Cohen Brothers Realty’s Charles Cohen, cover of foreclosure complaint and aerial of dev site at 850 South Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach
A lender is seeking to foreclose on the site of a stalled office project in West Palm Beach by Charles Cohen, adding more woes to the New York-based billionaire developer.
On Monday, Union Labor Life Insurance Company sued an affiliate of Cohen’s New York-based Cohen Brothers Realty Corporation in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, according to real estate database Vizzda and court records.
The foreclosure complaint alleges the Cohen affiliate defaulted on a $10 million loan issued in 2022, by allegedly failing to repay the mortgage by a May 4 maturity date. The lawsuit also names the West Palm Beach Community Redevelopment Agency, or CRA, as a defendant.
The CRA owns the 2.4-acre property at 801 South Dixie Highway, and entered into a ground lease in 2020 with the Cohen affiliate, which is planning West Palm Point, a 23-story tower with 352,000 square feet of offices and 25,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, records show.
Cohen Brothers has not been served with any foreclosure filing, “but our lender has confirmed that the foreclosure complaint is being withdrawn immediately,” Cohen Brothers Senior Vice President Ross Cohen told The Real Deal.
“We are in the process of refinancing the existing loan via our project financing, which is closing imminently,” Cohen said. “The existing loan is also in the process of being extended in the interim.”
Michael Woodbury, an attorney representing Union Labor, did not respond to requests for comment.
The Cohen affiliate filed a notice of commencement for West Palm Point last year, records show. Ross Cohen said the firm plans to break ground soon.
The West Palm Point foreclosure complaint is the latest headache for Cohen, whose net worth Forbes pegs at $1.6 billion. In New York, Cohen Brothers last month struck a deal to sell a distressed office building at 623 Fifth Avenue for $188 million, as part of its efforts to repay a $187 million judgment to Fortress Investment Group. A portion of the sale proceeds would cover some of the debt owed to Fortress.
Another lender won a foreclosure judgment in July for Cohen’s Midtown East, a 31-story office tower at 750 Lexington Avenue that was recently valued at $41 million. That’s more than an 85 percent drop from the property’s $300 million valuation in 2015, according to Morningstar Credit.
