"We have placed the city in default and if push comes to shove, you may say we are ready to push," Kling tells GlobeSt.com. The city, likewise, has placed Kling and Pearlman in default and maintains the developers breached their contract by not having the renovations completed by Dec. 31.
Kling, president of FF South & Co., tells GlobeSt.com the 28-year-old, 280,000-sf property is 90% leased; Church Street Station itself is 100% leased; the renovations are about 70% completed; and that the entire redevelopment is expected to be completed by April 1. He says the contract gives the developers 45 additional days to finish the job.
Kling says Pearlman's Transcontinental Cos. has signed a 15-year, 70,000-sf lease to occupy the upper two floors and part of the main floor of the vacant, three-story, 136,000-sf Exchange Building within the Church Street Station complex. Pearlman's 500-person staff is expected to relocate by March 1 from its Sand Lake Road offices.
"We have been working diligently on this project," Kling says. "It looks to me and even to others not associated with this project that the city, for reasons known only to certain city officials, are playing favoritism" on the Church Street Station job.
The city has committed a total $41 million in economic incentives to three other projects in the past 90 days.
Kling says the city is also unhappy with a contract clause that gives the developers the right to keep their portion of Church Street Station closed to vehicular traffic in the evening.
Wayne Rich, the city's newly named city attorney and a real estate developer himself, could not be reached by GlobeSt.com's publication deadline. But city hall sources intimate with the controversy tell GlobeSt.com Rich is preparing for a court battle with the developers over the total $3 million economic incentives package granted to them in February of last year.
"We're ready, if that's what they have in mind," Kling tells GlobeSt.com.
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