A partner of the Shore Club of HFZ Capital Partners in South Beach has filed a lawsuit against the hotel owners because the HFZ financial and legal issues continue to climb.

A company linked to The Clark Estates, the family of late newspaper publisher and businessman Stephen Carlton Clark, is suing Shore Club owners to block the sale of the hotel without the approval of The Clark Estates entity.

The lawsuit follows a February notice from the Florida Department of Revenue, which issued a warrant for nearly $ 441,000 in unpaid sales and use taxes.

The hotel, a prominent waterfront property at 1901 Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, has fallen into disuse and has been closed throughout the pandemic.

SC Philips Clark LLC filed a lawsuit last week in Miami-Dade Circuit Court against Shore Club Managing Member LLC, Shore Club JV LLC and Shore Club Property Owner LLC. The lawsuit says the Clark Estates entity owns 50 percent of Shore Club JV LLC, which in turn owns the hotel through the Shore Club Property Owner.

HFZ, led by Ziel Feldman, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In the complaint, SC Philips Clark refers to The Real Deal’s previous report, including an article published in December which revealed that New York-based HFZ had beachfront property in the market. for sale with Newmark brokerage.

The HFZ entity paid more than $ 175 million for the hotel in 2013. The management company Sbe operated the hotel since the acquisition of Morgans Hotel Group in 2016.

HFZ originally planned to redevelop the historic 309-key hotel into a Fasano-branded luxury condo development, but canceled plans for the project in 2017 due to the slowdown in the condominium market.

In 2019, Virgin Hotels offers to pay $ 235 million to the Shore Club, with plans to invest an additional $ 100 million in the transformation of the property. This deal failed.

The complaint alleges that HFZ did not hold mandatory monthly meetings with its partner and that it made more important decisions regarding the property without the consent of SC Philips Clark.

The lawsuit is similar to a lawsuit filed in New York in 2018, in which SC Philips Clark sued the same entities, alleging that they failed to provide monthly, quarterly and annual financial and lender reports, reports on the state of the condominiums and had not fulfilled their marketing obligations.

Earlier this year, HFZ experienced further financial difficulties. The developer lost control of four condo conversion projects in Manhattan. The CIM Group, one of HFZ’s lenders, seized the junior mezzanine positions linked to the properties.

And in December, Monroe Capital, one of the firm’s lenders, seized HFZ’s stake in a nationwide industrial portfolio.

Also in late December, Cedar Trading, a gourmet food supplier, sued the Shore Club to recover $ 13,363 in allegedly unpaid merchandise, including whole duck, raw shrimp and four gallons of Kewpie mayonnaise, according to court records of Miami-Dade. A final judgment for this amount was rendered in favor of Cedar Trading in February.