$100M Rector Square Lawsuit Names Developer, Manager

The poor unfortunate souls who bought into Battery Park City's Rector Square are mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore! Well, everyone except Augusten Burroughs, that is. He's still cool with the place. A group of 45 unit buyers have filed a $100 million lawsuit against the parties involved in the failed/abandoned/foreclosed/auctioned condo conversion, our sixth most frightening building in NYC. The Real Deal has the details, and they're fairly epic. Here's who the Battery Park City Hell Building buyers are going after, and why:

1) Yair Levy: The bucket-swinging developer is the big target here. The buyers say he failed to complete construction of the building (duh), converted reserve funds for his own use and failed to make the land-lease payments to the Battery Park City Authority. Oh, and he allegedly also sold a block of units to an Italian university for use as a dorm and rented apartments as extended-stay hotel rooms, both violations of local zoning laws.

2) Michael Shvo: His Shvoness gets hit up for "false advertising and misrepresenting the amenities, renovations to the building, construction schedule and otherwise acting in bad faith with the owners." But what renderings they were!

3) Cooper Square Realty: The former rental building's old management firm is accused of using cash from the building's reserve and working fund for "other purposes" and mismanaging other funds, like "co-mingling security deposits and move-in deposits with the building account and failure to monitor the use of these various accounts."

One hundred meeeeellion dollars! That may just buy enough chlorine for that pool.
 

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