Charles Cohen Restarts Downtown West Palm Office Project

Charles Cohen has set in motion a restart of his long-planned 400,000-square-foot office building in downtown West Palm Beach, after resolving a foreclosure lawsuit on a $10 million loan on the site.

New York-based Cohen Brothers Realty plans the 25-story West Palm Point with ground-floor retail space and an 11-story garage with a rooftop amenity deck, according to the project’s website. The developer has started the permitting process, Palm Beach County records show.

It marks a new chapter for West Palm Point, which was first revealed in 2020, that comes after Cohen faced lawsuits alleging unpaid debts in New York and South Florida.

Since the project was first proposed, downtown West Palm has emerged as an office market winner, primarily due to billionaire Steve Ross’ purchases of office buildings and development of glitzy towers that he’s quickly tenanted by tapping his New York network.

A brochure for the project shows a 15,950-square-foot top floor space as “leased,” and a 16,200-square-foot space on the 24th floor as “reserved.” It also shows letters of intent for levels four, and 11 through 16.

Cohen Brothers didn’t return requests for comment.

Cohen Brothers, through an affiliate, leased the 2.4-acre development site at 850 South Quadrille Boulevard from the West Palm Beach Community Redevelopment Agency in 2020.

In September, the Union Labor Life Insurance Company filed a foreclosure lawsuit in Palm Beach Circuit Court against Cohen Brothers’ affiliate, alleging default on a $10 million loan due to failure to repay the debt by its May maturity date, according to the complaint. Records show Judge Gregory Keyser in January approved both sides’ request to dismiss the suit.

Last month, Union Labor reassigned the loan to a lender in the care of San Francisco-based hedge fund Farallon Capital Management, records show.

In New York, Cohen recently closed the book on a legal saga with creditor Fortress Investment Group, which had pursued Cohen for guarantees tied to defaults on a $534 million loan portfolio. After Cohen satisfied an $187 million debt to Fortress last month, his attorney filed a demand letter claiming $204 million in damages from the creditor over a foreclosure auction of four of his former properties.

Over the past year, as Fortress sought to collect on the $187 million judgment, an Italian court issued a temporary seizure last year of a 220-foot megayacht owned by the Cohen family.

As New York’s office market was ravaged over the past half-decade, Cohen faced other foreclosures and went on a selling spree to pay off lenders. In June, he sold the ground underneath a pair of Midtown properties for $110 million, combined, to Tony Malkin’s Empire State Realty Trust.

Cohen Brothers’ South Florida assets include the 800,000 square-foot office and design showroom Design Center of the Americas complex in Dania Beach.