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Owners meeting update (by Jeffrey W.):

Here are a few follow up recommendations for those who did not attend the Aug. 2 or Aug. 4 meetings in Manhattan.

The Aug. 2 public owners meeting was extremely well attended. I am confident most if not all of the attendees were glad they came to listen to the presentations about legal issues and resale values. To catch up, please listen to the audio of the meeting that is now posted on this RedWeek forum. We will be contacting you in the future about possible follow-up action items that owners can consider taking to make their voices heard by management.

The official TMC owners meeting Aug. 4 was probably NOT very satisfying for the 53 owners who attended, because the board announced immediately they would not take any questions from the audience but would review questions submitted in writing. I also talked to several TMC owners who were denied admission to the meeting because they had not been thoroughly screened in advance by TMC security. TMC held the board meeting in a penthouse suite and effectively blocked people, including this writer, from even getting on the elevators to the penthouse. They also went to extra lengths to kick me out of the building, even though I posed no threat to their security (or anyone else's). After the official board meeting, a dozen owners hiked back to the Manhattan Club, where, in the owner lounge, they talked about their issues --- maintenance fees, reservation hassles, plummeting resale values, etc. While there is still a strong sentiment to do something significant --- like hiring a lawyer to start a new civil case against the club --- the owners acknowledged that the AG is already so far into this case, that starting a new action might be a big waste of resources and energy. So, short term, they agreed to keep communicating with the AG's office to provide any info that might be relevant and, in the meantime, to show patience while the AG sorts out its legal course of action.

The legal case is now evolving on two fronts; investigators continue to probe the original (July 2014) allegations of wrongdoing in the sale and disclosure of timeshares at the club. The second front involves an investigation of how the club's management behaved, and spent money, AFTER the July 2014 court order that shut down all timeshare sales and froze bank accounts. The AG has documented numerous instances of large withdrawals (mostly for payroll) from the supposedly frozen accounts, and it is pursuing possible contempt-of-court citations against Scott Lager, who signed the checks. The AG is also seeking documentation about Urban, an Eichner controlled entity, which supposedly managed the club's operations and received $6 million a year (20 percent of the club's annual maintenance fees). The AG is claiming in court documents that Urban is a shell entity that had no employees until AFTER the July 2014 court order; and that all of the money paid to Urban, over the years, went directly to the Eichners and their affiliates. Worse, the AG claims that Urban provided no real management services to the club. Those day-to-day functions, according to the AG, were actually performed by rank-and-file TMC employees --- many of whom are probably familiar faces to TMC owners have visited the club over the years.

The most recent court documents were filed Aug. 11. I encourage all owners to check them out so you are as informed as possible --- given the awkward fact that the AG, the club itself, and the club's attorneys are not talking, publicly, to anyone about what's happening or likely to happen with the investigation. All that can be said, for sure, is that the Eichner forces are fighting the AG's legal team on seemingly every front imaginable while still insisting that the Eichners are not legally responsible for any of the issues that owners have encountered since buying into the dream of the Manhattan Club.