<div><p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Attorneys for tenants in a vast New York City apartment complex said they would ask the state court to set the next 2010 rents if negotiations with landlord Tishman Speyer are unsuccessful.</p><p>The tenants lawyers also want Tishman Speyer to hand over control of an escrow account holding a portion of the rents.</p><p>In a statement issued late on Tuesday afternoon, Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP and Bernstein Liebhard LLP said they are continuing the good faith discussions with Tishman Speyer representatives. They are working to develop a framework to resolve issues left open last month when the state's highest court said the landlords of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village wrongly raised thousands of the apartment complex's rents.</p><p>"If necessary, plaintiffs' counsel will be making an application to the court asking it to issue an order to set January 2010 rents and to turn over to plaintiffs' counsel the escrow account established in March 2009," the lawyers said in a statement.</p><p>In the meantime, the rent differential -- the difference between estimated rent stabilized rents and market rents -- for November and December 2009 are being paid into the escrow account. By year end, the amount in escrow should exceed $16 million, the tenants' lawyers said. The properties have more than 11,000 apartments.</p><p>A representative from Tishman Speyer could not be reached immediately for comment.</p><p>New York's top court on October 22, ruled that Tishman Speyer and the real estate arm of money manager BlackRock Inc, which paid $5.4 billion for Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in 2006, wrongly raised the rent and sent the case back to the trial-level Supreme Court.</p><p>The two sides have been trying to negotiate a resolution of several issues including: certifying class for those seeking a class-action suit, transferring control of the escrow to plaintiffs' counsel, and determining interim rents. The tenants' attorneys want to resolve these issues while they negotiate other issues, including damages, which could run as high as $600 million.</p><p>The court decision helped push a $3 billion loan into the hands of special servicers, who deal with troubled loans that have been repackaged into commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS).</p><p>But the U.S. commercial real estate collapse has been the major culprit behind the purchase's troubles. Experts have estimated that the property is worth anywhere from $1.7 billion to $2.3 billion today.</p><p>(Reporting by Ilaina Jonas; editing by Andre Grenon)</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=64170945&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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