Developer Kent Swig Faces Foreclosure on Tribeca Condos

A six-story mixed-use building in Tribeca is a far cry from the Financial District skyscrapers Kent Swig used to own.

What’s not so different is the foreclosure proceedings centered on the property.

Axos Financial, the lender of a set of loans that Swig’s ownership group took out on the condominiums at 148 Duane Street, is seeking repayment of $24 million, according to a complaint filed in court last week.

Swig, who is the president of his eponymous investment and development firm and has ownership in Brown Harris Stevens, picked up the building for $19 million in 2017, according to public records.

He bought the property from Evan Seiden, who scrapped plans to convert the top floors into luxury condos. Swig’s goals for the building are not clear, and a spokesperson for the developer did not return a request for comment.

The three loans, which were taken out in 2018, were planned to mature in 2020, but through a series of negotiated extensions Swig pushed back the maturity date to 2024.

Swig’s failure to repay the loan by its maturity date, failure to complete his construction project on time, failure to keep several of the loans “in balance” and a lien taken out on the property as part of a separate suit also constituted defaults, according to the complaint.

Crain’s first reported the lawsuit.

This is far from the first time that Swig has been accused of not paying what he owes.

In 2022, a state judge ruled in favor of an investment firm that claimed that Swig’s real estate services firm, Helmsley Spear, failed to pay $342,000 in rent.

Swig also still owes $198,000 to a husband-and-wife duo who sued the developer in 2018 for allegedly failing to maintain air conditioning, heat and buzzer systems in their rent-stabilized unit during renovations. A judge ruled against Swig in 2021, which he has since appealed, and which

Swig, who at one point owned more than 4 million square feet of office space and 1,200 luxury apartments, had several landmark Downtown properties foreclosed on, including his office-to-rental building at 25 Broad Street and his office tower at 45 Broad Street.

An attorney for Axos did not respond to a request for comment.

The property at 148 Duane Street has four residential apartments and a commercial space on the first floor.