Unit Owners In Miami Beach Condo-Hotel Accuse Majority Owner Of Campaign To Force Them Out By Stacking HOA With Flunkies, Then $queezing Residents With Outrageous Assessments & Initiating Foreclosures For Failure To Pay

In Miami Beach, Florida, the Florida Bulldog reports:

• For the past four years, about 40 investors and snowbirds who own 42 rooms in a landmark oceanfront art deco hotel have been locked in a pitched court battle with one of Miami Beach’s most politically connected families to keep their units.
  
  An ongoing civil lawsuit in Miami-Dade Circuit Court alleges that Miami Beach developer Russell Galbut, along with relatives and business associates, broke Florida condo association laws by assessing them nearly $30 million for renovations at what is now the 340-room Shelborne Wyndham Grand South Beach. That works out to roughly $75,000 per investor.
  
  The group, 10 of whom spoke with a reporter but asked that their names not be used, claim Galbut stacked the condo association’s board with flunkies and is trying to take control of the entire building by initiating foreclosure proceedings against them for refusing to pay what they believe are outrageous assessments. They also alleged that their rooms were demolished without their consent during the renovations, resulting in the City of Miami Beach revoking their certificates of occupancy until they fixed their units.
  
  “They are using the old game of charging us exorbitant assessments to push us out,” said one New Yorker who purchased two rooms in the late 1990s as an investment. “There is a conspiracy to take our deeds for peanuts. Their end game is to own all the units.”
  
  Galbut is not a defendant in the case, but a Galbut company that owns 100 rooms and 57 commercial spaces at the Shelborne is a defendant. Other defendants with Sherborne Property Associates are four shell companies Galbut controls, his cousins Keith Menin and Joan Brent and the Sherborne Ocean Beach Hotel Condominium Association.
  
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  Built in 1940, the iconic hotel at 1801 Collins Avenue was entirely owned by Galbut and his relatives in the 1980s. A decade later, the Galbuts began selling some of their units to outside investors when the property was converted to a condo-hotel, according to the 10 owners and [Galbut attorney Russell] Rosegarten. The new owners were allowed to rent their rooms to tourists through a Galbut entity that managed the hotel or other companies that provided booking services.

For more, see Owners at South Beach’s Shelborne fight $30 million assessments, foreclosure.