Long-Delayed Sunset Park Development Site Faces Seizure and Sale
By Isabelle Durso August 8, 2024 5:00 pm
reprints
Watermark Capital Group and Maguire Capital Group might not be able to get a long-delayed development in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, off the ground.
On Wednesday, loan servicer Rialto Capital Group filed a lawsuit in Kings County Supreme Court to foreclose on the parking lot at 6128 Eighth Avenue, looking to potentially seize and sell the site, after the pair of developers allegedly defaulted on a $45.3 million loan tied to property.
Spokespeople for Rialto, Watermark and Maguire did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The story was first reported by Crain’s New York Business.
The loan was issued by the now-collapsed Signature Bank in January 2023, but the lawsuit claims that the developers stopped making mortgage payments in December 2023, explicitly naming Watermark Founders Wolfe Landau and Meir David Tabak.
Watermark and Maguire planned to build a 28-story, 497-unit project on the site with homes, medical offices, a grocery store and parking. They were the third company to try its hand on developing the lot.
MSK Properties first sought to build a single 11-story tower and a Home Depot on the site, but the company sold the property in 2014 to a group of investors in Great Neck, Long Island, for $52 million.
Those Great Neck developers took another crack at the site and ambitiously planned for three towers that would include offices and a hotel, The Real Deal reported. But, in 2021, they began to unload the property to Watermark and Maguire for $12 million, according to city records.
Watermark and Maguire were given the green light on the property two years ago, when the Department of City Planning said the developers didn’t need a special permit for the project.
Despite protests from members of the Brooklyn neighborhood, who argued that the property should have to undergo a public review since it was used as a railyard in the early 1960s, the Planning Department gave the developers the go-ahead.
Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.
