NY/NJ port authority takes tenant’s security deposit

   The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said Wednesday it has carried through with a threat to draw down the security deposit of Foreign Auto Preparation Service (FAPS), its largest automobile handler to cover back rent.
   “We drew down on their $2.4 million line of credit and we are monitoring their compliance with their lease terms,” said Port Authority spokesman Ron Marsico.
   The agency said last month it would get tough with FAPS because it owed $2.8 million in rent and fees dating to spring 2011.
   But the company, a tenant at Port Newark since 1956 said it had paid in excess of $167 million in rent, dockage and wharfage fees during the past decade, and its operations were hurt by the 2008 financial crisis and Japanese tsunami which “created a global crisis of unprecedented proportion in the automotive trade.”
   FAPS said it has “consistently made rent payments in spite of those developments and in recent months began full payment and a reduction in arrears.”
   A FAPS spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment. – Chris Dupin