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MetroLoft, the developer behind the Manhattan high rise that suddenly buckled on Tuesday, is facing a $350 million-plus lawsuit at star-studded 443 Greenwich St., home to names including Rebel Wilson, Harry Styles and Meg Ryan over the last decade.
A construction defect case, alleging a number of structural flaws, initially included $250 million in compensation and insurance claims. That figure has since ballooned to $376 million over the course of the last three years of litigation.
A separate case involving alleged defects at that address has former residents Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel as plaintiffs, though MetroLoft is not a defendant in that case.
MetroLoft has also collected a crush of other construction violations while retrofitting New York skyscrapers and former commercial buildings into luxury residences, city records show.
But chief among the complaints is the case at 443 Greenwich St, which started in 2022.
A few years earlier, when it was first developed, MetroLoft marketed the former bookbinding factory as offering ultra-luxury living and Paparazzi-proof privacy.
It quickly attracted A-list buyers like Jennifer Lawrence, Timberlake and Biel, Ryan and Styles — as well as Mike Myers — in a rush of 2017 purchases.
But shortly after moving in, some residents and board members contended the building was full of engineering and construction flaws.
The building’s condo board sued MetroLoft in 2022 for breach of contract and fraud, claiming “life-threatening” shortcuts. The allegations include leaking roofs pouring water into multimillion-dollar penthouses and structural decay so intense that residents could pull decorative bricks from courtyard walls by hand.
Other claims by the board include the plant-filled courtyard being built without a properly functioning drainage system, leading to heavy flooding.
MetroLoft’s legal team has filed several motions attempting to dismiss the case, but New York State Supreme Court judges have declined to do so, keeping the multimillion-dollar litigation moving through discovery, depositions and active appeals.
There are no public records, or information in the lawsuit filings, that indicate the alleged defects are fixed.
In a separate lawsuit filed by Menemshovitz NY Realty, the shell company Timberlake and Biel used to sell their penthouse in 2021 for $29 million, the couple claim their insurers should cover “extensive damage” they say their penthouse received from severe flooding that resulted from stormwater getting into the unit.
The couple is seeking unspecified damages.
The suit was filed last year and is still outstanding despite Biel and Timberlake having moved out of the building several years ago. The insurers, Privilege Underwriters Reciprocal Exchange, has denied liability in its response.
These are not the only troubles MetroLoft is facing.
MetroLoft, helmed by real estate veteran Nathan Berman, now carries 40 open violations on three properties it is working on, DOB records show.
MetroLoft, New York City’s biggest developer of office-to-residential luxury conversions, has converted more than 8 million square feet of space across 16 office-to-residential projects since 1997.
Its issues have grown as it has taken on larger properties, like the former Pfizer headquarters.
The former Pfizer property, at 235 E. 42nd St. — steps from Grand Central and the Chrysler Building — is a combination of two edifices into one residential development.
The work underway aims to yield some 1,600 apartments, whose residents will have access to a roof-level pool and a gym. On Wednesday, construction crews were set to work round the clock the prop up the building, which now has temporary shoring and beams installed on the 18th through 23rd floors. Their work will ultimately span the ninth floors to the roof to keep the site safe.
Moreover, the project has 22 open violations that now include a full emergency stop work order issued Tuesday after its support beams began buckling.
Whatever penalties are connected to this event would be added to MetroLoft’s $32,000 in outstanding unpaid city penalties at this address involving workplace safety and other violations over the past year.
They include a large heavy object falling inside and smashing through five consecutive floors, narrowly missing workers, DOB records show. Also, there have been complaints about welding being done by unlicensed workers and gas machines running inside the structure without proper ventilation, DOB records also show.
Another of MetroLoft’s properties, its 25 Water St. conversion —one of the biggest of its type in the United States —has eight open violations. This follows it resolving 42 others connected to its construction.
Violations include not keeping construction walkways completely clear of debris, not storing building materials properly on a work deck and not keeping site safety logs completely up to date.
MetroLoft’s waterfront office-to-residential retrofit at 111 Wall St. now has 10 open violations, after resolving 18 others.
The violations include a DOB inspector finding a worker operating a Skilsaw improperly. There was also “failure to safeguard the public and property,” when a heavy container fell while being loaded onto a garbage truck, resulting in the hospitalization of a worker, DOB records show.
This project is under construction and will open to residents in 2027, a site worker told The Post.
While the violations at the Water and Wall Street properties do involve measures to heighten safety, none specifically target structure, which the Pfizer development wasn’t contending with either — until Tuesday’s emergency.
A MetroLoft spokesperson declined to comment on the violations and lawsuits and other matters relating to the Pfizer Building fiasco.
These issues come amid a surge in New York City commercial-to-residential conversions driven by high office vacancy rates post-COVID, and the city’s critical shortage of housing. This trend is further propelled by falling commercial property values and government policies, including zoning reforms and tax incentives, to accelerate conversion projects.
–Additional reporting by Jordan Donegan
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