Lawsuit by Islanders great Pat LaFontaine seeks payment for Midway Crossing work

New York Islanders Hall of Famer Pat LaFontaine and a business partner have filed a lawsuit against executives with a Chicago developer for what the pair say is money owed for work bringing a proposed arena and convention center to Ronkonkoma.

The lawsuit names Derek Trulson and Michael Shenot, both executives at Jones Lang LaSalle Americas Inc, or JLL, the developer behind the $2.8 billion proposed project, known as Midway Crossing.

Attorneys representing LaFontaine and Steve D’Iorio filed the lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court on Aug. 1.

In a Tuesday interview, LaFontaine and D’Iorio, the latter a former senior vice president at JLL, told Newsday the lawsuit against Trulson and Shenot was their last resort to both recover nearly $2.5 million they say they are owed and get the project moving again. 

"We didn’t want to get to this point," LaFontaine said. "But we feel that we had an agreement as a partnership, and it was broken."

Trulson, Shenot or other representatives of JLL did not immediately return requests for comment Tuesday.

The defendants and plaintiffs were at one point all members of R5 Partners LLC, which JLL selected to develop Midway Crossing.

The plaintiffs "expended substantial time, money and labor for more than three years developing investors and tenants for the initial phase of the Midway Crossing project," the lawsuit states.

Both Trulson and Shenot had "unjustly benefited from and been enriched" at LaFontaine's and D’Iorio's expense, the lawsuit states.

Suffolk County in 2018 selected JLL’s pitch to build a 17,500-seat sports arena as part of its original plans for a mixed-use project. Dubbed "Midway Crossing," the proposal later called for construction of a sports complex with indoor and outdoor arenas, a 300-room hotel, shops, restaurants, offices, health sciences facilities and other amenities on 179 acres of county- and Islip Town-owned land.

However, the developers removed the indoor and outdoor arenas from the proposal in September 2022 to appease opponents in the Suffolk County Legislature who had called for a more scaled-down version, Newsday previously reported.

Trulson and Shenot in August 2022 resigned from R5 and "refused to proceed with any agreement" to act as developers for the project, the lawsuit states.

In the time since, according to both LaFontaine and D’Iorio, they have been unable to reach the two JLL executives.

"As a team, we could bring this across the goal line and bring it to the next level ... we could do this for Long Island as long as we remained a team," LaFontaine said. "And all of a sudden, it felt like the project got hijacked and went in a different direction."

"We’ve asked them a hundred times to get in a room and discuss what the disagreement is ... so we’re really not sure what’s going on at that side of the table," D’Iorio said.

LaFontaine and D’Iorio are seeking a judgment against Trulson, Shenot and their limited liability companies totaling roughly $1.3 million and $1.07 million, respectively, for "unjust enrichment," according to the suit.

"We’re willing to get in a room to figure this out," LaFontaine said. "This project is too important. Let’s all figure out a way to get in a room collectively because the pieces are there to move a great project forward if everyone puts their egos aside."