A new lawsuit by 432 Park’s condo board alleges the building’s developers ignored and warnings about cracks in its high-rise’s concrete facade and tried to cover up the defects.
Photo: Jon Bilous/Shutterstock
Owners at 432 Park Avenue have filed another lawsuit against the condo’s developers. Just a few years after alleging in a separate suit that the 96-story tower on Billionaire’s Row has at least 1,500 defects (including a trash chute that allegedly “sounds like a bomb”), owners on Friday filed a complaint in Manhattan Supreme Court claiming developers Harry Macklowe and CIM Group knew about widespread cracking in the building’s exposed concrete façade and engaged in “deliberate and far-reaching fraud” to cover it up.
432 Park’s condo board alleged in the latest suit, which was first reported by Crain’s, that CIM and Macklowe not only ignored warnings from architects and engineers about the crisscrossing exterior’s cracking but hid these problems from city inspectors and buyers in hopes of “avoiding delays and maximizing profits.” The suit, which is seeking at least $165 million in damages, plus compensation for depressed property values, claims that the “thousands” of cracks led to flooding and corrosion in the building.
The cracks aren’t exactly new. In October 2015, just a few months before the Rafael Viñoly–designed building opened, sources told writer Michael Gross that some “nasty stuff” called Silicane was allegedly being applied to the building’s exterior to address the cracking. And the initial 2021 lawsuit highlighted the exterior’s apparent defects on top of a slew of other issues, including claims that it was impossible for residents to sleep due to vibration issues and noise. (The lawsuit, meanwhile, came in the wake of a damning report by the New York Times that described the 1,400-foot-tall building as being plagued with elevator problems and millions of dollars in water damage stemming from plumbing and mechanical issues.) What the latest suit claims is that during 432 Park’s construction, between 2011 and 2015, the developers were well aware of the cracking in the building’s façade but failed to adequately address the defects and even attempted to hide them. Per the suit, this information was unearthed after lawyers for the owners read through 7 million pages of documents and conducted 100 days of depositions.
432 Park’s condo board alleged developers Harry Macklowe and CIM Group ignored advice from the project’s engineers and failed to properly address the building facade’s cracking.
Photo: New York County Clerk
So what was Macklowe’s alleged reaction to warnings about cracking? In addition to allegedly altering the condo’s offering plan in order to mitigate any responsibility for the defects, the suit claims he waved off the engineers’ advice to apply a thick coating of elastomeric paint to the building’s exterior, which he worried would alter the façade’s look; instead, the suit claims, he suggested applying a clear silicone material that he uses on his yacht. “Macklowe, who was not a concrete expert, argued that an invisible sealant was good enough for his yacht and therefore was good enough for the Building,” the suit reads.
A spokesperson for CIM denied the allegations and told me that the company would move to have the latest suit dismissed. Reps for Macklowe didn’t respond a request for comment, but the developer’s team previously called claims about the cracks and other construction issues “vastly exaggerated.”
The slew of bad press for the tower — which now also includes the stories around former tenant and alleged rapist Tal Alexander — can’t be great for sales. Sotheby’s International real-estate agent Nikki Field told The Wall Street Journal in May 2024 that with the “toxic” initial lawsuit still making its way through the courts, she was “avoiding” taking buyers to the building. (At the time, 14 out of 18 units on the market had gone through at least one price cut, with the average listing discount being 13.2 percent from the highest ask, per the paper.) Still, at least one owner I spoke to recently said he’s a fan of life in the beleaguered tower. “It’s my favorite building,” one resident, who purchased a pied-à-terre in 2016, told me earlier this month, ahead of the latest suit. “I love living there.”