The Ansonia Hotel and John Lennon on the “Abbey Road” album

A Manhattan landlord has finally collected payment on a deadbeat psychic who skipped out on his rent payments at the Upper West Side’s Ansonia, and withheld thousands of dollars he made in a sale of an iconic John Lennon suit.

A court had previously ruled that psychic and memorabilia collector Biond Fury owed the building, at 2109 Broadway, near 73rd Street, $21,000 after skipping out on his rent payments, but Norwalk, Conn.-based Braswell Galleries went through with a planned auction of the white suit that Lennon wore on the Beatles’ classic “Abby Road” album.
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New York City multi-family landlords who took advantage of the same J-51 tax abatement program that got Stuyvesant Town into legal trouble are facing legal battles of their own, according to a Deutsche Bank report released this week. The report, a culmination of an analysis of hundreds of these tax break recipients whose loans are secured by commercial mortgage-backed securities, said landlords of properties like the tony Belnord and the Ansonia on the Upper West Side, as well as the Meyberry House on the Upper East Side, would have to make due with decreased operating income as a result of the October Stuyvesant Town ruling, which stipulated that rents cannot be destabilized while J-51 is being utilized. “In the longer term, owners may face decreased investor demand for rent-stabilized properties since the growth rate of cash flow is now severely limited,” the report said. Many rent-stabilized buildings will not be able to increase tenants’ monthly payments until 2017, according to the report. The Belnord, which has a loan balance of $375 million, topped Deutsche Bank’s list of largest CMBS loans on properties affected by the ruling.

A construction worker fell to his death yesterday evening at the
Ansonia, at 438 12th Street in Park Slope. The construction worker,
Henryk Siebor, stepped onto a scaffold that gave way and fell, and two
other workers were left dangling in the air on harnesses. Both
mechanical failure and human error played a role in the accident,
authorities said. The workers have been replacing bricks on the facade
of the building, a former clock tower, for three months. A Department
of Buildings spokesperson said a stop-work order had been issued for the
site and citations were expected following an investigation. [more]