A flagship STK steakhouse planned for the corner of Union Square Park is now stuck in a New York courtroom, after its landlord demanded overdue September rent and the restaurant chain’s parent company fired back with an emergency court filing. At the center of the fight is a 13,000-square-foot ground-floor space at 200 Park Avenue South, where The ONE Group, STK’s parent, signed a 10-year lease in January 2025 but has yet to open its doors.
According to Bisnow, landlord ABS Partners Real Estate issued The ONE Group a notice demanding its September rent payment, which totaled $109,375 with a late fee, and gave the company until Wednesday to pay or risk losing the lease entirely. ABS extended that deadline by one day, but The ONE Group’s attorneys moved first, filing for an injunction and temporary restraining order in New York County Supreme Court to block ABS from terminating the lease while the underlying dispute plays out.
That kind of emergency filing is known in New York real estate law as a Yellowstone injunction, a legal maneuver that traces back to the 1968 case National Stores, Inc. v. Yellowstone Shopping Center, 21 N.Y.2d 630 and allows commercial tenants facing termination notices to freeze the clock on a cure period while a state court sorts out an alleged default, according to the Lasser Law Group. New York courts routinely grant such injunctions to keep a tenant’s lease alive pending judicial resolution, per the same source.
Whose Fault Is the Debris?
The dispute hinges on when STK actually took possession of the space, and therefore when rent obligations kicked in. STK’s side argues the unit was used for storage until August, with hundreds of pounds of debris, construction tools, and building materials left behind, and attorney Dov Treiman contended the clutter blocked real access to the space until mid-August 2026, Bisnow reported. Christi Hing, representing the tenant side, said nothing could be done with the space until the stored material was cleared out…