By Gus Saltonstall
An Upper West Side private school faces possible foreclosure on its building after a recently filed lawsuit claimed that it has not paid back a debt of nearly $3 million, as first reported by Crain’s.
Manhattan Country School, located at 150 West 85th Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues, is alleged to owe $2.9 million to the Long Island-based lending company, Flushing Bank, according to a suit filed on October 7 in Manhattan Supreme Court.
The school opened in 1966 with a guiding principle of “radical love” and a mission of providing its students with academic excellence, intellectual freedom, social awareness, confidence, and first-hand knowledge of the natural world, according to its website. The independent school, which has a sliding-scale tuition structure that has students paying an average of $22,000 a year, also owns a farm upstate that it incorporates into its curriculum.
When asked for comment on the suit, a spokesperson from Manhattan Country School told West Side Rag: “We do not comment on legal matters. Manhattan Country School has no plans to close.”
The representative from the school did not provide an answer on whether it was considering a move out of the 40,000-square-foot building on West 85th Street.
According to the suit, Manhattan Country School signed the original loan agreement to help pay its mortgage on the Upper West Side building in 2017, but recently defaulted on the terms when it failed to make monthly payments this summer.
The lawsuit requests that Manhattan Country School be barred from the building and forced to sell the property to help pay back the loan.
Certilman Bailin, the law firm representing Flushing Bank, did not immediately respond to the Rag’s request for comment.
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Maybe they can raise enough money from their event this Saturday.
Quick, tell Gail Brewer. She can turn it into a homeless shelter.
That would be completely hilarious if it were not so close to the truth! But thank you for making me laugh, I needed it.
Shhh – don’t speak those words into existence!
$22 k is nothing in this city. I can’t imagine how they are doing it.
Another Westside private school will bite the dust do to financial mismanagement. Remember the Rhodes School on W. 83rd. st? Someone ran off with the money, so I was told, leaving the teachers and the kids speechless!
This is the most wonderful school!