SoHo Alliance News: We Trumped Trump!

News from the SoHo Alliance:

Since 2007 the SoHo Alliance has been fighting Trump's end-run around our zoning laws, when he attempted to build residential condos (which are not permitted here without community review), but slyly called his project a hotel, which use is legal here.

Our lawyer, Stuart Klein, filed two lawsuits in NYS Supreme Court as well as several official complaints with the Security and Exchange Commission in Washington and the NYS Attorney-General in Albany, notifying them of discrepancies in Trump's Offering Plan.

We also successfully lobbied Council Speaker Christine Quinn to limit the time that an owner could use the unit to 29 days at any one time, and 120 days maximum a year.

The result of these combined actions is that few people bought into Trump's scheme. Those who did soon realized that they were duped by Trump and sued him.

This week the Post reported that Trump had to refund 90% of the deposit to these buyers. The Post further reported that Trump SoHo is now running as a hotel, which is what we wanted all along. It was a long and arduous struggle, but we finally succeeded in upholding our zoning laws. Trump and other unscrupulous operators won't be trying this scheme again. Thanks to all who helped!