Former American Bank Note Building Headed to Bankruptcy

With foreclosure and an auction hovering overhead, the owner of a Financial District office building decided to put it into bankruptcy instead.

Winta Asset Management filed for Chapter 11 protection on Friday for its property at 70 Broad Street, formerly known as the American Bank Note Building, Bloomberg reported. Winta values the five-story, 20,000-square-foot building at $16 million.

Winta is in the midst of a battle with Wilmington Trust, the trustee of the property’s underlying mortgage. Winta defaulted on a $15 million note near the beginning of the pandemic and has since struggled with operational issues and tenants’ departures.

Recently, a federal judge entered a $24.7 million judgment against the office owner. An auction of the property was scheduled outside of the office on June 12, which is now on hold due to the bankruptcy, as is the foreclosure action against the owner.

In its bankruptcy filings, Winta said the action would allow it to market the property through a real estate brokerage, which could elicit more buyers than a foreclosure auction would, Winta claimed.

The building’s name came from its former tenant, a producer of stock and bond certificates. But American Bank Note sold the property in the 1980s after moving out of New York City.

Since then, ownership has changed multiple times. In 2010, a Chinese investment and construction firm bought the landmarked building for $18 million. It had been listed for $45 million in September 2009, before being chopped to a final asking price of $25.5 million.

In 2016, the Chinese firm put the building back on the market, seeking $88 million. It doesn’t appear it ever sold, as no deeds for the property have appeared in the city’s public records since 2010.

Distress has come for office space of all shapes and sizes in Manhattan’s Financial District post-Covid. The 41-story waterfront office building at 180 Maiden Lane hit the market in a distress sale situation at the start of the year after the loan on the Clarion Partners property matured.

— Holden Walter-Warner