It’s the mother of all reality-show plots.
The Trump Organization is taking its dispute with a business school once associated with Kardashian family matriarch Kris Jenner to court, asking a judge to boot it from its Trump Tower space and cough up $1 million in arrears.
Legacy Business School, whose lease at 725 Fifth Avenue was terminated in July, has refused to vacate its space and failed to make any payments since last December, according to a complaint filed by former President Donald Trump’s real estate company in New York County Supreme Court on Friday. Commercial Observer first reported the lawsuit.
Legacy signed a 20-year lease on the 19th floor of Trump Tower in 2010, according to court filings, and opened in 2016 with Jenner as its public face, according to the Daily Beast. The school reportedly charged about $105,000 in annual tuition, but sweetened the deal by offering its first 100 students the perk of dinner with the reality TV star, who chaired its board.
The school came under scrutiny when it was revealed that it was simply a rebranded outpost of the European School of Economics, a for-profit institution accused by the New York State Department of Education of advertising and awarding graduate degrees despite lacking the legal authority to award them.
Legacy has failed to pay more than $1 million in rent, licensing and management fees, interest, real estate taxes and security deposit charges for its 3,400-square-foot space, according to the complaint. About 47 percent of its debts can be attributed to unpaid rent.
The Trump Org notified Legacy in June that it was in default and asked it to pay the $811,000 it owed at the time, according to the lawsuit. The landlord is now asking the court to appoint a sheriff or New York City marshal to kick the school out of the building.
Jenner stepped down from her post at Legacy in the weeks after the Daily Beast reported the allegations, with a spokesperson telling the International Business Times she was “unable to commit the necessary time in support of the school.”
Legacy fell almost $200,000 behind on its rent at Trump Tower in 2020, The Washington Post reported. The school disclosed its debts when it sued its founder Alessandro Nomellini for allegedly defrauding it by taking extra shares of the business. A judge ordered Nomellini to leave Legacy in April.
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