Lamenting the amount of time wasted in the Chapter 11 case of Tavern on the Green, a federal judge last week cleared the way for the liquidation of the famed eatery’s remaining assets. In papers filed last month, the committee of unsecured creditors of Tavern on the Green Limited Partnership accused New York City of “materially interfer[ing] with the Debtors’ effort to maximize the value of their estates” and “caused the estates needlessly to incur millions of dollars in administrative expenses.”
The committee, which said the estate owed some $3 million in “professional” fees, told Southern District of New York Bankruptcy Judge Allan L. Gropper that the only way to efficiently administer the estate was to convert the Chapter 11 proceedings to a Chapter 7 liquidation. The city countered that the conversion motion was a “ploy” and accused the committee of spending “enormous amounts of money in a very short period of time without producing any tangible results.”
