By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2025-04-03 21:38:32 | Updated at 2025-04-04 18:53:48
21 hours ago
Move over Sid and Nancy — The Hotel Chelsea has a new power couple.
Tenants Johnathan and Susan Berg have been accused of rocking the famous West 23rd Street address to its foundation by blocking roofers from probing a leak in the 150-year-old roof — with the confrontation getting physical and leaving one worker fearful for his safety, a new lawsuit claims.
The Bergs, who have been paying roughly $2,500 a month for the luxurious, rent-stabilized penthouse they have lived in since the 70s — and where they’ve hung out with punk rock stars like Patti Smith — are going to war because the work will tear up a hunk of their lavishly appointed roof garden.
The building’s owners, however, are fighting back in court in an effort to force the longtime squeaky wheels to let the workers in.
“The tenant above will not give us access,” the manager told a Post reporter Thursday.
“It’s not a pleasant situation,” one resident said, “as people are still living in the building and have reservations about their approach towards solving issues in the building and trying to basically stop it at times from going forward.”
On Jan. 7, the Bergs placed their bohemian bodies between workers and the leak they were sent to probe on the couple’s finished terrace, despite previously agreeing to allow the work, lawyers for the storied hotel argue.
A worker at the confrontation said he was fearful that “someone [might] put hands on somebody,” according to the suit.
The Bergs allegedly told the workers they were unaware of the appointment for the works, which would have involved tearing up about a four square feet of the terrace patio to probe for water leaking.
Facing the possible defiling of their tiny Manhattan oasis, the renters began demanding that the contractors not conduct the probe, and only repair “what we can see,” the suit claims.
“Susan Berg threatened to ‘just stand over there,’ indicating the location of the roof where the probe would be taken, in order to impede the work,” according to the suit, while her husband “marched” over to a worker and told him “excuse me no…no… at all… no sir,” the suit describes the video portraying.
Owners have already replaced roughly half of the leak-prone roof, and say that because of the age, patch jobs are not viable, and replacing the whole membrane as recommended by hotel-hired engineers could mean ripping up the beloved garden.
But first, workers need to make their 24-by-24 inch hole to probe the leak.
“The Defendants have made clear that any effort to do the work will be met by the same physical interference that took place when Owner attempted to undertake the probe,” the suit asserts, which asks the court to issue an injunction requiring the Bergs to allow for the probe.
Bergs and their lawyer say they consent to fixing the leak, but fear that the repairs are a “harassment” ruse to “remove their terrace space,” and point to a settlement in a previous lawsuit which guarantees access to the space, and remaining damage from scaffolding during another job in 2021, according to emails filed with the suit.
“This is a major concern for us, since the owners have shown blatant disregard for us in their hollow promises to ‘repair any damage,'” Susan Berg wrote in an email last summer about the lingering damage.
“The fiasco today is yet another page in your clients systemic harassment playbook to bully, strong arm, and harass the Bergs,” wrote the tenant’s attorney, Leon Behar, in an email to the attorney the day of the rooftop ruckus. “This strategy will not work and I suggest your client adopt another.”
Messages left with the Bergs and Behar were not immediately answered.
Johnathan Berg first moved into the Chelsea Hotel rooftop apartment in 1975, according to legal papers, back when the hotel was still filled with heady neighbors like Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen and Arthur Miller.
One filed letter from Behar includes a 1978 picture of Smith lounging in the Berg’s garden.
Two years after Berg moved in, the Hotel would earn a spot in rock n’ roll infamy when Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious allegedly stabbed his girlfriend Nancy Spungeon to death in a room there during a night of drugs. He was charged in the killing, but died himself before going to trial.
When the two wed in 1988 Johnathan Berg was president and founder of Berg Capital Corporation, and Susan led a design and communications firm, according to a wedding announcement in the New York Times.
The couple, described in court papers by the current owners as “disgruntled tenants,” have long battled the Chelsea Hotel in court, claiming harassment during past attempts at redevelopment.
As of 2017, the rent-stabilized tenants paid $2,248 a month, according to a prior settlement agreement. Its not clear what there rent is now.
Court documents reveal that the couple had received a 35% rent abatement during a series of redevelopments initiated after longtime operator Stanley Bard’s four decades of management came to an end in 2008.
Since last year, owners of the historic hotel have been fighting a leak from the circa 1874 roof dripping into a tenth-floor hotel room located below the “gratuitously” furnished roof terrace adjacent to the Berg’s apartment, the lawsuit says.
The space includes a historic garden with “extensive foliage on the roof’s surface, including mature trees,” one of which — a 45-year-old maple — the Bergs say was recently assessed at $35,000.
After water testing on the terrace “successfully recreated the reported leaks,” engineers recommended a probe to determine the damage.
But the renters refused to remove the plants and soil for several months as they “attempted to ‘negotiate’ the Owner’s access to the terrace by making unreasonable demands,” the suit claims.
Their demands, according to an October letter, included a project timeline, insurance requirements, the storage of the removed dirt and that any removed garden walls be rebuilt.
An agreement was reached between the head-butting attorneys, and after the hotel’s engineer examined the roof under the soil, another agreement was struck for a probe — after many “demands and conditions” from the Bergs, the suit notes.
When workers arrived in January on the agreed-upon day, the Bergs “reversed themselves and instead decided to interfere with the probe,” the owners argue.
An attorney for the hotel declined to make the video available or comment further on the allegations.
The Bergs have sued the owners over claims of harassment before, with owners dismissing the past actions as “spurious.”
In the months since, while the Bergs argue with the hotel owners if the work is necessary, the leaks have spread to another hotel room, the owners claim.
Their “obstruction and interference with the Owner’s access to the terrace to probe the roof to ‘confirm’ its assembly for planning purposes as a first step towards repair violates New York law.”
