A bankrupt but nearly finished Downtown Brooklyn hotel project has found a new owner from the Midwest.
Midas Hospitality, a St. Louis-based company, has purchased the development at 291 Livingston St. for about $34.9 million, property records show. The firm’s portfolio includes several hotels throughout the Midwest and South, along with one in upstate New York, but this appears to be its first purchase in the city.
Midas bought the project from a limited liability company linked to Aview Equities, developer Abraham Leifer’s Brooklyn-based firm. The LLC filed to put the project in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June.
The LLC, Hello Livingston Extended, formed in 2018 and bought 291 Livingston St. for $14.8 million, according to court records. It planned to build a 21-story, roughly 46,000-square-foot hotel and luxury residential project at the site but ran out of funding, an affidavit included with the bankruptcy filing said. The project was already 95% done and would require about $6 million to complete, court documents said.
The Leifer-linked firm had defaulted on multiple loans and planned to sell the property to pay off its creditors as part of the bankruptcy process. Its sole asset was 291 Livingston St. itself, and its estimated value was $29.5 million, according to court filings.
Representatives for Midas Hospitality and Aview Equities did not respond to requests for comment by press time. It is unclear if Midas plans to finish the project Aview had planned for the site, although that option would seem to make the most financial sense given how far along it is.
The city’s hotel industry has enjoyed a fairly solid recovery from the pandemic. The sector’s average daily rate for 2023 was $301.12, its most expensive yet, and it is expected to further increase to $310.23 this year, according to the commercial real estate database CoStar. However, the market is not expected to fully rebound to pre-Covid levels until next year.
Downtown Brooklyn, meanwhile, has seen a huge influx of residential projects in recent years, and more are on the way. Developer JCS Realty is planning a 154-unit project at 540 Atlantic Ave., for instance, and developer Twin Group Associates is planning a 101-unit project at 150 Lawrence St.
Eddie Small , 2024-03-14 15:12:06
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