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JDS’s Lower East Side skyscraper hit with a lawsuit over adjacent site

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The suit comes a month after work on the site was put on hold

Bad news for JDS Development: A month after progress on the firm’s Lower East Side skyscraper was halted due to a lawsuit over an adjacent site, it’s been hit with a lawsuit of its own over the same parcel of land.

Crain’s reports that developers Gary Spindler and Roy Schoenberg, operating under the name Little Cherry, are suing JDS head Michael Stern over the development rights for 235 Cherry Street, where the latter intends to build a not-quite-supertall tower. Last month, Spindler and Schoenberg sued the Settlement Housing Fund and the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council over breach of contract; initially, those nonprofits were working on a deal for the rights with Little Cherry, but ended up selling to JDS instead.

Per Crain’s, the lawsuit against Stern alleges the following:

[The lawsuit] accuses Stern of helping the nonprofits undermine their contract In addition, because Little Cherry holds a ground lease on 235 Cherry St., it argues that it has to approve the sale of development rights to Stern and since Little Cherry does not plan on giving its consent, the firm argues that the deal is not valid.

Little Cherry wants, among other things, to stop Stern from "proceeding or pitching his project to the city or community." The Department of City Planning halted any further progress on the site until the initial suit was settled, so the second one presents another setback.

247 Cherry Street

247 Cherry Street, New York, NY 10002