Kent Swig's 740 Park Avenue shitshow appears to be drawing to a close, but what a shitshow it was. The Bank of America made repeated attempts to foreclose on Swig's 16-room duplex in America's Richest Building, on which Swig and his estranged wife Elizabeth (daughter of Harry Macklowe) took out two loans totaling a little under $18 million, then stopped making monthly payments in June of 2009. Elizabeth later alleged that Swig had lied to her and used the money to pay off business debts. That information was revealed this May, when she was suing him for punitive damages while her father was simultaneously suing him for failing to repay a loan and he was accusing both of them of forging his signature on insurance checks. Anyway, it seems like the unhappy couple has somehow maintained ownership of the apartment, and has now put it on the market for $32.5 million. (Perhaps tellingly, the apartment is listed by Brown Harris Stevens, which Swig owns.) It sounds like they could use the money, since they currently have roughly eight million lawsuits going.
The entire episode has been an embarrassing one for 740 Park, which has been the subject of a book by Michael Gross, which was later adapted into a movie. The building's current residents include such superrich people as David Koch, Vera Wang, Howard Marks, John Thain, and Jonathan Sobel. Swig isn't the only occupant stained by controversy, however—Ezra Merkin, who owns a sixth/seventh-floor duplex, was forced to pay $405 million in 2012 to settle charges relating to his role in the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme. We can't wait to see what his apartment looks like.
· Listing: 740 Park Avenue #2/3D [Brown Harris Stevens]
· 740 Park Avenue coverage [Curbed]
· Kent Swig coverage [Curbed]
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