The Schlesinger family has added another holding to its collection of Palm Beach properties, which already included the majority of The Brazilian Court in Midtown as well as the Ambassador Hotel Cooperative Apartments on the far South End. Via a deed recorded last month at $9.755 million, Copperline Partners, headed by Managing Principal Adam Schlesinger, bought the 29 former timeshare condominiums that comprise the Palm Beach Resort and Beach Club Condominium Association at 3031 S .Ocean Blvd. The South End building juts into the Intracoastal Waterway about a third of a mile south of the Lake Worth Beach bridge to the mainland. Although the property was not in financial distress, the transaction was overseen and approved by a federal bankruptcy court in West Palm Beach, according to the deed and the Broward County law firms involved. The sale involved more than 800 owners with individual timeshare rights.
Because of the complexity of the case and the large number of parties involved — including many foreign nationals — attorneys devised an innovative Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing to handle the transaction, said Eisinger Law attorney Alessandra Stivelman. She worked on the case with her Eisinger Law colleague, attorney Carolina Sznajderman Sheir, and attorney Ido J. Alexander of AlignX Law. As a timeshare condo building, the ownership interest for each unit was held in weekly intervals, for a grand total of 1,508 weeks, Stivelman said. Owners could use their condominiums for a specific time period, depending on how many weekly intervals each owned, she added. Property records show the condo association dated to 1982. The building layout includes one- and two-bedroom units as well as townhomes. The condos were sold because the association failed to secure a majority vote among its membership to “continue the timeshare form of ownership” by the end of 2020, as stipulated by a so-called “sunset” clause in its governing documents, according to a statement released by Eisinger Law. That meant the association was required “initiate a partition action to sell the property and adjudicate the rights” of all the owners, the statement said. Attorneys are in the process of distributing the proceeds from the sale to the former owners, Stivelman said. Schlesinger did not return a phone message left at his office about the sale. But the law firm's statement said there are “no known plans to terminate the condominium association.” Darrell Hofheinz is a USA TODAY Network of Florida journalist who writes about Palm Beach real estate in his weekly “Beyond the Hedges” column. He welcomes tips about real estate news on the island.