A six-story SoHo office building known as the Suspenders Building has sold for $47 million, marking the latest asset to slip from the Chetrit Organization's grip as the family firm works through a wave of debt trouble across its Manhattan holdings. The buyer, real estate investment firm Sagehall, picked up 428 Broadway after the property changed hands through a foreclosure process that stripped away the site's mortgage baggage and delivered clean title just before closing.
According to Commercial Observer, the deal was signed by Michael Chetrit on behalf of two Chetrit Organization holding companies, while Jean-Marc Donics signed for AI Soho Investors and Jason Levine signed for the buyer entity, 428 Broadway Owner. Sagehall is led by Jason Levine, who serves as the firm's managing director, and the report notes that Sagehall spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Chetrit Organization spokespeople likewise did not respond immediately, per the same outlet.
The 42,000-square-foot building sits on an irregular 7,945-square-foot lot and carries 29,475 square feet of unused air rights, according to PincusCo. Designed by architect Samuel A. Warner in the Queen Anne style, the brick, terra-cotta, and sandstone structure went up in 1888 and sits within the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District Extension, per Joseph Pell Lombardi Architect. The Chetrit Group first acquired the property for $22.5 million in 2005, before the family enterprise split in the mid-2000s left it under the Chetrit Organization's ownership.
WeWork's Exit Triggered the Slide
The building's troubles trace back to WeWork's 2023 bankruptcy filing, which emptied out four floors the coworking company had occupied and left the property 96% vacant. That vacancy made it impossible to keep servicing the mortgage, and lender LoanCore Capital Credit began foreclosure actions in 2024, claiming default on roughly $200 million in loans spread across 428 Broadway and 1 Whitehall Street. Prior to WeWork's departure, the building had generated approximately $2.9 million in annual revenue, or roughly $69 per square foot, PincusCo reports.
Rather than let the asset go outright, an affiliate called C&AI Soho Holding — tied to the Chetrit Organization and Jean-Marc Donics — bought the defaulted $60 million loan from LoanCore for $40 million in late 2025. That debt purchase, detailed by PincusCo, set up a judicial foreclosure that wiped away secondary liabilities. Seller entity AI Soho Investors formally took title on August 18, with the foreclosure recorded on August 28, just days before the sale to Sagehall closed. City records reported the purchase, according to Commercial Observer.
A Family Firm Under Pressure
The building's current occupancy is unclear, and its sale lands amid what Commercial Observer describes as a year of distress and legal troubles for the Chetrit Organization. The firm's patriarch, Jacob Chetrit, who led the organization alongside his brother Juda, died at age 69 in early 2025, leaving his son Michael Chetrit to navigate the firm's distressed commercial assets. The Chetrit family had split its real estate business in the early 2010s, with Joseph and Meyer Chetrit continuing under the separate Chetrit Group.
That related Chetrit Group entity has indicated in court filings that it is in the process of being dissolved, Commercial Observer reports. The outlet also notes that the Chetrit Organization sold its former headquarters at 404 Fifth Avenue, which carried $75 million in debt, back to its lenders, as Crain's New York reported. Separately, 1 Whitehall Street — the 21-story, 366,000-square-foot office tower also named in LoanCore's original foreclosure claim — was sold this year to Nathan Berman's Metro Loft and Idan Ofer's Quantum Pacific Group for $105 million, with plans for a residential conversion.
Sagehall's SoHo Bet
For Sagehall, founded in 2020 by former Extell Development CEO Sush Torgalkar and former Starwood Capital executive Lanhee Yung, the 428 Broadway purchase fits a pattern of value-add bets on distressed commercial property around the region. The firm's American Industrial affiliate, co-founded by Roget Lerner and Jean-Marc Donics, was also among the sellers listed in the transaction. Sagehall recently closed an $80 million deal for the 200,000-square-foot 750 White Plains Road retail and medical center in Scarsdale, part of the same expansion Hoodline covered in its Scarsdale retail hub story, and a $62 million purchase of a former Lord & Taylor site in Stamford in October 2025.
With prime corner retail space along Howard Street and nearly 30,000 square feet of untapped air rights, 428 Broadway offers Sagehall room to reposition or redevelop the property despite continued headwinds in the office market. Jean-Marc Donics declined to comment on the sale, Commercial Observer notes. The deal adds another data point to the Chetrit Organization's broader unwind, following recent Hoodline reporting on the firm's Upper East Side townhouse loan troubles, its Maspeth warehouse refinancing, the loss of the Tides Hotel in a courthouse auction, and a 26 Broadway loan landing in special servicing.
