That's a more sensical name choice than Century 21 NY Metro, the moniker created last month when Dwelling Quest and Century 21 Kevin B. Brown & Associates joined forces.

FKG will have 200 sales brokers, centered in the Flatiron District--the finest district in town.

- Max Abelson

But when the 44-year-old eccentric bounded into City Bakery on West 18th Street on a recent Thursday morning, wearing a fire-truck-red Scottish kilt and a navy-blue wool sweater, his broad, leonine cheekbones streaked with charcoal-hued face paint, he looked more Braveheart than businessman.

That's the way it is when you're defending the family name.

Throughout its 139 years-the firm recently celebrated its anniversary with a party at Fizz, the private members-only club on Madison Avenue recently opened by La Goulue owner John Denoyer-the William B. May name had been paired with the limestone mansions of such families as the Vanderbilts, Carnegies and Fricks. Earlier even, its ancient lineage could be traced back to 17th-century England and the management of the crown's royal property. In more recent times, William B. May assembled land deals for I.B.M.'s Manhattan headquarters.

But on March 30, Mr. May's attorneys filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in lower Manhattan against Sherman Advertising Associates, a Manhattan-based real-estate advertising agency. The suit is the most recent kink in a bizarre tangle of internecine battles and corporate infighting: No fewer than 10 lawsuits have been filed in both state and federal courts by the dueling parties in the last year. Now those battles threaten to push the 139-year-old company from its perch among Manhattan's most exclusive brokerages.

"William B. May has a wonderful reputation. The firm has always had an impeccable reputation; they're one of the last family-run ones left," said Laurance Kaiser, the president of Key-Ventures Realty, an Upper East Side brokerage focusing on luxury properties and, like the Mays' company, one of the last remaining independents left in Manhattan.

Mr. May had donned the Scottish regalia that morning for a photo shoot at the Ken Browar studio on West 17th Street, a boutique shop known for such fashion clients as Roberto Cavalli and Prada, after shooting spots for a marketing campaign he said will revive his flailing company.

As some customers craned their heads to steal a look at Mr. May's getup, he plunked down at an upstairs table to describe his fight to win back the family company he says was snatched out of the hands of his elderly parents. He spoke in a husky bellow deepened by a two-pack-a-day Marlboro habit. Between sips from a double espresso, he nervously monitored e-mails on his Treo cell phone and raked his hands through his brown mane, already spotted with silver flecks.

"I don't mind a good fight," Mr. May said the next day, recalling a barroom brawl he once got into in his early 20's at an Irish pub on Third Avenue.

"My birthday is on St. Patrick's Day, and one St. Patrick's Day I got all tarted up in my kilts and the whole highland dress. I went into an Irish saloon. I was sober as a judge, and started singing "God Save the Queen" and fought my way out. There were eight guys. I left five of them bloody."

It all started in April of 2004, after Mr. May's brother-in-law, Peter Marra, left the family shop for rival brokerage Brown Harris Stevens, selling his own 12 percent stake in William B. May to Brown Harris' owners, the Zeckendorfs.

After some heavy legal wrangling between Mr. May, his sister's husband and the powerful Zeckendorf clan, all sides laid down arms in June in a deal that had the Zeckendorfs acquiring the Mays' two Brooklyn branches.

But since then, relations with the Zeckendorfs-if not with his brother-in-law-have been repaired.

"I think Billy is a very straight shooter and is an upfront business man," said William Lie Zeckendorf, co-chairman of Terra Holdings. Mr. Zeckendorf said he is considering real-estate deals with Mr. May.

Mr. May said he also patched relations with his brother-in-law and his sister Leslie, which had been left smoldering since June.

"I'm embarrassed about some of the things I said [about Peter and Leslie]," Mr. May said.

Mr. Marra, though, sees things differently.

"I'm happy at Brown Harris," Mr. Marra said by phone when reached for comment. "I really want to put this whole thing behind me, I want nothing to do with Bill May. I have nothing to say about Bill May or the May family."

About two months after the Marra defection, the firm sold its Madison Avenue branch for $375,000 to William B. May C.E.O. Christian Deutsch and his partner Kevin Brown, a Century 21 franchisee. The duo, now Mr. May's rivals, kept both names: A recent spate of real-estate ads in The New York Times, which are part of Mr. May's most recent lawsuit, carried the slogan "Century 21 William B. May." On Nov. 7, Century 21 William B. May ran an ad in The Times with a letter from Century 21 president and C.E.O. Thomas Kunz welcoming the company into its fold.

"It's my great-grandfather's name. It belongs to us," Mr. May said over lunch of lobster and kir in the cavernous dining hall of the Union League Club on April 1. "It's not a question of getting [the name] back, it's a matter of stopping other people from infringing on it. We still have all rights and title to it … and that license doesn't allow anyone to call themselves 'Century 21 William B. May' all in one breath. It says what we intended: You can be 'William B. May Company,' and with our express permission, you can make variations."

On April 8, the feud over the May family name steered toward détente when the May family's attorney, Mark Lebow of Sokolow, Carreras and Associates, distributed settlement documents to all parties involved. Settlement terms were not disclosed, and by press time not all parties had signed the accord. A signed settlement would cease all litigation.

In an e-mail, Paul Aloe, Mr. Brown's attorney, said: "As these matters are currently in litigation, our response to all of the allegations are in papers that are on file with the court. It is neither appropriate nor productive at this time for the parties to adjudicate these matters in the press. We are extremely confident in the correctness and merit of our position and in a favorable outcome."

Mr. May faces an uphill fight. High-grossing brokers such as Roger Erickson have decamped for rival agencies since the legal machinations began last July, and without their Madison Avenue flagship and the lucrative Brooklyn business that Brown Harris Stevens snapped up, the firm's major revenue streams have been choked off. Or, as David Burris, the co-chairman of Terra Holdings, the parent company of Brown Harris Stevens, said: "What's left of William B. May? William B. May will be whatever Bill May makes it. They managed to break up the firm. It basically needs to be built up from ground zero."

"I don't really want their money. I just want them to get the fuck off my island. It's my island," Mr. May said on a recent Friday evening. Such boasting could be brushed aside as brazen posturing, but for Mr. May, tact and nuance rarely inflect his oratory. He was gathered with several brokers from his firm's Beekman office at the Brazilian restaurant Circus on East 61st Street, where he dines several times a week. Mr. May, who goes by "Billy," wore a black leather jacket, trousers held up by suspenders and worn loafers. Perched at the bar, Mr. May clutched a glass of Portuguese red wine in one hand and a deep mug of espresso in the other. He took vigorous sips off both drinks in quick succession.

Mr. May eschews the management tactics championed by the corporate sages at Harvard Business School and instead mines the annals of military history for his business strategy.

"I feel like J.E.B. Stewart at the high-water mark of the confederacy, when J.E.B. Stewart took his cavalry and circled all the way around the Union Army," Mr. May said.

In business negotiations, he has been known to blast off fiery e-mails known as "Billygrams."

He lives in an East Side apartment just north of the U.N. headquarters with views overlooking the East River. In 1992, Mr. May said he reset his body clock to Greenwich Mean Time, which allows him to be more productive.

"I need four hours of sleep a night," he said. On a recent night, he recalled that he slept from 7 p.m. until 4 a.m., and then met brokers from his firm who were out dancing at Crobar. He stayed at the Chelsea club until 8 in the morning.

"Everyone was drunk, it was hilarious. I just had two Red Bulls and danced," he said.

Five days a week, Mr. May rises at dawn to lift weights with his personal trainer Ahmed, who he said once served in the Egyptian Special Forces.

"I do endurance stuff, mainly. I'm trying to get rid of the fuel tank to my love machine," he said, tapping the bulbous paunch that peeked just over his waistline.

When he's not at Circus, he prefers to dine at La Goulue or Russian Samovar with his fiancée, Inna Galerkina, a 29-year-old Russian-born hedge-fund manager with sharp blond hair, who on a recent evening wore a Chanel blazer and Bulgari pearls. The two met last year when Mr. May gave her real-estate advice at the request of a friend.

"It's time," he said. "I've been wolfing around this city for a long time. I proposed a while ago, and I gave her a token ring that she doesn't like. So I'm getting her a bling. It's a diamond sapphire ruby. The Russian colors. I thought it was kind of appropriate. It's a little East-bloc rock, but it's bling."

He said the ring cost "a mortgage."

Mr. May grew up in Ardsley-on-Hudson, 20 miles north of Manhattan. The family also spent time at a beach house on Fishers Island. He attended the prestigious St. George's School in Newport, R.I., and worked for his family's real-estate business.

"I worked in the company's property-management department out of 3 West 57th Street. It was funny because then, Donald Trump had just gotten started. And we were at 3 West 57th Street on the third floor, and he was across the street in the Crown Building on the third floor, and I used to watch him pacing in his office like a manic crazy person in those goddamn red suits he used to wear in the 1970's. It was ridiculous."

He also found time for carousing around the city.

"In 1976, I was dating a selling agent in the Liberty Tower building," Mr. May said. "She was great, she was hot. She was six or eight years older than I was. It was like a match made in heaven. She knew all the doormen at all the stupid clubs that were going on. But we always ended up at Studio [54]. I loved Studio," he said.

After high school, Mr. May studied economics at Duke University, where he dropped out after two and half years for what he said was his refusal to take a course he believed was "too politically correct." According to university records, Mr. May voluntarily withdrew in October 1982.

At Duke, Mr. May was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, played rugby and co-founded the school's polo club with 40 ponies he said his cousin won in a craps game in South America. Mr. May said he made his first foray into real estate at 17 when he bought a house in Durham, N.C., for $23,000 with "grass-cutting money and a loan from the bank." He sold it three years later for $160,000, he said.

"I had to get a note from home," he said. "I rented it to frat brothers, and they trashed it. That was fine; I kept repairing it. They paid a huge rent. My mortgage was $236 a month, and each bedroom was rented for $200 a month to fraternity brothers with their parents guaranteeing the rent, so who cares? It paid for my Duke education, by the way."

After Mr. May left Duke, he returned to New York in the early 1980's and worked in William B. May's brokerage business while managing some of his own buildings. To hear him tell it, his earthiness has been a boon to him at work. Mr. May said a disgruntled tenant in Washington Heights stabbed him in the abdomen when he showed up to collect rent one morning.

"Most of the tenants uptown were sleepy in the morning, so you kind of had the drop on them. This one opened the door, saw who I was, and went, ' Shhheet,'" he said, pointing to the spot where the knife punctured his stomach. Mr. May said he stitched up the wound himself.

Another time, Mr. May said, he walked into a drug deal gone bad during a building inspection in Harlem and took a bullet ricochet to the chest.

"The bullet went in sideways into the breast plate," he said thumping his chest. "I went to my doctor's house in Westchester. I jumped in a cab and went there."

In 1987, Mr. May abruptly quit the family business after a disagreement erupted over a deal to buy 10 townhouses on the West Side.

Mr. May landed in New Orleans and managed property for Brignac-Derbes, a Louisiana real-estate firm. While he was there, Mr. May said he worked as a volunteer cop, patrolling housing projects at night. A few years later, Mr. May returned to New York and said he developed some eight buildings in Brooklyn over the course of 18 months. Throughout the 1990's, he bounced around, wheeling and dealing. In East Texas, he said he bailed out the Indo-American Refining company; back in New York, he advised a bankrupt bicycle company that he declined to name. More recently, he said he has been developing loft buildings in the Wilmington, Del., area.

Mr. May said Sept. 11 changed his life. As he tells it, he took off from Delaware in his private plane en route to Newport, R.I. When the first airliner struck the north tower, Mr. May said he was some 10,000 feet above New York Harbor and witnessed the entire disaster unfold.

"I was on the radio to McGuire Air Force base in 20 seconds saying there had been a terrorist attack," Mr. May recalled on a recent afternoon walking across Lexington Avenue. "And I tried to get vectors to run chicken on the second airliner, because I figured, two buildings, two airliners-like that!"

Mr. May said he kept his plane aloft following the attack, rather than heed the grounding order issued by the F.A.A. In the ensuing months, he said he wrote a scathing 400-page report critical of airport security, and became the target of the F.B.I. He said at the time he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I relive that day most nights each week in my dreams. I still wake up sweating," he wrote in an e-mail message.

In a bizarre twist of events, he turned himself in to authorities in Delaware in December 2001. According to reports in the Associated Press and the Philadelphia Inquirer, the F.B.I. and police arrested Mr. May for allegedly leaving six fake bombs at the New Castle County Airport. According to a report in the News Journal, Mr. May planted phony explosives at the airport that included an empty can with a clock and a note left under an aircraft, a pocket watch taped to a shotgun shell stashed under a staircase, and an ornament placed on a closet light switch.

Mr. May said the ground crew had fueled his plane with the wrong fuel, which severely damaged his aircraft. In response, he became angry and planted the faux bombs to prove how lax airport security was. He described his actions at the time as "strange."

"I was trying to make a point and did it the wrong way," he said.

Between trial and sentencing, he served 31 days in solitary confinement and said he read Moby-Dick seven times.

Mr. May received a felony conviction and four years probation for the incident. He is barred from flying during his probation and banned from airports without approval from his probation officer. Mr. May's attorney at the time, Penelope Marshall, said in reports that Mr. May was not medicated for his bipolar disorder. In federal affidavits, Mr. May's sister, Leslie May Marra, said her brother was treated for bipolar disorder in 1984 and suffered from manic depression, and in the months before the incident Mr. May had tried to commit suicide.

He's "not a kook," Jeanne May, his mother, told reporters at the time. Today Mr. May denies his sister's account.

"When you're in jail, you have no voice," he said.

Over dinner at Circus, Mr. May ordered a salad tropical and spoke about his two principal adversaries, Mr. Deutsch and Mr. Brown of Century 21, the real-estate franchise network controlled by the $21 billion Cendant holding company that has gobbled up real-estate brands including the Corcoran Group, Sotheby's International Realty and Coldwell Banker, with more than 280,000 brokers worldwide.

Just how Mr. May's relations with Mr. Deutsch, William B. May's former C.E.O., and his partner Mr. Brown devolved remains a mystery spiked with bitter acrimony and personal attacks. Both sides, in dueling lawsuits and court documents, offer vastly differing accounts of the financial transaction that had Messrs. Deutsch and Brown purchasing the assets of the May family's office at 575 Madison Avenue to operate it under the Century 21 moniker. Mr. May alleges that Mr. Deutsch-who joined the family's firm in 1993-misrepresented his stake in the new Century 21 venture; that he altered financial statements to misstate the family's financial health by seven figures to pressure the Mays into selling and exact a more favorable deal for himself; and extracted funds from the company without approval. Mr. May's father, Bruce May, said in one instance he was pressured to sign a deal on the hood of his car outside a restaurant in Maryland at night. Mr. May is also suing Mr. Deutsch, his wife Alexandra and William B. May's former comptroller Linda Bower, seeking $15 million in damages and $25 million in punitive damages.

In October, Brown Harris Stevens Brooklyn, the brokerage controlled by the powerful Zeckendorf family, filed a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court alleging that Mr. Deutsch refused to release commission checks totaling some $650,000 from the Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights offices of William B. May that the Zeckendorfs had purchased following Mr. Marra's decampment, along with another $177,000 that disappeared from company coffers. Mr. May said he has spent some $40,000 on a private investigator to prove his case, as well as $40,000 more on forensic accounting to verify his firm's finances.

In response, Mr. Deutsch said in court documents that the May family was clearly aware the entire time of the deal's structure and his and Mr. Brown's plan to operate the 575 Madison Avenue office as a Century 21 franchise with the name William B. May attached. In no way were they in violation of the license, Mr. Deutsch said.

Mr. Brown summed up his view of the Mays' actions in a court statement: "They are in effect asking the court to unscramble an egg that they themselves scrambled."

Mr. Brown declined to comment on the record about the case.

In another court statement, Mr. Brown said that on July 26, Mr. May and his father, accompanied by several people, entered the 575 Madison Avenue office proclaiming it their own, and refused to leave. The police were summoned to the premises and the Mays eventually left. Mr. Brown also said that Mr. May had boasted to him that he had "planted" a previously reported article in The Observer last June.

Mr. May denied having boasted about his statements to The Observer, and said he wanted to sit for an interview after he saw an article in the New York Post that first broke Mr. Marra's jump to Brown Harris Stevens.

"I will just litigate forever, and keep them so mired in muck for doing what they did, they won't be able to do any business, they'll be so busy dealing with me," Mr. May said.

As he seeks to unwind the web of legal entanglements that has ensnared his company over the past year, Mr. May continues to operate three New York offices with branches in Beekman, Tribeca and Greenwich Village, and a fourth branch in Westchester in Irvington, N.Y. He said he's pursuing expansions into New Jersey and London. As a privately held company, financial records are not available, but Mr. May said business is reviving-and the company profitable. In the next 12 months, he expects to turn $15 million in commissions. He is renovating a new headquarters on the fifth floor at 135 East 55th Street, and plans to open the space in May.

Whether that's enough to get his family business back on its feet remains to be seen. Mr. May, who says he has already spent $1 million of his own money to stanch the attacks on his family's business, said he will not surrender until his family wins its name back.

"I'm like a one-man pack of wild dogs when I get angry," he said.

Their new 1839 Greek Revival townhouse has five stories, but it's currently set up as a four-unit building, with a duplex on the bottom two floors and three floor-through units above.

"She bought a house, but it's not finished yet," confirmed her publicist, Stephen Huvane, who said he didn't know the details of the envisioned renovation.

Presumably, Ms. Moore will seek to convert the building to a one-family residence, but as of press time, she had yet to file a renovation plan with the city's department of buildings. In the meantime, Ms. Moore and her gang are holed up elsewhere in the neighborhood. According to this week's New York magazine, she's currently renting the Greenwich Village townhouse of Christy Turlington. She reportedly negotiated a lease somewhere south of the property's $20,000 per month asking price.

When their stay there is up, Ms. Moore and her family can begin personalizing their new abode. It's a 21-foot-wide building with 4,500 square feet, and the townhouse has original trims, moldings, fireplace mantels, wide plank floors and a 1,090-square-foot garden.

According to a source close to the deal, the house's previous owner, Thomas James, moved to Dallas to become Pizza Hut's chief marketing officer. Efforts to reach Mr. James were unsuccessful. The source said, however, that Mr. James and his wife used to reside in the duplex unit, and they cleared out the building's rent-controlled tenants before putting the house on the market late last year.

For almost the last four years, Ms. Moore and her family have been living in loft apartments at 345 West 13th Street, a former warehouse building in the neighboring meatpacking district. Ms. Moore's first acquisition came in July of 1999, when she bought a low-floor unit in the building for $900,000. In October 2001, she upgraded to the building's $2.65 million penthouse unit, selling the smaller apartment for $1.95 million. By November 2002, however, Ms. Moore and Mr. Freundlich were ready to move again, and put their penthouse unit on the market for $3.9 million. It's currently under contract. At the time, Mr. Huvane told The Observer : "Julianne has always wanted a brownstone, and is shopping for one now."

Well, she's got it-and with the purchase, she joins fellow Greenwich Village townhouse owners Gwyneth Paltrow, Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, Hilary Swank and Chad Lowe, and Edie Falco.

Buy, With a Little Help From Your Friends: Rossellini Continues Sales With $430K Condo

Isabella Rossellini's real-estate divestment continues. On the heels of downgrading from a sprawling 3,000-square-foot Upper East Side penthouse to a more modest Upper West Side perch late last year, the Roger Dodger star recently sold a small financial-district condo that she's owned since 1986. The new owner is a friend of Ms. Rossellini's, who has been renting the apartment for the last 15 years.

"I've known her for 30 years or so," said the owner, Paavo Turtiainen. "It was a pure investment for her, and when it came on the market, I bought it."

Mr. Turtiainen, who said he runs a small catering company out of the apartment, paid $430,000 for the 1,075-square-foot, one-bedroom condo loft, located at 117 Beekman Street.

"It's got high ceilings and lots of light," he said. "It's a beautiful place and a nice building."

Mr. Turtiainen declined to comment on why Ms. Rossellini decided to sell the apartment now, and calls to Ms. Rossellini's press agents were not returned by press time.

In February 2002, Ms. Rossellini put her 3,000-square-foot East 85th Street condo on the market for $5.49 million. By the end of that year, she had purchased a 1,800- square-foot condo on West 86th Street for $1.79 million. She also retains a residence at 25 Central Park West.

RECENT TRANSACTIONS IN THE REAL ESTATE MARKET

CARNEGIE HILL

1088 Park Avenue

Four-bedroom, four-bathroom co-op.

Asking: $5.575 million. Selling: $5.075 million.

Maintenance: $5,027; 39 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: nine months.

LOOK OUT BELOW! Talk about getting in while the getting is good: In 1935, an international corporate lawyer at a major New York firm moved into a rental apartment at this Park Avenue building. In 1941, when the building was still a rental, the lawyer moved with his wife into this duplex penthouse unit, which has four exposures and a 360-degree wrap-around terrace. At the time, they were paying $250 a month. When the building went co-op in the early 1950's, the couple bought the unit for $8,900. They raised four children in the apartment, one of whom told The Observer about his fond memories of the apartment's outdoor space. "It was great fun to throw water-filled balloons onto 88th Street, and snowballs at the cars on Park Avenue," said the son, a semi-retired former furniture-company executive. "Having a terrace is also very useful for walking the dog." The family's patriarch died in 1990, and his 97-year-old wife passed away in October 2001. For almost the last seven decades, they'd been using the same phone number. An investment banker and his wife, a former investment banker herself, are the apartment's new owners. Until recently, they, along with their two young children, had been working and living in Hong Kong. Their new home has approximately 3,500 square feet, three staff rooms and a library, and the building has a quarter-acre interior grass courtyard. Hilda Shamash, an associate broker at Douglas Elliman, shared the listing on this apartment with Mary Rutherfurd, an associate broker at Brown Harris Stevens.

UPPER WEST SIDE

22 West 66th Street

Three-bedroom, three-bathroom condo.

Asking: $2.3 million. Selling: $2.1 million.

Charges: $2,000; taxes: $1,250

Time on the market: eight months.

THE CORRECTIONS To get an idea of the degree to which Manhattan's high-end real-estate market has "corrected" itself over the past three quarters, consider this deal: A residential real-estate investor based in Europe bought this apartment in 1995 for $995,000. The 2,241-square-foot unit has a library with two balconies, four exposures and park views. To the luxe marble kitchen and bathroom finishings that the sponsor had installed, the investor added cherrywood paneling, a wine cooler and attractive window treatments. It was an expensive and heartfelt installation, but when the investor found herself spending less and less time in America, she decided it was time to cash out. So in May of 2002, she put the apartment on the market for $2.95 million. Her broker, Reba Miller, president of R.P. Miller and Associates, received an offer at the full asking price within a week, but the deal fell apart when the buyer discovered that her portfolio had taken a bigger hit than she'd thought. As the summer wore on, fewer and fewer buyers came to see the apartment, and Ms. Miller was forced to reduce the asking price, first to $2.75 million, then to $2.6 million, then to $2.49 million and finally to $2.3 million. When a retired businessman finally closed on the property-eight months after the first looker had been willing to spend $2.95 million-the selling price was $2.1 million.

"Fears about the economy, war, the future of New York-they all played a part, there's no doubt about it," said Ms. Miller. "But at the end of the day, good money was still made, because [my client] only paid $995,000 for the apartment."

Michael Spodek of the Halstead Property Company represented the buyer.

MIDTOWN EAST

330 East 51st Street

Three-story townhouse.

Asking: $1.95 million. Selling: $1.8 million.

Taxes: $8,112.

Time on the market: one year.

IT'S YOUR NUMERALS When real-estate broker Kevin Brown bought this dilapidated shell of a townhouse in August 2000, he intended to add two floors to the building, rehabilitate it and then move in with his family. But thanks to what he called a year and a half of bureaucratic red tape, the townhouse is now owned by the Kabbalah Centre of Florida, and it's unclear what they're planning on doing with the property. But whether it's office space or housing for rabbis, it's a far cry from what Mr. Brown had in mind. When he first toured the ramshackle property almost three years ago, it was 11 p.m. on the night before he was leaving for Europe on business. An owner and senior managing director at Ashforth Warburg Associates, Mr. Brown had long been on the hunt for a fixer-upper, and he seized upon his prize instantly. "I had seen everything on the market," he recalled. "So when [the broker] said: 'One million three fifty,' I said: 'Fine.'" Mr. Brown drew up and submitted his renovation plans within 24 hours. That, he said, was the last time anything related to the property happened with haste. The first roadblock: building permits. "Thinking that I was a man about town, and that I knew so many people, I thought I could get the permits in two to four months," Mr. Brown said. Eight months later, he was still waiting for the city's approval. "I realized it could go on forever," Mr. Brown said. Unwilling to wait in limbo, he bought and combined two apartments at nearby 100 U.N. Plaza and moved in there with his domestic partner and their two adopted children. Their rickety townhouse hit the market in early 2002. Final approval from the city to turn the structure into a five-story building had arrived a full year and a half after Mr. Brown had originally applied. But by then, he was already entertaining offers on the property. Mr. Brown ended up going with the Kabbalah group because, he said, "I had a soft spot for any group dealing with spirituality." But the delays mounted. According to Mr. Brown, the numbers were agreed upon, but the numerology was off: the Kabbalah Centre held off on closing for two months, waiting for an "auspicious day" to finalize the deal. "It was frustrating for my attorney, as well as for their attorney, because we did not know which were the good days and bad days," Mr. Brown said. "Nobody seemed to know exactly what the right date was." Representatives for the Kabbalah Centre didn't return calls for comment.