Proposed Port Chester complex stalled in partnership feud

A $140 million residential and retail complex proposed for a prime location in downtown Port Chester has become mired in a partnership dispute.

West Harrison contractor Jean Sinis is demanding $30 million from Greenwich real estate developer Michael Caridi, in a complaint filed Oct. 12 in Westchester Supreme Court, contending that Caridi broke their deals.

Caridi, president of Majic Realty, says the complaint contains multiple misstatements, in responses to requests for his side of the story, and he provided a 2016 letter that indicates that the partnership was terminated two months after it began.

The proposed 12-story structure would be built at South Main Street and East Broadway, a block away from the Port Chester train station. The initial plans proposed 110 apartments, a 120-room hotel, 41,000 square feet of retail space and a parking garage.

The project was presented to the Port Chester planning commission last year, nearly four years after Sinis and Caridi formed a partnership.

In 2016, they signed a memorandum of understanding in which they agreed to jointly develop the project. Sinis would acquire several family-owned properties for the project and work with Caridi on acquiring adjacent properties, for $14.6 million to $15.6 million. Caridi would raise funds from outside investors and seek village approvals for the project.

The men also agreed in October 2016 that they would not disclose financial or business information without one another’s consent and they would not circumvent the partnership deal.

Sinis says he did his part by contributing property he owned or controlled to the joint venture, The Complex at Sinis Towers, according to the complaint.

He claims that Caridi breached their deals by acquiring properties for the project on his own and thereby acting in his own interest rather than their joint interests.

Caridi says the complaint contains “readily verifiable falsehoods.” Sinis claimed he contributed property to the joint venture, for instance, but the transfer documents “do not exist and no transfer happened.”

In a December 2016 letter to Sinis, Caridi disavows their agreements and alleges several breaches by Sinis. He says Sinis failed to disclose a foreclosure case against one or more of the project properties, for example, and misrepresented his ownership of several properties.

“Our partnership is now terminated,” Caridi wrote, “and any of our agreements … are null and void.”

Sinis is represented by Manhattan attorney Kenneth F. McCallion. Caridi is represented by Manhattan attorney Robert J. Hantman.