A lender that’s been aggressively moving to foreclose on big-name developers across the city appears to have a new target: Williamsburg builder Cheskie Weisz.
Maverick Real Estate Partners claims in a new lawsuit that Weisz and his partners have been in default since March on a $5 million mortgage backed by a multifamily project at 680 Lorimer St. in the Brooklyn neighborhood.
And the Midtown-based private equity firm is asking a judge to auction off the site of the planned 8-story, 26-unit development to the highest bidder, according to the suit, filed Wednesday in Brooklyn’s state Supreme Court.
The complaint also says that Weisz and his partners, including the father-and-son team of Alex and Jonathan Babakhanov, allegedly have not paid real estate taxes on the site since January 2024.
Weisz, CEO of CW Realty Group, which previously developed Williamsburg’s 187 Kent Ave., 61 N. 11th St. and 45 Newel St., has not yet filed an answer to the complaint. And he did not reply to an email for comment by press time. Also the Forest Hills, Queens-based Babakhanovs, who seem to focus on small-scale, outer-borough projects, could not immediately be reached.
But their project, at Meeker Avenue near an elevated portion of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, has appeared to struggle to get out of the ground.
The developers’ ownership of the property, which was originally two separate parcels, stretches back to 2021. No. 680, which once contained a garage, was acquired for $1.8 million that year, while next-door 676 Lorimer, where a 2-story rowhouse had stood, traded at the same time for $2.7 million, according to the city register. Weisz and the Babakhanovs also tacked on some unused air rights from 686 Lorimer for $519,000, records show.
The developers first applied for building permits in 2021, based on city Department of Buildings filings. But demolition for what would be the 30,200-square-foot project, which would include a small storefront, didn’t occur for years, until 2024, the same year the project was finally given the go-ahead, filings show.
Weisz’s name appears on all the permits, though Jonathan Babakhanov is the principal who signed the deeds.
To help finance the project, Hanover Community Bank in 2021 extended to the developers a $5 million mortgage, the loan that’s the crux of the current court fight. The debt was reassigned to Maverick only on May 1, according to the register, indicating that the firm, which is led by co-founders David Aviram and Ted Martell, wasted little time in mounting an effort to foreclose on the property, possibly leading Maverick to seize it.
In the fall Maverick successfully foreclosed on notorious landlord Steve Croman to take over four Kips Bay buildings. It also wrested control of a West 14th Street Meatpacking District site in July from Thor Equities. Maverick has also gone after the Chetrit family over a SoHo retail site at 447 Broadway tied to an apparently soured $14 million note.
A message sent to Maverick was not returned by press time. And Christopher Palmieri, the attorney with Long Island firm Jaspan Schlesinger Narendran who filed the suit on the firm’s behalf, did not immediately return a call for comment.
