scheduled for November of last year, but the judge overseeing the case issued a stay at the last minute. Court records show both sides reached a settlement in January.
The 140,000-square-foot building sits at Kent Avenue and North 3rd Street, a block from where the Walentas family’s Two Trees Development is planning its 1,050-unit River Ring megaproject.