City taxpayers have already spent $85 million to create a new home for the Fulton Fish Market in the Bronx. Now, city officials say, New Yorkers will be forced to pay thousands of dollars more every day the move is delayed.

In June, when the relocation seemed imminent, the city turned on the air-conditioning at the new Hunts Point facility, which is so enormous that it takes about a month to cool it to its ideal temperature of 38 to 42 degrees.

Throughout the summer, as temperatures hovered in the 90s and energy prices climbed, the city – which owns the 400,000 square-foot indoor market – paid the air-conditioning bill at a cost of about $70,000 a month.

Yesterday, the fish market was finally supposed to move into its new home, start paying rent, and pick up the tab for the air-conditioning as well as some security costs the city is paying. A lawsuit filed in state Supreme Court last week thwarted that plan, and New Yorkers are paying the bill.

The lawsuit was filed by a former aide to Mayor Giuliani, Randy Mastro, on behalf of Laro Service Systems Incorporated, a private fish-unloading company that has served the market since the Giuliani-administration reforms of the 1990s. It claims that the city’s decision to license a return of the market’s fish-unloading operations to the fish wholesalers, the same people who ran the market before the Giuliani crackdown, is akin to handing the reins of the market back to organized criminals.

The city has said the case has no merit. Yesterday, a spokesman for the city’s Economic Development Corporation, Michael Sherman, told The New York Sun: “This lawsuit is costing the city money and the fish wholesalers money, while the only one profiting from it is Laro Service Systems. We hope this is a short-term delay so that we can open the Fulton Fish Market at Hunts Point in the very near future, bringing more than $1 billion in economic activity.”

A lawyer representing the fish cooperative that will be managing the new facility, Thomas Canova, said his clients are paying $45,000 each week the move is delayed. For the most part, that covers the salaries of security and maintenance workers who were supposed to start work this week. The new market is expected to generate hundreds of jobs, most of them for residents of the South Bronx.

This Friday, there will be a hearing at which the chairman of the city’s Business Integrity Commission will testify about the city’s decision to license the wholesalers to unload their own fish. The court will also hear testimony from lawmakers about the original intent of the legislation. The former mayor is not expected to testify.

At this point, both sides remain optimistic about the lawsuit but acknowledge that it could take at least a month to resolve.

Mr. Mastro said, “I look forward to the hearing.”

He said nothing is stopping the fish market from moving, as his client, Laro, is licensed to unload fish and only the cooperative of wholesalers is barred from unloading until the legal matter is resolved.

Mr. Canova said the market cannot move because there is no contract between the cooperative and Laro to perform unloading at the new facility. He said he anticipates that whoever loses the case will appeal.

“We may need another round or two,” he said. “But I’m confident that the cooperative will be entitled to make its move and proceed just as the Business Integrity Commission has agreed it could.”