Luxury LA condo towers at risk of losing utilities after developer stops paying bills

Any day now, worried the residents of the luxury Metropolis towers in Los Angeles, the building’s power and water could be shut off.The residential towers, located near the Crypto.com Arena and the LA Convention Center in downtown LA, had been heralded as the best in upscale living, with luxury amenities and access to all the city had to offer.But somehow, the condo towers had racked up thousands in unpaid utility bills, and residents were concerned they might lose electricity.And that wasn’t the only problem.Maintenance on the buildings had slipped.

The elevators in Tower II were constantly out of service, and the gym’s HVAC unit hadn’t worked in months.First Service, the property management company in charge of the buildings, warned developer Greenland USA in June 2019 that the development’s homeowners associations were “now officially out of money,” vendors would “not perform services,” and utilities were “at risk of being shut off,” according to an email included in court filings.That was how Oleg Pariser, a long-time resident of Tower I in Metropolis, discovered that the developer had given itself an abatement that exempted it from paying thousands of dollars in HOA dues each month on the roughly 300 unsold units it still owned.Pariser said he was shocked to learn that Tower I, with an operating budget of around $4 million, had less than $200,000 in reserves, and that Greenland hadn’t paid any HOA dues since 2018.The developer’s total unpaid tab with the HOAs now totals $6.8 million, residents have claimed in court filings. The discovery set off a chain of events that led to multiple lawsuits, HOA liens, and ultimately a “desist and refrain” order from California’s Department of Real Estate preventing Greenland from selling any additional units.

That order may be why so many Metropolis units remain empty today, as Realtor.com reported earlier this month.At the heart of the conflict between Metropolis homeowners and Greenland i...