Earlier this month, a former board president of the famed Dakota building on the UWS filed a lawsuit against the co-op board for not allowing him to buy a second apartment in the building, claiming that this was only the latest example of the board's persistently discriminatory and racist practices in controlling the building. But when we talked to current board president Bruce Barnes, he told us that Alphonse Fletcher Jr. was just bitter over being denied a second apartment, which they turned down because of his dubious "financial situation." And now, the Dakota is fighting back at the lawsuit publicly by revealing the details of that financial situation.
Yesterday, the board filed a 237-page response in State Supreme Court that denied Fletcher Jr.’s claims, and said he lacked the wealth he claimed to have. In the filing, the board contends that Feltcher Jr. “greatly inflated” the amount of money he was worth and that he managed, partly because his firm, Fletcher Asset Management, double-counted its assets. Citing tax returns, bank records and other documents that he submitted when applying to buy the $5.7 million apartment, the board called Fletcher Jr.'s statement of net worth “highly unrealistic.”
Fletcher Jr., a former board president, already owns two units in the Dakota (one without a kitchen), and also bought an apartment for his mother, a fellow longtime board member. Barnes said that approving the purchase of another apartment for him had nothing to do with race, but ultimately would be an “unacceptable financial risk.” Fletcher Jr.'s lawyers repsonded, “The defendants’ latest filing predictably attempts to shift attention away from the lengthy and detailed narrative in Mr. Fletcher’s complaint of unlawful self-dealing, improper discrimination and inappropriate retaliation that lies at the core of this case."
Regardless, the public nature of the dispute is unusual for the Dakota, whose biggest PR problems previously have been mosquito-like tourists and sneaky Beatles trespassers.
