Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on January 3, 2015

A prominent Jewish Manhattan real estate executive claims he was left red-faced and out in the cold after the buyer of his Garment District building locked him out of his personal office and his synagogue preventing him from attending a service on the first day of Chanukah.

Abe Talassazan, head of the Eretz group, says he inked a deal to sell his building at 485 Seventh Ave. for a whopping $182 million to real estate giant the Lightstone Group in November with assurances that Lightstone would allow him and his company to remain in their offices at the property, which also included a small synagogue for daily prayer services, for up to six months.

Instead, Lightstone allegedly changed course inexplicably and served Eretz with a vacate notice as soon as the ink was dry on the closing documents. Days later, Talassazan and his partners had been locked out of their spaces. When they tried to attend the synagogue on December 17th , they were instructed to wait in the lobby for the cops.

They left them in the lobby, subjected to humiliation as they awaited the police, according to a lawsuit filed this week in State Supreme Court. They intentionally interfered with persons seeking to exercise the right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.

The Eretz Group wants back into its office space and $5 million in damages.

Spokespersons for both companies were not immediately available for comment.

Meanwhile, Lightstone reportedly has plans to convert the landmarked 263,000-square-foot Seventh Ave. property, which sits between W. 36th and W. 37th Sts., into a high-end hotel or office building. The building, which dates back to 1906, was once home to the worlds largest hotel for single working men.

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Jewish real estate developer locked out of synagogue

Category: Synagogue
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