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Illegal Hotel Guests at UWS Building Will Not Be Removed — For Now

By Kathleen Culliton | July 26, 2016 4:43pm
 Imperial Court Hotel tenants protested outside Manhattan Supreme Court on Tuesday.
Imperial Court Hotel tenants protested outside Manhattan Supreme Court on Tuesday.
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Kathleen Culliton

UPPER WEST SIDE — Temporary guests accused of terrorizing permanent residents at a West 79th Street building offering illegal short-term stays cannot yet be removed after a Manhattan Supreme Court judge deferred an expected ruling on the issue Tuesday.

Instead, owners of the Imperial Court Hotel have been given one week to prove that the removals would force them to break contracts with its transient tenants, Justice Kathryn Freed ruled. 

“We hoped for a quick decision,” said attorney Stephanie Rudolph, who represents five permanent tenants who sought to have the hotel guests removed from their building within the next 24 hours.

“Every day that passes is yet another day that the clients are suffering."

Michael Edelstein, owner of the Single Room Occupancy (SRO) dwelling at 307 W. 79th St., was fined $65,000 in March for violating the state's Multiple Dwelling Law, which mandates that the building’s units be rented on at least a 30-day basis.

When city officials found Edelstein rented 99 of the building’s 227 units to transient occupants, or guest staying for fewer than 30 days, they filed a temporary restraining order mandating he stop taking short-term reservations.

On Tuesday, Edelstein’s attorney Cornelius Zimmerman argued that his client is contractually obligated to honor the 504 reservations booked through December and should be allowed to do so because it was never proven that transient occupants caused problems in the building, including slow elevators, excessive garbage and sullied common areas.

“This is all invented,” Zimmerman said. “This is all, you know, fiction.”

The tenants' attorney Rachel Hannaford countered that because the rentals are illegal and the guests are a nuisance, they should not be allowed to stay.

“Every day they live in the illegal hotel, they suffer,” Hannaford said of her clients. “There’s absolutely no legal justification.”

Imperial Court resident and kindergarten teacher Richard Amelius, 41, said he witnessed prostitution, drug use and fights in the building hallways.

And resident Ilona Farkas, 36, said temporary guest once threw a lit cigarette into her apartment.

“To be made to feel unsafe in your own home,” she said, “that’s the definition of harassment.”

Edelstein's attorney has until Aug. 3 to submit the rental contracts to the judge, who is expected rule next week whether he would be held liable if he canceled the reservations.