By Albert Amateau
Basketball City filed a Chapter 11 federal bankruptcy petition on June 7 just before the Hudson River Park Trust was able to deliver a court-ordered eviction to get the sports facility off Pier 63.
The bankruptcy action, which a Trust spokesperson denounced as a backdoor legal maneuver to avoid the eviction, automatically stays procedures against Basketball City USA, L.L.C. or its property.
“We intend to try and lift the stay, but I can’t say exactly when we’ll do that,” said Christopher Martin, Trust vice president for marketing and public affairs.
Basketball City, prime leaseholder from the Trust on the former railroad pier at W. 23rd St., operates basketball courts on the pier’s upper level under a bubble and subleases the lower level to the Police Department for use as stable for its West Side Mounted Unit.
The bankruptcy was filed with a minimum of information, no balance sheet of assets and debts and a partial list of 13 creditors with no mention of what they are owed. Basketball City has until June 22 to file the necessary information.
The Trust, the city-state agency building the 5-mile-long riverfront park between Chambers and 59th Sts., said in a June 7 statement that more than $60 million is allocated to construct a “a dramatic new open space at Pier 63. Basketball City is standing in the way of such progress.”
Basketball City has thwarted the Trust’s attempt to take possession of the pier for a year and a half past the expiration date of its lease, which ended in 2004.
Most recently, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff proposed to allow Basketball City to stay on the pier through this summer if it agreed not to pursue further legal action. But the bankruptcy was the response.
Bruce Radler, managing director of Basketball City, had no comment on the matter.
“The Trust is currently coordinating with the city to help relocate the N.Y.P.D. Mounted Unit,” the Trust statement says. “The city has agreed to reconfigure the tow pound at Pier 76 [at W. 36th St.] to accommodate the Mounted Unit temporarily until a permanent West Side home is ready. Substantial work and site preparation could be performed on Pier 63 while the horse unit is present with no dangers to police or horses,” the statement says. “However, such work cannot occur while Basketball City is present,” the statement concludes.
