The city is owed $750,000 in unpaid water bills. An investor is demanding a $12 million refund. A bank hasn’t seen a dime of a $56 million construction loan repaid for a building that opened six years ago. And that building ― a luxury apartment complex ― is bleeding money.

Now, a new public document shows that the delayed, and largely failed, redevelopment of West Baltimore’s Poppleton neighborhood has generated steady cash for at least one group: the executives who run New York-based La Cité Development.

La Cité spent $7.3 million on executive compensation, operational expenses and other overhead costs from 2005 to 2022, according to a company document.

That document and others are exhibits in an ongoing lawsuit filed by an investor. They shed light on how La Cité and its president, Dan Bythewood Jr., have been spending investors’ money — like labeling $16,000 in political donations as “marketing” expenses.

In videos posted to social media, Bythewood portrays himself as a globe-trotting businessman with a taste for the finer things in life: caviar, Dom Pérignon champagne and his own fully restored Formula One race car.

The court records in the lawsuit depict a developer who haggles over relatively minor amounts of money, even when it risked derailing a project.

In court documents, La Cité blamed the investor, Arctaris Impact Investors, for delays in the project, saying the firm refused to process its reimbursements. But Arctaris said a six-month delay alleged by La Cité stemmed from a single market study that would have cost $12,000 to complete.

Arctaris had committed more than $13 million to the Poppleton project but sued La Cité when the developer missed a deadline to begin construction. The parties agreed on a $12 million refund, due Dec. 31. La Cité missed that deadline.

On Monday, a judge in Boston ordered La Cité to cede control of that project to Arctaris, which is based in Massachusetts.

The court ruling and the city’s decision last year to end its development agreement with La Cité have dealt serious blows to Bythewood’s ambitions to remake an economically depressed part of Baltimore into a high-density, upscale neighborhood evoking Manhattan.

Bythewood did not respond to an interview request for this story.

The developer’s only completed project in Poppleton is a 262-unit apartment complex called Center\West.

At the 2018 ribbon-cutting for that complex, Bythewood told a crowd of supporters that it represented just 8% of what La Cité intended to build there.

Since opening, the two-building complex has struggled to retain residents and attract first-floor commercial tenants, financial records show, and it has lost nearly $16 million, requiring multiple infusions of cash from investors.

Some of La Cité’s backers include celebrities, like Susan Taylor, the longtime editorial director of Essence magazine, and Malik Yoba, an actor from the movie “Cool Runnings.”

Last year, La Cité said the Texas megachurch pastor, T.D. Jakes, had invested.

“This investment is not just about housing,” Jakes said in a press release. “It’s about creating opportunities, empowering families, and leaving a lasting legacy for generations to come.”

The Bythewoods also have tapped lower-profile investors, including a longtime family friend, Jonathan Stern.

Stern said he invested $150,000 in the apartment complex and then watched in frustration as the project failed to turn a profit. Finally, Stern said he cashed out his investment last year for “pennies on the dollar.”

“I would constantly berate them and ask, ‘Where’s my money? Where’s my distributions?’” Stern said.

When told that La Cité had spent at least $7.3 million on costs it labeled as overhead, including executive compensation, Stern called it “astounding.”

“They have been lining their pockets with investor money,” he said.

La Cité did not respond to a request for comment.

Besides money from investors, another way La Cité makes money is by selling the development rights to city-owned land in Poppleton.

The city of Baltimore spent $15 million to uproot residents, demolish buildings and acquire that land. But in a 2006 deal, the city awarded La Cité the exclusive development rights to it.

When Arctaris teamed up with La Cité to redevelop one of those city-owned parcels, the firm agreed to pay $2 million to a subsidiary of La Cité and an additional $6 million upon completion of the project, according to their operating agreement, which is part of the exhibits in the investor case.

In 2023, the Housing Authority of Baltimore City paid La Cité $550,000 to develop three abandoned properties owned by the city.

Even after the city’s termination of the deal last year, the firm has continued to assert that it controls the development rights over several acres of vacant, city-owned land in Poppleton.

Representatives of the city’s housing agency, which oversaw the deal with La Cité, did not respond to a question about who controls the land.

La Cité is pursuing plans to build townhomes and smaller apartment buildings with builder NVR Ryan Homes there.

Bythewood described himself in a 2023 video interview as a “real estate developer in the Eastern Seaboard predominantly in America, but we have done things as far as Montenegro.”

La Cité‘s website lists the apartment complex in Poppleton and a 29-unit building in Long Island as its completed projects.

Bythewood’s social media posts show him attending New York Fashion Week, swimming in a cave in Mexico, and cooking chicken noodle soup using a 2012 bottle of Dom Pérignon champagne.

Perhaps more than anything else, Bythewood likes to show off his race car, a fully restored BAR 003, which competed in the 2001 Formula One World Championship.

Top Gear Magazine called it “one of the rarest F1 cars in the world.”

In a video interview, Bythewood said he shipped the car to Germany so a company could X-ray its entire body and ensure its structural integrity.

“It just costs so much money to get these things up and running,” Bythewood said.

As part of the interview, Bythewood reflected on his upbringing as a child actor on Long Island, where his father was a “massively successful” orthodontist. Bythewood said he dreamed of becoming a professional race car driver but realized it was too expensive.

That’s when Bythewood said he decided to become a real estate developer and “make some real money.”