The owner of a Smithsonian-affiliated museum site in the East Village is at risk of losing the property to foreclosure.
Affordable housing developer Eric Anderson has been accused by a lender of failing to pay off millions of dollars in loans and property taxes for 56 E. First St., a mixed-use site whose commercial space is home to City Lore. Focused on modern urban history, the nonprofit museum has a collection that includes candid photos of streetscapes and shop owners in working-class neighborhoods.
Western Adventist Foundation, an Arizona-based lending arm of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, claims Anderson never paid the balance of almost $4 million in mortgages when it came due in 2020, according to the suit, which was filed Wednesday in Manhattan’s state Supreme Court.
Anderson, who has done much of his development through firms using variations on the phrase Urban Green, also allegedly owes about $76,000 in taxes for bills stretching back to 2022, the suit alleges.
And despite being granted several extensions, Anderson is still in arrears, according to a notice of default dated Feb. 18 that gave the developer 30 days to settle up. Because he did not, according to the complaint, Western Adventist is requesting that “the premises should be sold at a foreclosure sale.”
An effort to track down Anderson, who reportedly lives in one of the two apartments in the building, according to an oral history of the site that he provided to the museum, was unsuccessful by press time.
But the museum, which relocated to the property in 2013 from a different address on East First Street, is expected to stay on at the site no matter the outcome of the case, according to Executive Director Steve Zeitlin. Indeed, in 2023 the museum renewed its lease for an additional 12 years and included a non-disturbance clause, a measure used to protect tenants in buildings where foreclosure is a risk, Zeitlin told Crain’s.
For years an empty lot owned by a North African cab driver, 56 E. First was acquired by Anderson in 2002 for an undisclosed price, based on the city register, and developed into a 4-story, 6,100-square-foot building in 2004. Anderson moved into one of the two residential units, while a family that was friends with him took the other apartment, according to news reports from the time.
The Lower East Side Girls Club, now on East Eighth Street at Avenue D, was the original commercial tenant.
Western Foundation, whose mission is “managing assets in alignment with Adventist values while supporting ministry efforts” according to its website, lent Anderson $3.5 million in 2017 and also issued a smaller $350,000 note two years later, mortgage documents show.
Martin Dunn, president of prolific affordable housing development firm Dunn Development, also invested in the site, writing a $2.5 million mortgage in 2017, based on the register. Although Dunn’s loan is not ensnared in the new suit, Western Foundation has named Dunn as a defendant in the case as a lienholder on the property. An email sent to Dunn Development was not returned by press time.
Whether Anderson’s case will ever be heard before a judge is unclear. In a likely defensive move, he put 56 E. First up for sale in February for $9.9 million, according to an ad from the brokerage Compass. The developer had also previously marketed the building for sale, starting in 2018, when he was asking $13.3 million, according to StreetEasy.
One of the site’s apartments, a three-bedroom unit with industrial-style concrete walls, has also occasionally turned up on the listings site, most recently in November, when its marketed rent was $16,500 a month.
Designated in 2018 as a Smithsonian affiliate, an honor bestowed upon just a couple hundred organizations in the country, City Lore sometimes showcases items from the Smithsonian’s Washington, D.C., archives.
But the museum also exhibits its own collection, much of it from the predigital days, including 32,570 slides, 1,140 cassette tapes and 200 VHS tapes, according to its website. City Lore also sponsors the popular POEMobile, a roaming truck that projects stanzas onto buildings and bridges.
For his part, Anderson launched his career in 1988 with a single room occupancy building conversion on West 116th Street but has built charter schools and medical clinics in the city through the years, though he recently seems focused on multifamily projects in the Hudson Valley, including in Orange and Dutchess counties.
An email sent to Western Adventist was not returned by press time. And Michael Amato, the lawyer with Long Island-based firm Ruskin Moscou Faltischek who filed the suit on the group’s behalf, also could not be reached for comment.
