95 Madison placed in bankruptcy, valued at $50M or more

By Adam Pincus

The owner of the landmarked Emmet Building, at 95 Madison Avenue at the corner of 29th Street, placed the building in bankruptcy protection yesterday, valuing the building between $50 million and $100 million and listing liabilities of $4.8 million, according to the petition filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. There is no mortgage debt recorded on the building.

The petitioner was Rita Sklar, of RAS Property Management. She and her now-deceased half-sister Lois Weinstein owned the property that has been in the family’s hands since the 1940s. Weinstein fought with Sklar through a lawsuit alleging mismanagement by Sklar and a petition in New York State Supreme Court in June 2019, seeking a partition and sale of property. However, in November 2019 Weinstein died. A ruling found her executors did not have standing to continue the litigation in her stead, but the executors have appealed.

Sklar or 95 Madison have been involved in several additional civil court actions over the past few years. The Rockefeller Group sued Sklar as it related to alleged delays in giving the developer the right to access 95 Madison as part of its construction of a neighboring new tower; Vitra, an office furniture designer sued and obtained a $1.85 million judgment; and Sklar’s own law litigation firm Verill Dana LLP, is owed $875,000 according to the filing.

The attorney who filed the bankruptcy petition was Charles E. Simpson of Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf.

The property is a 146,161-square-foot commercial building, constructed in 1913. The building has an estimated $6.7 million in gross income and a net operating income of about $2.7 million, according to an analysis of city assessment figures.