The boutique City Club Hotel at 55 West 44th Street is set to double its room count after securing $36 million in new loans from Starwood Property Trust, according to the Wall Street Journal. City Club’s owners, led by hoteliers Stephen Brighenti, Jeffrey Klein and Russell Hernandez, will use up to $13 million of the financing to build 66 rooms on top of the existing 65.
“Our best-case scenario is that in six to eight months we’ll have [city] approval to proceed,” Brighenti said . “Whereas the original rooms are more traditional, these will be more open and loft-like. Half of the new rooms will have balcony terraces.” [more]

From left: James Dimon, whose firm JPMorgan Chase owes $300,000; Crowne Plaza JFK, which owes $944,491; the Holiday Inn JFK, which owes $852,239; Gordon DuGan, whose firm W. P. Carey & Co. owes $464,000 (Dimon photo source: Public Intelligence)

Tax debtors beware: New York State is calling you out.

Last Friday, the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance went live on its Web site with lists of the top 250 individual and corporate tax debtors in the state.

The individual debtors range from Onandaga County resident Bradley Cooke, who owes $381,509, to Irving Bilzinsky, the former Scores strip clubs owner from Brooklyn who topped out the list with more than $15 million outstanding taxes from between 2007 and 2009. Among businesses, Gui Hong Chen, of Queens, took the top spot with more than $19 million in unpaid corporate taxes.

This week, The Real Deal combed through the newly-public documents to find the worst offenders in New York City real estate.

They include luxury broker Agnes Nolan and her late husband, who owe more than $850,000 in personal income taxes, a subsidiary of real estate investment firm W.P. Carey, which has a warrant out for roughly $464,000, and JPMorgan Chase Bank, which owes upwards of $300,000 (see the full list after the jump).

Perhaps the highest-profile individuals listed were Ponzi-schemer Bernard Madoff (No. 69, with $984,281 in sales taxes) and celebrity fashion photographer Annie Leibovitz (No. 83, with $503,740 in personal income taxes outstanding). Earlier this week, Leibovitz narrowly avoided emergency sales of her four New York homes — three Greenwich Village brownstones and part of the Astor family’s estate in Rhinebeck, N.Y. — when a Los Angeles private equity firm specializing in distressed real estate agreed to take on her millions of dollars in debt. [more]

1861 Bronxdale Avenue

From the January issue: Last month’s big foreclosure legislation was signed in Morris Park, a
middle-class enclave of leafy streets and tidy brick homes in the Bronx
where the bill’s co-sponsor, Senator Jeffrey Klein, grew up.
During the first three quarters of 2009, the Furman Center counted
190 foreclosure filings in the community district — the fourth highest
in the Bronx, where the overall quarterly foreclosure filing rate shot
up by 42 percent last year. In fact, four of the five community
districts in the Bronx that have the highest median incomes also saw
the most foreclosure filings (Riverdale-Soundview is the one
exception). Klein said he’s watched empty homes in his neighborhood become
havens for rats, vandals, druggies and squatters; and has heard stories
of marshals evicting unknowing tenants whose landlords were foreclosed
on.

State Senator Jeffrey Klein and Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries said
Governor David Paterson’s effort to prevent foreclosures with mandatory
settlement conferences between lenders and borrowers of subprime loans
who are in default has been largely ineffective. In Queens, 419
conferences between October 2008 and April led to 16 settlements, and
in Brooklyn, 759 conferences resulted in 22 settlements, according to
New York Acorn. Klein and Jeffries said borrowers are going into the
meetings with a lack of understanding about the foreclosure process,
and that lenders are sending representatives who do not have the
authority to modify loans. The two lawmakers introduced new legislation
to revamp the process, which would require a borrower to meet with a
housing counselor before the settlement meeting to work out a financial
plan. [more]