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Last night we received a copy of this letter from Broken Angel creator Arthur Wood to developer Alex Barrett. The rather ominous letter says the foreclosure at 4-6 Downing Street isn’t final. “I am sure Madison did not tell you that,” the letter continues. “I advise you to get your money back from Madison good luck with that!” Wood concludes: “Be further advised that if you ignore this and go ahead with your renovation, you are taking the risk of the lose [sic] of this property and whatever money you put into it.”

The return address on the letter also revealed that Wood is now residing in Beacon, N.Y. (or at least is receiving mail there). We reached out to Barrett for comment but have not yet heard anything.

Update: Barrett told us he has not received the letter. Otherwise, he had no comment.


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. From ACRIS docs, it looks like the bank took possession through a public foreclosure auction in May 2012. They then sold it in January 2013 to an LLC called “4-8 Downing Purchaser” which appears to be David Schwartz of DJS Real Estate Development who then sold it to the new developer. I’m no title company but it all looks pretty legit to me.

  2. It was purchased from the bank through the referee appointed by the court as such the the money would have been paid to the foreclosing lender. Unless something highly unusual occurred the foreclosure is over and the property belongs to the purchasing entity. Whatever issues the borrower claims still exist should have been raised in the foreclosure action and are likely cut-off (if they in fact exist) by the completion of the foreclosure sale.

  3. An open note to Brownstoner: If you are looking for a serious issue to write about, I would love to see you interview Mr. Wood to get the history of what he’s gone through with his building and dealings with the Buildings Department and the banks. Mr. Wood is a talented artist who helped shape this neighborhood, and even if he’s not presently living here, I still consider him a part of this community. I would applaud anyone who were to take on his story and write a serious piece on it. Foreclosure is a huge problem, but it seems like there are very few stories these days which deal with it from the perspective of what banks did in terms of messing with paperwork. We hear about the next bubble coming, families being displaced, foreign investors, etc. Let’s take a step back and really look at what happened to all of those documents that were robo-signed, back-dated, etc. Did I miss the follow-up stories about what happened to families who were harmed this way, or have they yet to be written? Mr. Wood’s story might be a huge lesson to us all.

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