Tim Ziss uses bankruptcy to try to acquire Midtown office building

Who says no one wants a Midtown office?

Brooklyn investor Tim Ziss’s Allied Properties entered into a contract to buy a vacant seven-story office at 14 East 52nd Street for $22.5 million in February, but he claims the owner — Inmoprisa, which was once tied to Spanish fashion mogul Alberto Palatchi — balked on an extension prior to its April deadline. 

Inmoprisa sent Ziss a notice of default and put his $3 million deposit at risk. So he filed a bankruptcy petition to keep the contract in place.

“We made a good-faith effort to secure a short extension and close as planned,” said Ziss in a statement. “The seller was unwilling to accommodate, leaving us no option but to seek protection of our interest and allow for the needed time to close.”

Although bankruptcy is often a last-ditch effort to refinance or sell a property prior to a foreclosure, it can also be used to extend contracts.

“Using bankruptcy to preserve a contract is nothing new. [It] has been done before many times,” said Adam Stein-Sapir of Pioneer Funding, a bankruptcy specialist uninvolved in the case. “It’s seen as an asset of the estate.”

PincusCo first reported the bankruptcy.

The building was previously occupied by Pronovias, a luxury Spanish wedding dress designer who used the building as a showroom and office headquarters, but moved to 45 East 58th Street in 2019. The site also has 19,000square feet of unused air rights. It is being listed for sale by Avison Young.

The property was once eyed by Harry Macklowe as a piece in his plans to build a 1 million-square-foot supertall office tower known as “Saint Stevens New York.” He acquired neighboring properties to create an assemblage. 

Macklowe was believed to be connected to entities shielded by the late lawyer Steven Holm. In 2016, a Holm entity acquired the property at 12 East 52nd Street for $32 million. In 2018, a Holm entity entered a contract to buy 14 East 52nd Street from the owners of Pronovias in 2019, but the deal never closed. 

Tim Ziss is no stranger to bankruptcy. The investor, whose legal name is Efthimios Zisimopoulos, recently acquired a 100,000-square-foot Bay Ridge office building out of bankruptcy through a $25 million credit bid. He attracted controversy over his sale of a Nathan’s restaurant in South Brooklyn to New York City School Construction Authority for more than double what he’d paid for it just six months earlier. 

An investigation by The City found that Ziss had been paying New York Building Congress head Carlo Scissura to meet with local leaders and elected officials about the development of five properties in Bay Ridge.