A developer that was once the “biggest landlord on SoHo’s fashionable side streets,” according to its website, could soon lose a property at one of those addresses in its latest struggle in the neighborhood.
Thor Equities is facing a foreclosure suit from investment giant Blackstone over allegedly being in default on a $10 million mortgage secured by 25-27 Mercer St., a double-wide retail space between Howard and Grand streets.
Blackstone seems to have moved quickly to possibly seize the site, a 9,500-square-foot commercial condo that has cycled through several clothing stores and other boutiques in recent years. Thor, whose chairman is Joseph Sitt, was notified March 25 that it was in default on the loan, according to the suit. Blackstone’s lawyers filed a foreclosure suit in Manhattan state Supreme Court six days later.
Thor owes a balance of $9.5 million on the mortgage plus interest and fees, according to the complaint. The original loan was issued in 2016 by Signature Bank, which collapsed in March 2023; the debt was assigned to Blackstone-backed shell company Sig CRE 2023 Venture LLC in May 2024, according to the city register.
In 2014 Thor paid $4.8 million for the property, a 62-foot-wide space created by merging a pair of adjacent retail sites as part of a condo conversion project, the register shows.
Nanushka, a Hungarian women’s apparel shop, has occupied half of the space since September, though the tenant that had been in the rest of the storefront, Zcrave, appears to have relocated to nearby Canal Street in the winter.
After being one of SoHo’s most dominant property owners, Thor, a $20 billion firm vying for a coveted downstate casino license to anchor a planned $3 billion Coney Island project, has trimmed its portfolio, sometimes under financial stress and at a major loss.
For instance, in 2023 the firm sold 155 Mercer St., which formerly offered a Dolce & Gabbana store, for $60 million after shelling out $93 million for the site in 2016, according to the register. Similarly in 2022 Thor unloaded 496 Broadway, whose retail tenant for years was a Sunglass Hut outpost, for about $13 million after buying the site for $21 million in 2013.
Last year it also lost 440 Broadway, home to a Foot Locker, in a court-ordered foreclosure sale. But Thor managed to surrender the keys to nearby 470 Broadway before that site, also threatened by foreclosure, had to face a judge.
Thor is still in acquisition mode in other areas, however. Last year it purchased a Tootsie Roll factory turned luxury rental building in Clinton Hill for $59 million.
Thor spokeswoman Katie Smith had no comment by press time. And Alina Levi, a lawyer with the firm Polsinelli who filed the complaint on Blackstone’s behalf, did not return an email for comment by press time.
