New York State Supreme Court Justice Richard F. Braun yesterday ordered the foreclosure sale of the Riverton Houses complex in Harlem to satisfy the $240.6 million debt of owner Laurence Gluck who recently defaulted on his mortgage when optimistic revenue projects failed to materialize.

The complex is bounded by 135th and 138th Streets, Fifth Avenue and the Harlem River. Its residents over the years have included former Mayor David N. Dinkins and Billy Taylor, the jazz pianist.

Mr. Gluck bought Riverton in 2005.

"We're about to see a wave of foreclosure sales throughout New York City," Harold Shultz, senior fellow at the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, said in an article in today's edition of The New York Times by Charles V. Bagli. In January, the owners of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, two middle-class housing complexes overlooking the East River, announced that they would give the keys back to the lender after they defaulted on $4.4 billion in loans.

Cynthia Allen, president of the Riverton Tenants Association, said in the article that "We are hoping that whoever buys this property is not another greedy developer."

"Lawyers familiar with the Riverton foreclosure said the sale would probably take place in March," according to the article, adding that "Several groups have expressed interest in buying the property, which has 1,228 apartments in seven buildings, many of them surrounding a 700-foot-long grassy mall. But it is unclear whether any of them will offer enough money to satisfy the lender, which is represented by Wells Fargo Bank."

Riverton was built in the 1948 by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, which sold it in 1976 to Jack Holland and Charles A. Vincent for $12.5 million. "They, in turn," the article said, "sold it to Mr. Gluck of Stellar Management in 2005 for $135 million. A year later, Mr. Gluck refinanced, getting a $225 million mortgage and a $25 million loan. That enabled him to recover his initial investment of $44 million and collect tens of millions of dollars in profit. Mr. Gluck landscaped the property and renovated the buildings, installing new elevators and entry doors."

"The rental income, however," the article continued, "covered only 30 percent of the debt payments. His plan was to convert more than half of the apartments to market-rate rentals by 2011 and increase net income to $24 million. But the conversion process proved slow, and by 2008 only 10 percent of the units had been deregulated."

An article by Adam Pincus in the September 17, 2009 edition of therealdeal.com said that the complex "was reappraised at $108 million, less than half the value of its $225 million mortgage, according to a report today from commercial mortgage tracking firm Trepp," adding that the complex had then lost "68 percent of its value compared to its appraisal value of $340 million in January 2007, according to a source."

The development consists of 13-story buildings on 12 acres. It was designed by Irwin Clavan, who also designed Stuyvestant Town and Peter Cooper Village.