But Jamestown's beef isn't with Moody's. According to Zoukis, the first they heard of the dilemma was when Jamestown went for bank approval on certain building upgrades. "Fat, dumb and happy, we package the request and ship it off to the Bank of New York," he recalls. "We wait a couple of days and don't hear anything. We call them up and they tell us our loan was assigned to special servicing and that we'd have to call [special servicer] Orix. That's how we found out about this."
That was actually the climax of what managing director and general counsel Matt Bronfman describes as a frustrating string of phone calls stretching back to June 20. "Our first communication from BNY reminded us that we had to show evidence of coverage," he explains. "August 10 was going to be the first renewal date of our policy since Sept. 11, 2001."
"Properties the size of 1211 require special attention," states Zoukis, "because they are more difficult to insure. We wanted to start a conversation with the people of BNY to discuss what our plan was."
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John Salustri
John Salustri has covered the commercial real estate industry for nearly 25 years. He was the founding editor of GlobeSt.com, and is a four-time recipient of the Excellence in Journalism award from the National Association of Real Estate Editors.
