Iconic NYC hotel that was home to Dodgers’ World Series celebration faces foreclosure

Real Estate

Once among the toniest hotels in the outer boroughs, one also set to reopen as a luxury stay, this landmarked stunner now faces foreclosure.

How Brooklyn Heights’ Hotel Bossert has fallen from grace: The Montague Street beauty previously nicknamed the “Waldorf-Astoria of Brooklyn” has been hit with a $112 million pre-foreclosure notice after missing mortgage payments and accumulating hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

On April 13, Wells Fargo filed the notice against building owner, the Chetrit Group, in Kings County Supreme Court, business site PincusCo first reported. The notice alleges that the real estate developer owes more than $126.7 million on a $112 million loan from 2019. 

Chetrit Group and Clipper Equity’s David Bistricer — the latter of whom Chetrit bought out in 2019 — purchased the 187,200-square-foot Italian Renaissance Revival-style property from the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 2012 for $81 million, with plans to turn it back into a 302-room hotel, Brownstoner reported. Beyond its history as a hotel, the property also played stage for a big local sports celebration.

hotel bossert foreclosure notice
The hotel in 1895.
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hotel bossert foreclosure notice
The Hotel Bossert in 1958.
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hotel bossert foreclosure notice
The Bossert Hotel in 2008.
Dylan Wilson

“Most of the rooms at the former hotel — where the Dodgers celebrated their only World Series title in Brooklyn before heading west — are now used as residences for Witness volunteers,” The Post reported of the 14-story building, which was built in 1909, at the time of purchase. 

According to the April filings, the owners planned to reopen the storied lodging as a Kimpton Hotel and managed to secure a temporary certificate of occupancy for the building in January 2020, Brownstoner added. The hotel has been closed for years.

hotel bossert foreclosure notice
Celebrating at the Brooklyn Dodgers’ victory party at the Bossert Hotel in Brooklyn.
Bettmann Archive
hotel bossert foreclosure notice
The Dodgers’ Duke Snider is stopped by fans as he arrives at the Hotel Bossert for the Dodgers victory dinner.
Bettmann Archive
The Dodgers since moved to Los Angeles.
The Dodgers since moved to Los Angeles.
Corbis/Icon Sportswire via Getty

The bank claims that it sent out a number of default notices to the owners, adding in the filing that it plans to sell the hotel to recoup the more than $126 million outstanding balance.

For a brief period it looked like it might reopen with a liquor license in August 2019 — a deadline which has come and passed. Last year, the hotel emerged on the IHG Hotels & Resorts websites and other hotel booking sites with rates ranging from $246 to $303 nightly — but still the property never opened.

The foreclosure news comes amid the family-led Chetrit Group moving forward with other high-profile projects, PincusCo noted, including a $78 million Lower East Side development and a $290 million Financial District refinancing. 

The Chetrit Group did not immediately return The Post’s request for comment.

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