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Fortress Gives Charles Cohen With $534M for NYC, Florida Properties – Business Observer


Fortress Credit score Company has supplied New York-based Cohen Brothers Realty with loans totaling $533.6 million for properties in Manhattan and Fort Lauderdale, together with one which evaded foreclosures in 2020, Business Observer has realized. 

The restructuring comes because the agency, led by billionaire Charles Cohen, is being dogged by a number of lawsuits, closures, and at the least one default. 

In Manhattan, Fortress Credit score — a division of Fortress Funding Group — supplied Cohen Brothers with $100 million to refinance the 300,000-square-foot 135 East 57th Road, an workplace constructing on Billionaires’ Row, based on property information in New York. The mortgage combines an current $90 million in debt with a $10 million hole mortgage, per the mortgage paperwork.

An extra $251 million from Fortress is secured by the 245-room Le Méridien Lodge Dania Seaside and the Design Middle of the Americas (DCOTA) campus on which it’s constructed, based on information filed in Broward County, Fla. The resort, at 1825 Griffin Highway close to the Fort Lauderdale airport, was accomplished in 2019. 

That 12 months, Wells Fargo initiated a $179 million foreclosures lawsuit in opposition to the DCOTA property.

The almost 800,000-square-foot complicated was constructed within the ’80s as a set of showrooms for high-end furnishings and fixtures in addition to different design-related retailers. Charles Cohen purchased the complicated in 2005, however the property struggled after the Nice Recession, even after Cohen pivoted to workplace area. 

At one level, on-line pet retailer Chewy took 100,000 sq. ft on the complicated, however that didn’t come near filling the vacancies. Chewy has since introduced that it will be relocating elsewhere within the county.

In 2020, Cohen Brothers settled with its lender. An organization tied to Fortress had refinanced the defaulted mortgage for $112 million, The Actual Deal reported on the time.

A 3rd mortgage within the package deal is for the shuttered Doral Arrowwood Resort in Westchester County in New York. The 400-room golf resort shut down in January 2020 and has been vacant since. In Could, Cohen proposed redeveloping the resort into luxurious housing, based on native reporting.

Along with his actual property holdings, Cohen is a film lover who owns the Landmark Theatres chain by means of the Cohen Media Group and Curzon Cinemas, a U.Okay. arthouse theater and the distributor of the Oscar-winning movie “Parasite.” Entities linked to each companies are additionally named as debtors within the mortgage paperwork, although it was not connected to a greenback quantity. 

After all, the movie show enterprise has not had a straightforward time of it these previous few years both. In New York, for instance, the Durst Group has sued Cohen over the Landmark Theater location at 57 West, which closed completely in 2020, for $48 million in missed rent.

Cohen Brothers didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.

Chava Gourarie will be reached at [email protected].

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