MILLERTON — The future of an apartment building in downtown Millerton is facing more uncertainty after mortgage holders won a foreclosure judgment in Dutchess County Supreme Court last month.
The 100-year-old apartment building at 7-9 Main St., situated between Mad Rose Gallery and the Harney Tea Shop, must now be sold at a foreclosure auction by the end of June after a court order handed down on March 27.
The court order finds that GVKGNE Inc., a business operated by Chris Rrapi of Monroe, New York, defaulted on a loan of more than $400,000 in 2023. Lending firm Toorak Capital Partners, which took control of the mortgage from the original lender FM Home Loans LLC in 2021, filed for foreclosure in December 2023.
March’s foreclosure order comes on the heels of a furnace malfunction in January that forced tenants out of their homes. The building has remained vacant ever since, with the exterior doors still bearing signs warning people to stay out of the building by order of the village’s building inspector.
Now the empty building will be sold as-is at auction, though the date has yet to be determined.
Rrapi purchased the building in 2021, after the prior owner, Charles Lilley, died. The building was configured with 12 units, but Rrapi later learned that was twice the number permitted under prior approvals.
Rrapi, who said earlier this year that his intention had always been to upgrade the property, encountered his first obstacle when attempting to get approval for renovations to the aging building in 2024. Village officials told him the property was permitted to contain only six residential units.
It’s unclear from public documents when the building was configured with 12 units.
The property owner then went back and forth with the village’s Zoning Board of Appeals until 2025. Zoning board members rejected a bid for a nine-unit configuration coupled with a request that parking requirements be waived.
Those proceedings coincided with the foreclosure suit.
Zoning board members asserted that parking constraints in downtown Millerton informed their decision to reject Rrapi’s requests. The property has no onsite parking and street parking is limited on Main Street. Village zoning rules require space for 1.5 parking spaces per residential unit.
