“It’s almost like peeling an onion,” Jonathan Adelsberg, a partner at Herrick Feinstein, which is representing the board, told the Times of all the building’s problems. They claim the Sponsor alleges to have fixed hundreds of defects, but their review found only nine repaired, with many problems left completely untouched.
DOWNSIDE LIFE TOWER CREAKS BREAKS FREE
The board alleges the Sponsor ”refused to accept responsibility for the vast majority of its errors, shamelessly seeking to foist the costs of repairs back onto the unit owners for defects that have existed from the beginning.”Įven some of the building’s luxury perks have become liabilities: Promised free breakfast in the in-house restaurant with a “Michelin-rated chef,” residents say they now have to spend $15,000 a year just to subsidize the restaurant’s operation.Ĭommon charges jumped nearly 40% in 2019, and the condo’s property insurance premiums have allegedly skyrocketed by roughly 300%, due in part to repairs.įrustrated by what they saw as the developers’ inaction, the unit owners commissioned their own independent engineering reports. The repairs, which required evacuating residents and turning off the skyscraper’s electricity, reportedly cost upwards of $1.5 million. In one alleged instance, a worker attempting “a band-aid fix” to the water infiltration system drilled into the building’s electrical wiring, causing an explosion that threw him “several feet through the air” and shut down air-conditioning in many units. Those half-hearted attempts have reportedly included slapdash repairs that caused millions of additional dollars in costs and outages. “These defects are so severe,” per the complaint, “that some residents have been completely displaced from their units for periods in excess of 19 months while the Sponsor half-heartedly attempted to fix the problems.” But, according to the lawsuit, even CIM Group chair Richard Ressler, a fellow resident, admitted in “an unguarded moment” that the sound and vibration issues were “intolerable” and made it hard to sleep during bad weather. The buildings’ elevators, programmed to slow down during high winds, have repeatedly shut down and trapped residents for hours “on multiple occasions.”Įvery 12th floor is an unenclosed space, intended to allow air currents to pass through, decreasing wind resistance and cutting down on stress to the structure. The suit accuses CIM and Macklowe of “one of the worst examples of Sponsor malfeasance in the development of a luxury condominium in the history of New York City.” “If I knew then what I know now, I would have never bought.” “Everything here was camouflage,” Abramovich told the Times in February. Three years ago, a water leak several floors above seeped into the Abramoviches’ home, causing an estimated $500,000 in damages. She rode up to their apartment in a freight elevator “surrounded by steel plates and plywood, with a hard-hat operator.” On their move-in date, Abramovich claimed, both their unit and the building were still under construction.
Sarina Abramovich told the paper she and her husband bought a high-floor unit at 432 Park for nearly $17 million in 2016. Another home is also currently on the market for $135 million, as Architectural Digest reported earlier this month.īut the cracks in the veneer really emerged in February, when The New York Times reported on many of the residents’ grievances. Saudi retail billionaire Fawaz Alhokair purchased the 96th-floor penthouse in 2016 for $88 million, but he is also selling: Alhokair listed the six-bedroom aerie this summer for $169 million, including artwork and furnishings. Of course, they only kept their three-bedroom condo for about a year.
While many occupants purchased properties anonymously through shell companies, known buyers included former flames Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez, who purchased a 4,000-square-foot apartment at 432 Park in 2018 for $15.3 million. Some critics compared Rafael Viñoly’s 125-unit tower to a middle finger jutting above the Midtown skyline, but it still had a projected sellout value of $3.1 billion. When the 1,396-foot-tall skyscraper was completed in 2015, it was the envy of Billionaires Row and the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere.
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