Ashkenazy’s Marriott East Facet lodge caught in between feuding expense partners

“Deka is happy with the court’s unanimous selection and seems to be ahead to continuing to vindicate its rights,” firm attorney Jed Bergman stated.

Deka, the guarantor on the financial loan, paid off its amount in June, as for every an arrangement. Weeks immediately after spending the whole $136 million to the financial institution, German bank BayernLB, the expense company sued Lexington Avenue Lodge, proclaiming it now owed its credit card debt to Deka.

Representatives for the hotel’s ownership claimed that Deka has no rights to the revenue due to the fact it produced the option to pay off the bank loan in its place of having an extension. It never ever obtained consent from the partnership to do so, in accordance to files submitted with the courtroom.

A state Supreme Court docket judge refused to situation a ruling without a trial, but the appellate panel resolved in favor of the German investor recouping its income. To do that, Deka would need to have to go just after the partnership’s belongings, which incorporate the hotel and its bank balance.

Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, even so, the hotel’s value could be severely diminished. It has not attained a nickel in much more than a year.

The associates have experienced their fair share of challenges with the 655-area lodge. 

In 2019 Deka sued Ashkenazy, boasting that the latter experienced reneged on their $174 million deal to acquire the hotel outright from the German company.

Nine months back, they sued Marriott for using out $12 million from its routine maintenance and mend reserves to address other expenses while the resort remained shut by means of the pandemic. The fit was afterwards dropped, but Marriott is no for a longer time functioning the lodge.

In February a further a single of their creditors, DekaBank, commenced foreclosures proceedings from the partnership around a $53 million home loan that went unpaid. That scenario is ongoing. 

If the lodge is offered to get well money, Deka Immobilien would have to satisfy DekaBank’s financial loan in advance of having any funds for by itself.

The expenditure companions procured the hotel for $270 million from Morgan Stanley in 2015 and attempted to sell it, unsuccessfully, at minimum 2 times given that then. The resort is now forever shut.

The century-old hotel garnered fame in its heyday for its roster of celebrity consumers and residents. Artists Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe lived there collectively starting in 1925 and in 1971. It shut to the general public as a resort. Immediately after many renovations, Marriott turned its operator in 1990. That exact yr, Meir Kahane, a famous American-Israeli rabbi and previous Knesset member, was assassinated there.

Associates for Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp. declined to comment.