Apartment owners at a luxury New York skyscraper are suing the building’s developers over a “far-reaching fraud” in which they allegedly hid structurally significant defects — including “thousands” of severe cracks on the tower’s facade.
The condo board at 432 Park Avenue, a super-skinny high-rise on Manhattan’s Billionaire’s Row, claims that real estate firm CIM Group failed to disclose the extent of damage that has resulted in flooding and impacted the value of their multimillion-dollar properties.
Filed at the state court in New York in late April, the lawsuit also names architecture and engineering companies involved in the project. Condo owners are collectively seeking more than $165 million in damages, according to the complaint.
Completed in 2015, the slender 1,396-foot-tall skyscraper has a 15:1 height-to-width ratio, putting it among the so-called “pencil towers” now dotting midtown Manhattan’s skyline. To protect against high winds, the building was designed with unoccupied floors that encourage airflow, anchors drilled deep into the bedrock and “tuned mass dampers” that act like pendulums to counteract swaying.
Property developer Harry Macklowe — whose firm McGraw Hudson Construction Corp is also named in the suit — compared the tower to the Empire State Building, telling the New York Times in 2013 that it was “the building of the 21st century.” Pop star Jennifer Lopez and Chinese businessman Ye Jianming are among those reported to have purchased units there for eight-figure sums.