44.0°,
Mostly Cloudy Long Beach Superblock appeal denied
Judge: City must pay former owners $19 million
In what has been described as a setback for the city in the long and tedious legal saga involving the Superblock, the New York State Court of Appeals has rejected Long Beach’s appeal of a ruling earlier this year that awarded two former owners of the property millions of dollars, after the court said they were underpaid when the city acquired the property through eminent domain nearly a decade ago.
On Sept. 3, Chief Justice Jonathan Lippman rejected the city’s request to appeal a state appellate court’s decision in January.
The appellate court affirmed State Supreme Court Judge Thomas Adams’s 2012 ruling in favor of former owners Sun NLF Limited Partnership and developers Louis Bombart and Steve Silverberg, who owned a total of five parcels on the six-acre Superblock.
According to the city, Adams ruled that Sun NLF and Bombart and Silverberg were each entitled to $5.5 million more than what the city had initially paid. The city must also pay 6 percent annual interest, plus attorneys’ fees.
Though the city settled its lawsuit with iStar Financial and Philips International, the current and former owners of the property, respectively, for $5.25 million payable to the city last year, officials called the eminent domain case the only remaining litigation involving the Superblock. The ruling means that the city is on the hook for a whopping $19 million.
City Manager Jack Schnirman called it a setback as the city recovers from Hurricane Sandy and after officials worked to improve Long Beach’s finances following a fiscal crisis the administration “inherited” when it took office in 2012.
“It’s important to remember that all the actions taken in this case were taken by prior administrations,” said Schnirman. “This is frustrating — it’s a setback for the city as we recover, and just another challenge that we’ve inherited to deal with. But Long Beach is incredibly resilient, and we’ve overcome a variety of these challenges.”
