A planned 900-foot-high condominium tower, a modernist showpiece designed to rival the tallest new Midtown Manhattan residential skyscrapers, landed in bankruptcy court yesterday amid a slowing luxury market, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Developer Joseph Beninati’s Bauhouse Group put the project into chapter 11 protection on Wednesday to try to halt a foreclosure after he was unable to find lenders to refinance short-term loans the group used to acquire land and air rights for the tower on East 58th Street near Sutton Place. Construction has not started. The developer was seeking to block an effort by an investment firm controlled by real-estate investor N. Richard Kalikow from foreclosing on the development. The project faced opposition by local officials and worries by lenders about the increasing risk in financing high-end residential towers. The bankruptcy of the Sutton Place project, and the slowing demand for condos in super-tall Midtown towers on and around West 57th Street, signals a broader unease among banks and other lenders about financing luxury development. The Midtown area has set new benchmarks for Manhattan real estate, including a $100.5 million sale on West 57th Street, sometimes known as Billionaire’s Row. But during the second half of 2015, this portion of the market began to cool as the number of slender towers on the market rose and economic turbulence in much of the world made wealthy international buyers wary.
