Bonjour Capital has finally closed on a long-stalled Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment complex that has been the subject of much dispute, paying $16 million, an attorney for Bonjour confirmed to The Real Deal today. The deal, completed this week, will allow the new owner to proceed with the 57-unit rental project.
The conversion of the industrial building at 333-345 Greene Avenue is about 70 percent complete. Bonjour, in a partnership with real estate developer and manager Empire Equities, bought the first mortgage on the building last March from Banco Popular; at the time, more than $18.4 million of principal and interest was due. Empire has since sold its interest in the partnership, called Team Greene 333 LLC, Bonjour’s attorney said.
The project was originally the brainchild of developers Joseph Tyrnauer and Martin Daskal — through an entity called 333-345 Green LLC — but years of infighting hastened the busted project’s slide into foreclosure, said attorney Eric Goldberg of Olshan Frome Wolosky LLP, who represented Bonjour.
The pair also faced foreclosure at another project, at 1775 East 17th Street, in Brooklyn’s Midwood area, records show.
Bonjour intends to immediately finish construction and market the units as rentals, Goldberg said.
The Manhattan-based real estate investment and development firm, led by Charles Dayan, moved to take control of the property starting in 2012, with a foreclosure auction held in January of this year. However, one week after the auction, Tyrnauer field for bankruptcy, per court records.
Tyrnauer’s action brought the foreclosure proceedings to a halt, since foreclosure actions cannot legally move forward with a party in bankruptcy. Indeed, Goldberg characterized the bankruptcy filing as a stall tactic.
Neither Daskal nor Tyrnauer could be reached, and a call to the attorney representing Tyrnauer in his bankruptcy declined to comment.
Just last week, Bonjour reached an agreement with the debtors to buy the project, which had sat in purgatory for more than three years.
The glass- and brick-fronted structure, originally set to rise 12 stories, has seen construction start and stop for nearly six years now, published reports show.
An entity identified only as 333-345 Greene LLC bought the property in 2003 for $1.1 million, property records show. The listed address for the entity is the same as Tyrnauer’s home, according to city records.
Bonjour sold 5 Beekman Street, set to become a boutique hotel, for $64 million last year. The group also partnered with Joseph Chetrit and Yair Levy on 620 Sixth Avenue, a mixed-use Chelsea building deductively valued at $500 million when Scott Rechler’s RXR Realty picked up the last stake from that trio last year.