The residential condo board at 75 Wall Street scored a win in its dispute with its downstairs neighbor.
The board at the Financial District luxury condominium, which sits atop the Hyatt Centric Wall Street Hotel, filed a lawsuit in May arguing that the hotel owed nearly half a million dollars in unpaid common and utility charges.
The suit was filed on behalf of the property master board, which is made up of three residential members and four representatives affiliated with the hotel. This week, the judge ruled that residential members of the master board may place a lien on the hotel unit until its balances have been paid.
The judge also prohibited the hotel’s board affiliates, which constitute a majority on the master board, from taking any action on behalf of the master board or holding a special meeting, something that the hotel’s affiliated board members repeatedly tried to do in the wake of the lawsuit being filed.
The residential board said in a statement it was pleased with the judge’s ruling. The hotel did not respond to a request for comment.
Passing the buck
Things have been awkward at the building for some time now, in what has essentially turned into a bad roommate situation, replete with unattended house meetings and bickering about who owes what.
The hotel is owned by an entity affiliated with Naveen Shah’s Navika Capital, which purchased the portion of the building in 2021 for $85 million. The condo board claimed that the hotel stopped paying utility charges in January 2023 and has not kept current with common charges and special assessments levied since April 2024.
In May 2024, the building’s general manager emailed the master board, telling them that she had continued “to receive emails and calls on a daily basis from vendors wanting to know when they can expect payment,” adding that the vendors were “beyond frustrated and have threatened to suspend services or file a lien if payment is not received soon.”
At that point, the hotel allegedly owed nearly $320,000 in unpaid charges. The master board tried to hold a special meeting in June, but the hotel’s representatives refused to attend, according to testimony from Dhwani Srivastava, the residential and master board president.
The following September, Srivastava emailed the master board to demand that outstanding balances be paid.
This time, the hotel’s board members ordered a special meeting in October, where they agreed to deposit $135,000 into escrow, according to Srivastava.
By March of this year, the funds had not been deposited and the master board took a vote to place a lien on the hotel unit. The vote was defeated, given the hotel’s majority representation on the board, according to Srivastava.
In response, the hotel representatives tried to hold another special meeting in June in an alleged attempt to remove Srivastava as president and replace the master board’s general counsel with the law firm currently representing them, according to Srivastava.
While the two sides argued in court over whether Shah and the hotel representatives had the authority to hold a special meeting, Con Edison informed the building’s general manager on June 18 that service would be shut off by 3:30 p.m. that day if payment was not received.
Shah wired roughly $101,000 that day to pay off a portion of the arrears, but substantially less than the amount the residential board claimed the hotel owed, which had ballooned to over $500,000 by the end of June.
The hotel’s board members sought to hold another special meeting in July, which the judge ruled they were ineligible to organize, given they still owed outstanding balances.
The dispute will now likely center on how much the hotel actually owes. The hotel allegedly is behind on almost $360,000 in utility charges, of which it paid roughly two-thirds “under protest” on June 30. The hotel has claimed it doesn’t owe the remainder of that balance due to incorrect electrical billing.
The board is seeking an additional $700,000 for the hotel unit’s alleged breach of its fiduciary duty.
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Wall Street hotel owes half a million in common charges, condo board alleges
