Researching Reputation of a Developer or Sponsor

The NY Observer does a pretty good job about covering developers. And the Real Deal has many stories on developers. If it is a publicly traded company, you can go the route you would use for any public company. Also you might try the BBB and the Attorney Generals Office for any pending cases.

I just used google to see if there was any controversy in the news the past few years and looked for old messaged boards threads for some of their past buildings. Just to give me an idea of what I was getting into.

Google and proper secondary search terms may yield some results.
You can start with the developer name and work down from there....(President's name of development company,etc.)
Secondary search terms that may help as well...."plaintiff" "defendant," etc.

There's also ecourts. (No URL, but just google that.) You can use it to search NYS Supreme Court cases.

Best is WestLaw, which requires a subscription, but might also have a pay-per-search function.

apt23, spaceboy,truthskr10 and NWT, thank you all for your very helpful responses.