Results tagged “coop”

If it's November, it's time to start dreading the Holiday tipping ritual. How much do you give the super or the doorman or—no joke—the sanitation worker? Well, if you're the board of directors at a tony co-op, the solution is simple: Nothing. A thread on the Urban Baby message board has sparked a vigorous debate about noblesse oblige during a recession, beginning thus:

SANTA CLAUS CAME EARLY!!! Just got a notice from our co-op board: "In response to past complaints about favoritism, and in light of the current recession that has dealt a significant blow to many of our shareholders, the board of directors of (XYZ Building) has implemented a strict "no tipping" policy for the building staff." THANK YOU SANTA!!!

A tenant war broke out recently when one Upper West Side co-op was considering taking a common area and fancifying it into a new playroom for the buildings' kids, nowadays apparently too good to just hide inside the Hamburglar's Head all day. The spat pitted the classic battle of Mommies versus Bodies, the contingent of self-improving residents who wanted to put in a gym. Throw in one crank calling to "get rid of it! It’s a waste of money and it’s taking up storage space that we need," add a touch of winning rhetoric on the parents' part that apparently included an "Obamaesque way of phrasing things," and it sounds like a classic battle in yuppieland. Apparently this kind of madness is becoming more common in the high-stakes world of children's playrooms in buildings, which can cost up to six figures and include amenities such as trapezes(!).

Third quarter real estate data for Manhattan showed that sales for condos and co-ops improved from the second quarter... but sales still trail 2008 third quarter numbers. So, is the glass half full or empty?

A Queens judge ruled that a 45-year-old man can be evicted from the Woodside, Queens co-op his dad has let him live in for 18 years. According to the Daily News, even though Richard Carnivale was allowed to live in the apartment and paid $250,000 in maintenance fees over the two decades—his dad welcomed him to the new pad with a kiss and said, "Here are the keys to your new home"—he never had actual ownership. The judge wrote, "The son's claim of ownership is essentially predicated on the handing over of keys to the co-op apartment. No writing exists to evidence an intention by the father of making the son the owner of the property." Plus, the father and son had a falling out, and Carnivale stopped paying maintenance in 2007. A lawyer for Carnivale's father said his client has health problems, "The father didn't want to do this, but he needs the money. It's a shame that it had to come to this. We're not looking to take the apartment and throw him out in the street." Carnivale may appeal the ruling.

"It's like being raped," 50-year-old Kevin Uhrin tells the Daily News, describing how he felt seeing a piece of paper on his apartment door with the word "fags" written on it. Uhrin says the paper, which was taped up to announce some impending repair work and insult him, was part of an ongoing anti-gay campaign by board members at his Kew Gardens Co-Op. He also heard his floor referred to as the "AIDS floor," because three units on the floor were each owned by a gay couple. So Uhrin and another tenant, Estelle Torino, filed a discrimination lawsuit; Uhrin settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, but Torino's case will go to court next month. She says the trouble started when a busted pipe caused a leak in her apartment, and management refused to repair the damage. Tensions escalated, and in the years since, the board has allegedly turned other hetero tenants against their homosexual neighbors. Now Torino is scared to go downstairs to do her laundry alone, but shouldn't she be more worried about finding an offensive note on her door?

Uh, it's time to rent, maybe? Crain's New York reports that all over the city, "maintenance fees and common charges for co-ops and condos, respectively, are rising at the highest rates in years."

The Post reports that a family is fighting their Chelsea co-op to keep their beloved Mastiff—and that the co-op board secretary, CNN's Soledad O'Brien, is especially critical. Steven Lyons, who bought his 4,000 square-foot apartment in 2003, says, "[O'Brien] told me at a shareholder's meeting that my dog stinks." Ugo, a 150-pound mastiff, arrived in the Lyons household in 2007, but O'Brien noted his "size, slobbering, shedding, drooling, gassiness and odors" in an affidavit (the family gets him groomed three times a month and sprays him with a deodorizer). The co-op allows pets, but Lyons's wife Monica Nelson tells the Post that other board members hold their noses when they share the elevator with her—even when she's without the dog! The co-op board has terminated their lease, and the Lyonses may have to leave their apartment or get rid of Ugo. Interestingly, O'Brien put her apartment on the market last October—you can see it and her cat in this video.

Federal Magistrate Ronald Ellis's decision to allow scammer Bernard Madoff to remain out on bail means that his neighbors at 133 East 64th Street must endure more, most likely, unwelcome attention to their rarefied Upper East Side co-op. The NY Times' Susan Dominus revealed that Madof sent them a note ("printed out on simple white paper, with letterhead formatted by word processor") a few weeks ago:

Dear neighbors,

Continue reading "More Semi-Free Range Madoff"

Just in time for Halloween, there's been some chatter regarding hallway and door decorations in New York apartments. Brownstoner notes that in July, a Clinton Hill co-op board controversially "decided to enforce a house rule: no decorations on any doors, without getting board approval first," since in a co-op you don't have the rights to your door, the decision is out of one's hands. A recent Habitat article breaks it down, but what about those not in co-ops? While stoops, hallway rights, and even smoking rules in buildings are ongoing hot topics, the door often gets ignored. How does your building handle decorations?

A group of social butterflies in Brooklyn – who the Real Deal describes as having careers in "high-paying creative fields" – are banding together to start what would be the city's first "co-housing community." Like co-ops, co-housing communities make group decisions on issues like building maintenance. But here's the twist: while residents live in private homes, they share common areas for dining and cooking. The still-growing group of 25 households is eying a development site in Fort Greene, and expect to collectively spend $15 to $35 million to reside socially. It's a popular lifestyle in groovy Denmark, but will it fly here in individualistic New York? Once the first parent hears that someone fed precious Conner a carrot stick grown with pesticides, it'll surely mean war. [Via Brownstoner.]

The Brooklyn community board that covers Bay Ridge is fed up with the food vendors who clog 86th Street – all three of them. “The issue is cleanliness,” asserts the board’s District Manager Josephine Beckmann, whose husband is a police lieutenant. “It would be best to have no vending at all. It just causes problems.” So the board has unanimously urged the city’s Department of Small Business Services to banish them from the block.

It's not uncommon to hear about animals being housed in New York apartments -- not just cats and dogs, but tigers and monkeys, oh my. The latest animal house can be found in a 50-story luxury condo complex on the East Side.

Colors, the feel-good restaurant on Lafayette Street owned and operated by Windows on the World employees who were spared on 9/11, is reportedly back from the brink of ruin. The fine dining restaurant opened two years ago as one of New York’s few cooperative restaurants, with everyone from busboys to chefs sharing ownership and a menu featuring international cuisine created by the multi-ethnic staff.