Judge Rules Zelig Weiss must leave William Vale Hotel After Yearslong Dispute

Zelig Weiss may finally get kicked out of the William Vale.

A judge ruled last month that the William Vale’s owner Eos Hospitality can evict Weiss’ company Espresso Hospitality Management from a suite at the Williamsburg hotel. It is unclear whether Weiss himself is living in the suite; he has another apartment in Williamsburg.

Weiss’ company managed the 22-story, 183-room property that he co-developed with his former business partner Yoel Goldman until Eos purchased the property for $177 million at a bankruptcy auction in 2024. Weiss was supposed to move out of the suite after the sale, but he never did, according to the lawsuit Eos filed in Kings County Supreme Court.

Now, the judge has entered a default judgment against Weiss’ company, ruling that it did not file a response to the lawsuit before a deadline set by the court. He directed the sheriff to remove the company from the property.

The ruling comes after Weiss’ lawyer, Jon Brooks, argued that the company had not missed the court-mandated deadline because it had joined Weiss’ legal defense. The judge, however, called this “nonsensical” because Weiss’ defense had blamed the company for squatting.

Though the eviction suit has lasted just a little over a year, the ownership struggle at the heart of the case traces back much further.

Weiss and Goldman were once two of Brooklyn’s most prominent Hasidic developers. When the duo opened the William Vale in 2016, it appeared to be the cherry on top of Goldman’s billion-dollar real estate portfolio that tapped into cheap financing from the Israeli bond market. 

But the empire soon came crashing down. Goldman’s company, All Year Holdings, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2021 after its lenders initiated foreclosures on all of its properties and the company missed payments to its Israeli bondholders. 

Then came Eos, who scored the property in 2024 for $177 million at a bankruptcy auction. The company quickly asked Weiss to move out of the suite his company was using to manage the property. But Weiss didn’t move. By August 2024, Eos served Weiss with a ten-day notice, ordering him to move out. He still didn’t budge. 

In June 2025, Eos filed a lawsuit against Weiss in Kings County Supreme Court, asking the judge to evict him once and for all. The judge, Richard Velasquez, set a deadline of Nov. 20, 2025, for Weiss and his company to respond.

Weiss’ lawyer, Jon Brooks, quickly filed a motion on Sept. 12, 2025, asking the judge to dismiss the lawsuit. He argued that Weiss was not the true occupant of the suite. Instead, it was his company: Espresso Hospitality Management.

But Espresso didn’t file its own motion to dismiss the lawsuit until Jan. 28, two months after the November 2025 deadline. Even then, they joined Weiss’ motion, which argued that Espresso was the true squatter.

The judge pounced on the logical error. In a July 14 ruling, he argued that the company could not join Weiss’ defense since it implicated Espresso. He added that the company had missed the filing deadline by two months and included no additional arguments to exempt it from eviction, leading him to rule by default against the company. Now, it’s on the sheriff to kick the company out.

Neither Weiss’ nor Eos’ attorneys responded to requests for comment.

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