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The MONY Group Inc. has moved to foreclose on properties controlled by high-profile developer Phil Pilevsky. Partnerships led by him have defaulted on mortgages on two Long Island shopping centers, MONY says.
MONY--which was known as The Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York until a recent public offering--is trying to collect on mortgages that came due more than a year ago. The company is owed about $6.3 million for financing on Philips Plaza in Lynbrook, and some $7.4 million for financing on Riverhead Plaza in Riverhead, according to state foreclosure suits filed in Nassau and Suffolk counties.
Mr. Pilevsky was the principal of the two partnerships that owned the properties when the loans were made in 1987. The shopping centers are not part of the holdings of his publicly traded real estate investment trust, Philips International Realty Corp. He says he no longer holds an ownership stake in one of the shopping centers.
The foreclosure action may be a sign that after years of prosperity in New York real estate, a new round of contentious workouts between owners and lenders, similar to those in the early 1990s, is about to emerge. Mr. Pilevsky and the insurance company were in workout negotiations for about a year before talks broke off.
Mr. Pilevsky, who rolled 13 of his strip centers into a REIT offering in May, is one of the comeback kids of Manhattan real estate. He gained fame at the beginning of the 1980s by bankrolling Studio 54 owners Ian Schrager and Steve...