Ownership Battle Erupts at Chelsea Building Torched by Arsonist

The arson fire that gutted the building on a long-vacant six story building in the heart of Chelsea on April 12 is far from the final chapter in the property’s long and complicated story.

The building’s previous owner, Erroll Rainess, is waging a battle to regain control of the property at 210 Seventh Ave., even as the Department of Buildings has found that the building posed an “imminent threat to public safety” after the conflagration, and issued an emergency order to demolish the building.

Rainess had left the property vacant since 2002, when a coffee shop that was on the ground floor closed. For over two decades, it remained unoccupied, except for sporadic squatters.

However in April of 2025 it was apparently repossessed by the city over back taxes and auctioned off in a tax lien sale to one Casey Schear, in partnership with Sam Stern, of C&S Capital for the rock bottom price of just $350,000.

The property ownership is currently listed as Chelsea 210 LLC. A year later, in the beginning of April 2026 the first of a litany of lawsuits initiated by Rainess was filed by his attorney, Bradley S. Silverbush of Rosenberg & Estis, P.C., claiming both the sale of the building, and its imminent demolition, were illegal. In the days after the fire, Rainess claimed his own engineer, Leonid Krupnik, P.E., found the building to be “structurally sound” and pushed to have the demolition halted. That apparently did not happen, however.

According to the plaintiff’s lawsuit, Mr. Rainess was illegally barred from the tax auction supervised by a Sheriff Yang, and despite having a check for $139,000 to stop the auction from proceeding, the sale went through to Mr. Schear. Since then, multiple lawsuits have been filed, culminating in Rainess’ suing the city for $10 million.

Statewide Demolition was hired by the DOB to carry out the demolition on an emergency basis. A brick-by-brick demo began again on May 12.

But more problems ensued. The DOB issued two violations to the contractor on May 20 when debris from the fourth floor collapsed onto the third floor during demolition operations.

“No one was injured during the incident, however it was revealed during our investigation, that the contractors had not properly shored up the 4^th floor which led to partial collapse,” a DOB spokesperson said. DOB issued a violation for failure to properly safeguard the work site, and for failure to promptly notify DOB of this incident.

No explosives or wrecking ball are involved in the demo, a supervision on site told Chelsea News. He said the structure would basically be manually deconstructed in order to minimize upheaval and danger to surrounding buildings.

Since there is a pending arson case, there is a need to preserve debris to show the fire marshal.

Brittany Babb, 32, of the Bronx, was arrested for arson at the building at 210 Seventh Ave. as well as two fires she is said to have started in the East Village on April 1 when prosecutors say she started a fire in a building on the corner of First Ave. and E. 14th street that had a group floor fast food restaurant, Empanada Mama, as well as a salon and residential apartments around 4:30 a.m.

A few minutes later, she set more cardboard and debris on fire in front of 333 E. 14th Street, a large apartment complex a few buildings away which includes the Peter Stuyvesant Station Post Office on its ground floor. That fire eventually engulfed a nearby car.

Prosecutors with the Manhattan DA’s office say she faces several counts of felony arson and misdemeanor reckless endangerment in connection with all three incidents.

Rainess claims there are suspicious aspects regarding Babb’s ease of egress into the building with the intent of arson, as well as the timing of the conflagration, which took place just days after Rainess filed a suit against the city claiming the tax sale of the premises was illegal. The sheriff’s lock, which had secured the door on the 7th Avenue entrance, was either missing or broken, according to video that Rainess said he submitted to investigators for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Chelsea News was unable to view footage.

Another concern as the demolition proceeds is the possible presence of asbestos among the wreckage, which must be handled with extreme care. Air monitors have been installed inside the fence whose results are automatically sent to the D.E.P. and the New York State Department of Labor to ensure the safety of workers and neighborhood residents.

As of last week, the top two floors have already been removed, and the fourth floor is now crumbling into the third. The existence of floors five and six atop what was originally a four story structure is yet another source of contention.

The DOB had issued a building permit for the two story addition years earlier but claims after the owner added the two top floors, the building department was never contacted to do an official inspection after completion nearly thirty years ago. A certificate of occupancy was never issued.

Over the years, the building was cited numerous times for code violations, many of which were apparently never addressed.

It currently has 57 violations according to the DOB, and 107 with the Office of Administrative Trial and Hearings/EBC, all of which are moot, of course, if the structure is actively being demolished. Any fines will eventually be passed on to whoever is ultimately deemed the owner.

And that ownership is still very much in contention. Schear is all but impossible to contact, with only an address in Brooklyn and a P.O. Box as his sole locator. Phone numbers associated with his person are either out-of-order or wrong numbers. The DOB said he is the one responsible for the costs of the emergency demolition at this point.

The adjacent building at 208 22nd Street had its top floor vacated due to roof damage from the fire, displacing residents.

Back in 2001, Rainess said he was finalizing the construction of those upper floors, when suddenly he lost his beloved wife, Keido, to breast cancer. He maintains that he was emotionally not able to finalize the inspection, and this remained the case to date.

In his ongoing fight to regain ownership Rainess’ most recent contention is that Philip Ng, the director of engineering for the city’s DOB “perjured” himself when he stated that upper floors were constructed without the proper permits. Rainess contends he had the proper permits from the Building Department even if there was no final certificate of occupancy issued by the DOB. Whether the judge sides with Rainess or Ng is yet to be determined, and will be addressed at a trial set to begin July 1

Meanwhile, the arson case is headed to trial on July 22.

In another fascinating recent turn, the Judge Kathleen Waterman-Marshall), allowed Rainess access to the property to assess the building for its structural integrity. After an initial hitch, on May 15, Rainess was allowed access with his engineer, alongside the city’s engineer Philip Ng, for the delayed inspection. According to Rainess, his own engineer deemed the building “structurally sound.”

After several adjournments, the hearing to overturn the sale was rescheduled for July 1. The building that Mr. Rainess so hoped to preserve will likely be razed by then, as it is already severely diminished from its original grandeur. To whom the property belongs will hopefully be determined at that date.