Featured in Crain's New York Business: Bike Shop Sues JDS Over Billionaires Row Crane Accident
A Midtown bike shop is blaming Michael Stern’s JDS Development for $150,000 in losses after an accident at his new development at 111 W. 57th St. resulted in street closures, according to a lawsuit led Tuesday in state Supreme Court in Manhattan.
During windy weather in October, a crane being used at the site of JDS’ 85-story luxury building, one block from the shop, began to spin and knocked large pieces of debris onto the street below, prompting road closures that lasted several days.
Central Park Bike Tours on West 58th Street, which offers guided tours and bike rentals to tourists and locals, said it lost six days of business because people couldn’t walk on that street.
After the accident, the city Department of Buildings issued a stop-work order at the site and inspected it for several days to ensure the site was safe enough to reopen. In the meantime, the police shut down Sixth Avenue from 56th to 58th street, and 57th Street from Fifth to Seventh avenue, the complaint said.
“Current and potential customers were either fearful of or not permitted to walk toward [our] store because their lives were in danger,” the shop’s attorney, Gregory Nahas, wrote in the lawsuit.
This isn’t the bike shop’s rst run-in with a developer over lost revenues. It led a similar lawsuit this month against Extell Development over falling icicles by the luxury developer’s Central Park Tower at 217 W. 57th St. The falling ice prompted street closures last year.
In that instance, the shop claimed six days of lost revenue amounting to $150,000 because “current and potential customers were either fearful of or not permitted to walk toward [our] store because their lives were in danger,” Nahas wrote.
The JDS building, formerly known as the Steinway Building, is set to become one of the tallest towers in the city, at more than 1,400 feet, and the skinniest in the world once completed.
It has had its hiccups, though. Stern took his contractor and its insurer to court this month for nearly $12 million over shoddy work that caused water damage and pushed back deadlines. There are several DOB violations led against the project, as well as a partial stop-work order that’s still
active.
The building made headlines again this month when Stern sold a penthouse unit at the property for more than $50 million to an unknown buyer.
Michael Stern did not respond to a request for comment.