A controversy-prone site in Greenwich Village is facing a fresh challenge.
No. 333 Sixth Ave., an address known for years for its adult entertainment shops, has landed in a court fight over an alleged mortgage default.
Financial giant Blackstone is accusing the landlord, Goldberg Group, which owns the ground-floor storefronts at the 12-story mixed-use building, of being delinquent on a $10.5 million loan.
Goldberg failed to pay off the balance of the debt by its August due date, which allows Blackstone to foreclose on the retail spaces at the flatiron-shaped prewar property, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Manhattan state Supreme Court. The upstairs residences at the building, at Cornelia and West Fourth streets, are not involved in the suit.
Goldberg principal Josh Goldberg purchased the commercial condo unit that makes up the storefronts in 2015 for $19.2 million and borrowed the money at the heart of the dispute in 2018 from Signature Bank, according to the city register. In September, about a year and a half after Signature’s collapse, Blackstone acquired Goldberg’s mortgage, the register shows.
Goldberg, who has not yet filed a legal response to the suit, did not return an email.
The dust-up is not the first to trouble the site, whose businesses—pornographic video stores, pipe shops and tattoo parlors through the decades—have remained remnants of the neighborhood’s rougher past even as the area has heavily gentrified.
In fact, when the building’s most-infamous X-rated business, Crazy Fantasy Video, opened in 1989, some neighbors and community board officials railed against it. Critics said it made the block seedy; others opposed what they called garish signage, according to news reports.
But Crazy Fantasy’s owner, Ygal Mizrahi, who immigrated to New York from Israel in 1975, not only managed to hang on but ultimately prosper: In 1997 he bought the real estate housing his store for $4.3 million, according to court filings, before unloading it to a Chehebar family firm, The Jackson Group, for $16.5 million in 2013, according to the city register.
(In 2019 Mizrahi sued his brother and business partner, Yoel, alleging Yoel, who orchestrated the Jackson deal while Mizrahi was recovering from a car accident, told him the sale price was actually just $13 million and thus stiffed him out of profits. A Manhattan judge ruled that the statute of limitations was way too far gone for Mizrahi to make such a claim.)
After Jackson sapped up No. 333, principal Ike Chehebar told a reporter he planned to swap out Crazy Fantasy for an upscale retailer like Dylan’s Candy Bar. There was retail turnover in the multiberth address in the following years, as some tattoo shops closed. But high-end tenants never did arrive, and two years later Chehebar flipped the site to Goldberg.
Crazy Fantasy ended up morphing into a similarly-focused business, Fantasy Parties, owned by a Staten Island mother of five, Tsipi Yeruham, public records show, who had her own challenges. During the pandemic Goldberg sued Yeruham for back-rent and in 2023 won a judgment of $654,000. But Yeruham’s “adult toy store” continues to operate.
A 12-story Beaux-Arts edifice from 1907 that’s part of a landmarked district, 333 Sixth for years contained the offices of The Nation magazine while its storefront offered La Groceria Ristorante, an Italian eatery and market. In 1981 twin brothers and developers Roger and Robert Fisher purchased the building and converted its upper stories into about 40 residential condo units, which use the address 2 Cornelia St. The Fishers kept the stores for years before selling them to Mizrahi, records show.
James Faller, the lawyer with the firm Reed Smith who’s representing Blackstone, declined to comment.
