Standing beside one of the two waterfalls he had built into his duplex condominium on West 15th Street in Manhattan, Colin Rath smiled. The waterfalls feed a narrow koi pond that runs the length of the living room and was scooped out in the shape of a scale replica of the Yangtze River in China.

“It’s so peaceful in here,” he said.

What he wanted to do next door, however, is another story, one Mr. Rath, 52, has now told in a self-published book. Whether it was a case of tremendous misfortune or terrible miscalculation is hard to say. What the episode does reveal is the remarkable excesses that prevailed a decade ago, and perhaps again today, across New York City.

“We went to hell and back I don’t know how many times,” Mr. Rath said, reflecting on the two decades he spent on the block in the Chelsea neighborhood, half of them trying to build his “green dream,” an eight-story boutique condominium building.

Meant to be ahead of its time, employing every luxury and technology imaginable, the project instead pulled its creator in over his head. In 2010, he walked away with nothing but 27 debtors clamoring for absent millions, and friends and relatives who had soured on the enterprise.