Once more, billionaire design center landlord Charles Cohen is on the hook for an outstanding payment—this time, it’s $187 million of his own funds. For more than a year now, Cohen (whose company, Cohen Brothers Realty, owns the Decoration & Design Building in New York, the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles, and the Decorative Center in Houston) has been embroiled in a legal back-and-forth with his lender, Fortress Investment Group. Last year, it led to Cohen losing the Design Center of the Americas in Dania Beach, Florida. Now, it may cost him a sizable chunk of his personal fortune.

The origin of the conflict dates back to 2022, when Cohen borrowed $533 million from Fortress, largely to refinance prior loans, and put up a parcel of properties as collateral along with a personal guarantee for $187 million. Early last year, the agreement began to unravel: As Cohen’s company continued to miss payments, Fortress took legal action. By November, the lender conducted an auction (believed to be the largest of its kind in U.S. history) that saw the DCOTA acquired by Fortress for $76 million in addition to the purchase of several other Cohen-owed properties. Meanwhile, Cohen’s personal guarantee still hung in the balance, with the real estate scion filing an appeal to block collection of the funds.

Now, Fortress is coming to collect. The New York Supreme Court Appellate Division struck down Cohen’s appeal this week, leaving him with few remaining options to dodge the payment, The Real Deal reports. If a lower court signs and enters the $187 million judgment, Fortress will be given the all-clear to begin collecting, either in cash or assets.

In France, that process is already underway. Fortress has already commenced proceedings to enforce the judgment there, leading local courts to begin seizing assets from Cohen’s chateau, a source familiar with the case told The Real Deal. As a similar process unfolds in the U.S., the lender may claim some of Cohen’s recent moves as fraudulent: In the lead-up to the auction, Fortess filed documents claiming that over the previous year Cohen had moved his assets—including transferring ownership of his $20 million Greenwich mansion and several yachts valued at a total of $50 million—to protect them from collection.

In response to this week’s decision, Cohen’s team wrote a letter to the judge asking for a settlement conference to discuss the possibility of mediation—to which Fortress hit back in its own letter the same day. The lender stated that along with failing to engage in good-faith negotiations over the past year, Cohen hasn’t paid Fortress since June 2023, has “continued to engage in gamesmanship and delay tactics,” and has “publicly taken a combative position, claiming that he’s ‘not paying that personal guaranty.’” While Cohen responded once more refuting the claim that he’s not negotiating in good faith, the next steps in the legal dispute remain in the court’s hands. A representative for Cohen did not respond to BOH’s request for comment.