The founding owner of a company formed to make a quick profit on Yorktown properties assembled for sale to a retail developer faces more lawsuits from a broker, a deceased broker”™s estate and attorneys since the land deal was stalled because of the owner”™s legal feud and bitter falling-out with his partner and a developer.
Sammy Eljamal, founding partner of Best Rent Properties 202 L.L.C. and owner of Wholesale Fuels Co., in Thornwood, one year ago was ordered by a state Supreme Court judge to stop his attempts to block his Best Rent company”™s $6 million sale of a 14-acre property off the intersection of Route 202 and the Taconic State Parkway to Retail Store Construction Co. Inc., the construction arm of Long Island developer Wilbur Breslin.
Breslin, president and CEO of Breslin Realty Development Corp. in Garden City, is seeking approval this year from the town of Yorktown of a final environmental impact statement for his proposal to build a 151,000-square-foot Costco Wholesale Club store and gas filling station on the site of the abandoned Yorktown Country Inn owned by Best Rent Properties.
Eljamal, though, in 2010 refused to close on the deal he and partner Majed “Mitch” Nesheiwat struck with Breslin the previous year, when the initial sale price was $7 million. Eljamal admitted to the court that he acted in his personal interests, fearing the Costco station would compete against and undercut prices at several gas stations he owns in the area.
At the time he began lobbying against the deal with town officials, Eljamal also was a managing member of New York Dealer Stations L.L.C., a newly formed company that had recently acquired about 80 Shell service stations in Westchester, Brooklyn and on Long Island. Eljamal and his family also have a long history as owners and operators of Mobil stations in the county.
Nesheiwat went to court, backed by the developer, to force Eljamal to complete the Costco deal. Eljamal in turn sued his partner and Retail Store Construction and asked the court to rescind the sale contract, claiming he was not aware of the Costco gas station plans when he signed the purchase agreement.
In a second decision last December, Supreme Court Justice Sam D. Walker ordered Eljamal to indemnify Best Rent Properties for all damages or costs incurred by the company because of his opposition to the sale. The deal now is expected to close once the Costco developer obtains town approvals for the project, which has been opposed by a group of Yorktown residents.
“That closing could get bloody,” said a real estate source, alluding to the mutual hostility between Eljamal and Nesheiwat, a Poughkeepsie-based owner of fuel distribution, convenience store and construction businesses in the Hudson Valley.
The held-up deal also has prompted legal action by commercial broker Jerry Gershner, owner of Gershner Realty Services in Ossining.
Gershner has gone to court seeking to collect a total of $320,500 in unpaid brokerage fees from Eljamal, Best Rent Properties and New York Dealer Stations for the 2009 sale to Breslin of the three Yorktown properties. The broker had represented Eljamal in other property purchases in the county.
Eljamal”™s former attorney in White Plains, Albert J. Pirro Jr., withdrew from the case last October, claiming his client owed him about $4,900 in legal fees. Eljamal is acting as his own attorney in his defense against Gershner.
Gershner said both Eljamal and Nesheiwat in depositions said they will pay him for his broker services when the sale closes. Yet he said he is ready to go to trial with his suit. “I”™m looking for some written assurance” that he will be paid, he said.
The widow of Gershner”™s co-broker in the 4-year-old land deal, Marshall Winston, the late president of SCS Retail Real Estate Ltd. in Armonk, also is seeking to collect unpaid brokerage fees owed her husband. In a complaint filed in state Supreme Court in January, Helene Winston, executrix of her husband”™s estate, claimed he was owed $220,000 by Eljamal and Best Rent Properties.
Gershner said Winston was looking to bring a Hannaford Supermarket to northern Westchester. But the company did not like the site and Winston offered it instead to the Costco developer. “And so he brought Breslin to the table,” he said.
“No one ever thought it would take this long,” said Gershner.
