Viva Vendetta: 1Oak Lawsuit Update

I caught up with 1Oak honcho Scott Sartiano and asked him if they were still suing some of his neighbors. A resounding "yes" led to a conversation which went beyond Andrea Peyser's New York Post article about the lawsuit. 1Oak is suing a tenant, Ann Fredlin, who lives on the 20th floor of the Caledonia, a new construction directly across from the boite. Two other people named, LeCee Johnson and Bobby Cintron, live in the Clinton housing building up the block near 10th Avenue. The $2 million lawsuit is a result, according to a source , of "continuing harassment and lies told to anyone who will listen." This sort of conflict was inevitable when the city rezoned the area to "mixed use" to support the highly ambitious, highly brilliant High Line project.

The High Line and the surrounding galleries, shops, restaurants, and nightclubs of the Meatpacking District and neighboring Outer Chelsea (OuCh) made the hood a sexy place for new residential construction. The Caledonia, a magnificent building, was built with everyone—developers, new tenants, local police, and community—knowing that nightclubs existed prior to and adjacent, and they were thriving. A visit to the Caledonia website’s neighborhood section even boasts about the proximity of the building to 1Oak, Cielo, the Park, and other hotspots:

1Oak - Sophistication, attentive service, and egalitarian spirit combine at 1OAK. Here, the barriers between art and fashion, famous and infamous, upcoming and established have been deliberately torn down, creating a unique environment that is amicable and unpredictable. 1OAK embodies the passion of the Avant-garde and embraces the new and the unknown.

When 1oak co-owner Scott Sartiano, who also lives in the Caledonia, asked me to his apartment to bless his decorator’s paint colors, I noticed the workers on the High Line busy as the birds and bees that used to nest there. They were hammering, drilling, banging, and I’m sure yelling at each other as construction people tend to do, yet I couldn’t hear them at all. Thick windows made it a silent spring day. The upcoming lawsuit will emphasize that the Department of Environmental Protection has done two sets of readings in Ann Fredlin’s apartment and found nothing to write about. No violations were issued. The Caledonia has 392 residents, and it’s Fredlin who is doing the complaining. 62 of the tenants have gone so far as to sign a petition in support of 1Oak.