According to Eater, vendors supplying the Cipriani restaurant empire have had trouble getting paid, and the Ciprianis have been withholding rent payments because of a drawn-out rent arbitration with the landlord. The original ten year lease signed in 1998 was for $4 million a year, then a property reappraisal increased the rent to $8.7 million in February 2007, the Daily News reports. Last month the rent was lowered to $6 million, but now the Ciprianis are suing, accusing the property owner of trying to "force Cipriani out of business at the premises and thus out of the premises." more ›

Rent-controlled tenants living in the artist studios above Carnegie Hall received eviction letters last week from the state, but at least one of the six remaining holdouts remains defiant. 96-year-old Editta Sherman has been fighting to stay in her $530/month rent-controlled, 800 square foot studio apartment ever since the concert hall announced its expansion/renovation plans last year. The Carnegie Corporation has offered to relocate the remaining tenants "to equivalent or superior apartments in the neighborhood, paying any differential in rent for the remainder of their lives," but Sherman tells the Post, "They'll have to drag me out. They'll have to use their bare hands." Unless, of course, the corporation can come up with the $10 million figure she floated in October as the price of her evacuation. more ›