A Seven Pines Tower tenant claims that the Yonkers apartment building has been uninhabitable for nearly two years, yet the owner continued to lease apartments without a valid certificate of occupancy.
Chevelle Bethea accused Seven Pines Associates LP of deceptive business practices in a class action complaint filed Nov. 1 in Westchester Supreme Court.
Instead of obtaining the required certificate of occupancy after apartments were damaged in a fire, the complaint states, Seven Pines Associates “marketed the building for residential tenants and continued to illegally collect rent on occupied units.”
Seven Pines Tower did not respond to an email asking for its side of the story.
The 27-story, 305-apartment structure was built in 1978 at 1 Glenwood Avenue next to the Metro-North Railroad Glenwood station.
On Jan. 6, 2021, a fire broke out in a third floor apartment and spread to the hallway and up one of the staircases, according to a city condemnation notice filed the next day. Elevator doors buckled, fire extinguisher boxes melted, electric and water service were disrupted and 22 apartments were destroyed.
This past July, according to a news article in the New York Real Estate Journal, Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano, Andrew Stillman of H&S Property Management and other officials held an event declaring that the owners had reconstructed the damaged apartments in a multimillion-dollar project.
But Bethea claims that the building owner “perpetrated a fraud” by claiming that the building was suitable for occupancy when in fact it was not, failed to disclose the condition of the building to many tenants, and circumvented fire safety requirements.
Seven Pines Associates is affiliated with Halpern-Stillman Development and H&S Property Management Inc., and Jon Halpern, according to property records, with offices in the Dunwoodie section of Yonkers near Bronxville.
The owners are experienced landlords who are well aware of fire codes and building regulations, according to the complaint. The state multiple dwelling law and Yonkers regulations, for instance, require Seven Pines Tower to have a valid certificate of occupancy. Without the CO, rents may not be collected.
Bethea is asking the court to certify the case as a class action on behalf of all tenants, declare that no rents are due until a certificate of occupancy is obtained, return rents that were paid when there was no CO, and fix all unsafe and illegal conditions in the building.
Five lawsuits were filed previously against Seven Pines Associates by numerous tenants who claim they were injured, for example, from inhaling thick black smoke during the fire. Four cases are pending and one was dismissed when the plaintiffs failed to show up for court proceedings.
Manhattan attorney Karim H. Kamal represents Bethea.
