Glitzy residential development One Madison Park is being foreclosed on before it’s even finished.
A prominent commercial real-estate lender says the developers have defaulted on the mortgage and owe them over $200 million.
In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, iStar Tara claims the borrowers at the problem-plagued luxury condo site have committed “numerous breaches of its obligations under the mortgages,” and the company’s had enough.
It wants to foreclose on the property, sell it, and get a “deficiency judgment” against developers Ira Shapiro and Marc Jacobs and their Slazer Enterprises, who had “guaranteed repayments of certain amounts owed to [iStar].”
Calls to Slazer were not returned.
When it was announced in 2008, the blue-glass One Madison Park was a hot property that attracted Hollywood stars such as Susan Sarandon, Liev Schrieber and Naomi Watts.
Then financing woes hit, and Shapiro and Jacobs found themselves mired in controversy and targeted in lawsuits by other angry lenders and buyers, including ex-Yankees Chairman Harvey Schiller and One Madison Park’s ex-broker Wendy Maitland of Brown Harris Stevens.
The newest suit says the developers defaulted on interest payments, which have not been paid since September and now total over $13 million. They also didn’t keep enough cash on hand to finish the 60-story building on East 23rd Street.
In an interview with The Post on Thursday, Shapiro acknowledges there were “issues” with iStar, but said, “we are hoping to resolve them.” iStar didn’t return calls about what Shapiro had characterized as 11th-hour talks.
The suit says there are a dozen judgments, liens and lawsuits pending against the property. The on-site sales and marketing office has been closed for at least the past week, sources said.
The suit said the foreclosure action would not affect condos that were sold by the developers with iStar’s OK.