Former Manhattan Loft Corporation partners John Hitchcox and Harry Handelsman are locked in a legal battle over profits from the company’s £150m redevelopment at St Pancras station, NW1.
Hitchcox, who now runs the Yoo residential group with designer Philippe Starck, claims that he is owed a 50% share of MLC’s profit on the high-profile 300,000 sq ft revamp of the disused hotel at the site. It will become a luxury hotel, with 67 flats, due for completion in 2009.
At a pre-trial hearing last Friday, (28 September) lawyers for Hitchcox alleged that he was “kept in the dark” about the opportunity between July 2003 and January 2004 and is entitled to a profit share because of a joint venture agreement between himself and Handelsman.
But Handelsman’s team argued that MLC could end up making a loss of as much as £11m at St Pancras. They said that “harsh economic realities” had pushed projected construction costs up from £99m in May this year to £125m in July.
Hitchcox’s team will question this forecast when the case starts in the High Court on 31 October. He and Handelsman, who founded MLC in the 1990s, will be called to give evidence.
A spokeswoman for MLC said: “The building programme is in its early stages construction costs are rising for all in the development marketplace, but then so are development values the outcome for the project cannot be known until it is completed in the meantime, MLC is fully committed to the project and its successful completion.”
She said that MLC had terminated a contract with Laing O’Rourke after they were “unable to agree mutually acceptable contract terms for the main works”. Its interim contractor is Galliford Try.
Neither Hitchcox nor Handelsman could be contacted.
