Club members battling Toll Bros. over PB property

Members of the Frenchman’s Reserve Grande Clubhouse, 45,000-square-foot facility overlooking an Arnold Palmer golf course, are suing Toll Brothers for allegedly soaking up surplus cash from operations to offset earlier losses. They are seeking more than $15 million in damages plus legal costs.

Toll Brothers spent an estimated $31 million to build the clubhouse in 2001. Now it has become the site of an approximately 470-home development, according to the Palm Beach Post.

But according to a lawsuit, the publicly held developer delayed the turnover, failed to maintain financial records, used surpluses to offset their deficits and left with assets of the club, “including at least a snack cart, rugs and furnishings.”

However, Toll Brothers denies the accusations saying that it did nothing wrong.

“The club documents specifically provide for when turnover is supposed to happen — upon sale of the proper number of memberships in the club, which has now occurred,” attorney Michael Napoleone said Monday. “The turnover was always going to happen. It was just a questions of when, not if,” said West Palm Beach attorney Napoleone, who is teamed with partner Gerald Richman in the case. [Palm Beach Post] – Christopher Cameron