One of the city’s priciest rentals — a $100,000-a-month Soho townhouse with a 40-foot swimming pool that was featured in Beyoncé’s music video “Halo” — is also a firetrap, a neighboring film producer claims in a new lawsuit.
Tony Krantz, who lives in an adjacent duplex at 55 Crosby St., is calling out the owner of 214 Lafayette St. over an “illegal” easement meant to fix the dangerous code violation.
“Defendant regularly rents 214 Lafayette to tenants for over $1 million in rent [annually] without a legal fire escape, exposing defendant to serious civil and criminal liability,” Krantz’s Manhattan civil suit says.
So to get around the lack of a fire escape, Krantz says in the suit, his neighbor undertook an “unlawful” land grab by getting an easement to cut across a 6-foot strip of land between Krantz’s duplex and an adjacent parking lot that the producer owns.
Krantz — whose producing credits include the 2001 David Lynch thriller “Mulholland Dr.” — says the owner of the 13,000-square-foot townhouse “secretly” registered the easement in 2014.
The “24” and “Felicity” producer just discovered it last month, his suit says.
The previous owner of 214 Lafayette, Hollywood director Marcus Nispel, transferred the townhouse to an LLC for $0 in 2012. It is unclear if he is the controlling member of the corporation, but public records put Nispel at the Soho address.
Krantz says when he bought the properties in 2011 for about $6.5 million, the easement was not recorded on his deed.
“The deed for the premises contains no mention of the easement,” the Manhattan civil suit says.
The “unlawful” land grab is tantamount to trespassing and damages the value of his properties, Krantz says in the $10 million suit.
A lawyer for the LLC did not immediately return a message for comment. Nispel also did not return messages.
In addition to serving as the backdrop for Beyoncé’s “Halo” video, the dramatic space, originally an electrical substation with 25-foot ceilings, also appears in John Mayer’s video for his song “Who Says” and in a 2008 Esquire photo shoot of Kate Beckinsale.
This year Forbes magazine listed 214 Lafayette as the city’s second-most expensive rental.