The owner of mixed-use building Bloom on 45th in Manhattan has filed for bankruptcy, saying fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic as well as interest-rate hikes have made it unable to meet its debt obligations, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Hudson 888 sought protection from creditors Sunday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan after it failed last Friday to reach a debt-restructuring settlement with a secured lender owed a total of $79.8 million. The property, at 500 W. 45th St., was built in 2020. Roughly 60 residential units of the 92-unit luxury condo property in Hell’s Kitchen are unsold. “As a result of the pandemic restrictions in place for more than two years, residential sales of the project did not meet the projections” of the owner and original lenders, Hudson 888 Chief Executive Sheng Zhang said in a filing. When pandemic restrictions started easing in 2022, the Federal Reserve began successive interest rate hikes to combat inflation. “Those increases in interest rates caused mortgage rates to increase, which put downward pressure on the condominium sales market,” the CEO said in the filing. Hudson began defaulting on its debt in late 2022.
