It is “out with the old” in more ways than one.
The long and sordid saga of Park Slope’s Prospect Park Residence finally came to an end this week, when the landlord closed the sale of the tony Prospect Park West old folks home building for $84 million, according to broker Terra CRG — more than two years after he first tried to clear out and offload the property but was instead met with a fierce legal battle from some of his elderly tenants.
Deitsch sold the ritzy nine-story, 134-unit building near Grand Army Plaza to investment firm Sugar Hill Capital Partners, according to a Real Deal report.
The sale comes just days after the five remaining elders moved out in exchange for a $3.35 million settlement reached in June. The funds are finally in the oldsters’ attorneys’ hands after months of delays while Deitsch and Sugar Hill squabbled over who would cough up the cash, and comes as a great relief to the oldsters and their loved ones, who feared the landlord would somehow weasel out of paying.
“At least it worked,” said Nancy Richardson, whose 93-year-old friend Annemarie Mogil lived in the building until recently. “They moved. They’ve gotten the money.”
Deitsch — the son-in-law of controversial developer Shaya Boymelgreen — cut a deal to sell the property to Sugar Hill in 2014, but the sale stalled after a handful of seniors in the then-unlicensed nursing home sued over his efforts to hastily evict them, and a judge ordered him to keep the facility open for them throughout what ended up being a lengthy court battle.
Throughout the high-profile case, the tenants and their loved ones accused Deitsch of trying to harass them out — and thus end the case — by raising the rent, serving moldy food, and refusing to turn on the central air conditioning in summer.
Deitsch’s attorneys maintained throughout the proceedings that he was just trying to keep the business solvent while having to keep the massive building open for just nine people — which eventually dwindled down to five as some died and others moved out. The judge nevertheless ripped the reins out of Deitsch’s hands and placed a professional nursing-home caretaker in charge in May last year.
Earlier this year, Deitsch defaulted on the $33.4 million mortgage he took out to buy the Prospect Park Residence building in 2006, and a real-estate investment firm — Madison Realty Capital, according to the Real Deal — tried to foreclose on the property.
The property also has $10 million in liens on it in connection to separate lawsuits filed by the families of former tenants over the alleged wrongful deaths of their loved ones. That money will be placed in escrow until that case is resolved.
