Feds Sue Stagg Group Over Accessibility at 607 Bronx-Area Units

The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York sued Stagg Group on September 25, alleging the developer built six apartment buildings with 607 units that fail the Fair Housing Act’s accessibility rules. The complaint’s claims are allegations, not findings, and we found no public response from Stagg.

Why it matters

The government’s release says the suit covers five Bronx buildings and one in New Rochelle: Riverdale Tower at 3745 Riverdale Ave., The Station at 5959 Broadway, The Hudson at 6327 Broadway, The Stables at 6375 Broadway, The Equestrian at 1680 Pelham Parkway South, and West View at 26 Garden St. Prosecutors want a court to order retrofits of apartments and common areas, new compliance procedures for future projects, and compensation for people harmed. The case is United States v. Stagg Group, 1:26-cv-08372, per WRE News, which reports the government also seeks a civil penalty. For any developer with a large elevator-building pipeline, a retrofit order on finished, occupied buildings is the expensive version of an accessibility miss.

The numbers

The complaint counts 89 units at Riverdale Tower, 72 at The Station, 90 at The Hudson, 42 at The Stables, 129 at The Equestrian and 185 at West View, which sums to 607. Our pull of Department of Buildings new-building filings for the five Bronx addresses found five different owner entities: 3745 Riverdale Avenue LLC, CM Water Group LLC, Stagg Group itself, 6375 Broadway LLC and Ashley’s Backflips LLC. Only 6327 Broadway lists Stagg Group by name, so the suit targets the brand while the paper owners are single-asset entities. Filed unit counts match the complaint at three buildings (72, 90 and 129). The 6375 Broadway filing shows 65 proposed units against the complaint’s 42 for The Stables, a gap we could not explain from the record.

What’s next

Watch the SDNY docket for Stagg’s answer or a motion to dismiss, and for whether the single-asset owners are added as defendants, since that decides who pays for retrofits. Earlier SDNY accessibility cases against large builders often ended in negotiated retrofit settlements, though nothing here signals one yet. More on the borough’s development activity is on the New York market page.