Results tagged “petercooper”

The New York Historical Society has brought a couple of paintings out to the streets. The mini installation of sorts is comprised of their portraits (replicas, of course) of Abraham Lincoln and Peter Cooper; both are currently on display at the Astor Place Triangle.

One month's free rent! Pets allowed! These are some of the new strategies from Tishman Speyer for its market-rate rentals at Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village complex. Which is a far cry from its past as a complex where building workers would be rewarded with $150 gift certificates if they narced on pet-owning tenants.

An appellate court ruled this week that a 71-year-old woman could remain in the West Village apartment she shares with her two cats, despite a no-pets clause in her lease. Siiri Marvits has lived in the same apartment for 43 years and has had her two cats Athena and Apollo for more than ten years. The Daily News reports that according to the New York City Law Journal, a landlord must begin eviction proceedings within...

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a double shooting/possible homicide on Greene St. in Brooklyn, a shooting at Wyckoff Ave. and Starr St. in Brooklyn, and another shooting at East 51st St. and Church Ave. in Brooklyn. An appreciation of Jewish Delis in New York City. To avoid the widespread use of pesticides on its acres of grounds, real estate firm Tishman Speyer released 720,000 ladybugs around Stuy-Town and Peter Cooper Village. The ladybugs will...

We don't know if that's brilliant or frightening.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a found grenade(!) at Sedgwick Ave. and Depot Pl. in the Bronx, a child abduction on 8th Ave. and 150th St. in Manhattan, and a person struck by a train on 103rd St. and Roosevelt Ave. in Queens.
• A New Jersey State Police report concluded that the unauthorized use of flashing emergency lights by his driver didn't cause Governor Corzine's near-fatal crash, but it did contribute significantly to the accident by initiating the chain of events.
• Your apartment is only as small as your imagination and creativity, and a retired steamfitter who lives in Peter Cooper Village knows it.
• Parents Against Styrofoam in Schools (P.A.S.S.) are objecting to the approximately four million styrofoam trays used in New York's public schools every week.
• The woman charged with robbing rapper Foxy Brown was released from Rikers Island after her alleged victim failed to appear at the accused's grand jury hearing.
• Brownstoner notes that the DUMBO pedestrian plaza is coming together at a record pace.
• Before new city noise regulations kick in July 1, Stereogum rates the 20 Loudest Albums of All Time.
• Mayor Bloomberg lashed out against special tax breaks that could hand developer Bruce Ratner an extra $300 million for developing Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards. Mayor Mike hopes Gov. Spitzer will quash the "carve-out" benefit.

With the $5.4 billion purchase of the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village apartment complex by Tishman-Speyer, some longtime rent-stabilized tenants have been worried about whether they will be able to stay. Well, now tenants are complaining that Tishman-Speyer has been spying on them.

• Cabbies are worried about their safety after robberies on the Lower East Side
• The city's problem-laden high schools for pregnant girls are closing; check out this article about how one student was facing the difficulties of her school, which included teachers not showing up and student fights
• Culturegrrl speaks with William Griswold, the future head of the Morgan Library, who actually left the Morgan a few years ago, with stings at the Getty and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
• Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village has become a symbol of the high cost of living in NYC and the place for people to join hands in protest
• Green thumbs in Red Hook and plans are not yet approved for Whole Foods in Gowanus
• The end is nigh: Donald Trump agrees with Rosie O'Donnell regarding Lizzy Hasselback
• A baby was found wandering around Staten Island; an elderly couple took care of the baby until the police arrived, and the baby has since been identified
• After their hostess kicked them out of her apartment, two people beat her up in Central Park
• When it smells like vomit but it's really just the crap rotting in a vacated apartment

• The city wants to do repair work to buildings that need it - and charge the landlords - in legislation proposed by the City Council and supported by the Mayor and other housing groups
• City Comptroller William Thompson thinks Wal-Mart is spying on its shareholders - is that better, worse, or the same as keeping employees locked up?

It looks like some advances in technology are causing some problems at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. The $5.4 billion complex of buildings is replacing all its regular old keys with fancy electronic key-cards - in the case of Peter Cooper Village, the cards are already being used. The Post reports that Stuy Town residents could be using the new key system as early as next week. This is somewhat of an issue for Orthodox Jews on the Sabbath and religious holidays because they are forbidden to use the key technology during those days. One Stuy Town resident told The Post, "They are making us prisoners in our own homes. What do they want us to do? It's not like we can go somewhere else. It's our home." Well, what they obviously want you to do is move out so they can charge more rent to the next tenant.

With the record setting $5.4 billion sale of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village to Tishman Speyer last year, many residents suspected that the new owners would shake things up. But we doubt few tenants would have anticipated the rent increases sent in lease renewal papers. The NY Times speaks with some tenants about their sticker shock. The verdict? A lot of people are moving out. Check out these rents and the increases:

Two months after Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village were sold by MetLife to Tishman Speyer for a record-breaking $5.4 billion, an epic review of the deal by Charles Bagli of the NY Times ties up loose ends and brings several underlying issues into sharper focus. Reading between the lines:

What do slumlords, apartment-seekers, and big real estate developers around the city have in common? Not much. But the latest debate in City Hall should have all of them closely watching the reforms of 421-a, a bill that will decide the future of New York City’s affordable housing policy and long-term housing stock if passed by the state legislature.

Yesterday, it was announced that Tishman Speyer's $5.4 billion bid for Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village was successful, making it the largest real estate deal in history. But what's interesting is that the second bid from Apollo was $5.33 billion. We wonder if Apollo executives are "What if"-ing right now. The bid organized by tenants to preserve middle-class housing was $4.5-4.9 billion - well behind the other bids - and City Councilman Daniel Garodnick, Peter Cooper resident, who worked on the tenants' bid said, “Eventually, I think what you will see is a market-rate, gated community, which is what MetLife was pitching to all the potential bidders.”

The City Council has introduced a bill to stall the sale of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village. At the end of August, MetLife announced it would seek bids for the 110 building complex that spans 80 acres in Manhattan, with an ideal asking price of $5 billion. The sale sent tenants of STPCV into a frenzy, worrying about their status there, as well as advocates for affordable housing, as all signs point to developers taking the land for a luxury development. Last week, many bids were submitted, and one of the bids was from the tenants - $4.5 billion to "preserve at least 40 percent of the complexes as middle-class housing" - which is half a billion below bids from other developers in the running, according to the NY Times. The Times also explains the bill:

The legislation, introduced by Councilwoman Rosie Mendez, would require the owners of large-scale apartment complexes where more than half the units are rent-regulated to provide 120 days’ notice of a sale. The city’s housing department, in turn, would asses the impact of losing large numbers of apartments for low-, moderate- and middle-income tenants.

Continue reading "Council Intervention on Behalf of Stuyvessant Tenants' Bid?"

- The Cadman Plaza General Post Office looks great, but it's not that great inside (make haste with a conversion?)

-- Whoops! 330 students were incorrectly made to repeat the fifth grade.

There's a wonderful feature on department store Lord & Taylor by Toni Schlesinger in the Observer today. Earlier in the summer, it was announced that the Lord & Taylor chain had been sold to an investor group including the folks that backed the Time-Warner Center; though the deal isn't finalized yet, when Schlesinger wonders if condos could be built on top of the 424 Fifth Avenue location, lead investor Richard Baker says, "Yes, we could build on top. But we have made no decision what to do with the existing building." And he added, “I’m getting a lot of e-mails: ‘Don’t mess with Lord & Taylor!’”

There may be some high-flying developers and investors interested in buying Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village, but the underdog bidders to capture the public's heart of the sale might just be the tenants of STPCV themselves. Really: The Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association reports that tenants are interested in forming an investor group to make a bid. A tenants-investor group would try to preserve stability for tenants - both market rate and rent-stabilized. Now, how a group of tenants will get billions ready for a bid is another question, but it'll be interesting to see how the tenants fight the sale of the complex. City Councilman Dan Garodnick, who lives in Stuy Town-Peter Cooper Village, is working with the tenants' association (he even tried to visit all 100 buildings in the complex during his election run last year!).

As news of what could be the biggest real estate deal in history spread, residents of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village - and the rest of New York City - wondered what this could mean for the real estate market. Though selling the 110 building complex and changing over ownership of all the units would probably take years, questions about what Mayor Bloomberg will do about the city's housing policy arose, as well as what this will mean for the middle class residents who live there as a large swath of housing is taken away. The Tenants Political Action Committee tells the NY Sun, "This sale is the perfect illustration of the hole in the bottom of the bucket of the Bloomberg housing plan. The plan deals only with production. They will never build as much as we're losing."

Hmm, Met Life is thinking about selling Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. Maybe it's logical that the complex, which has been trying to upsell their renovated apartments to tenants with bigger bank accounts, would be on the block, because there's only so much Met-Life can probably take from tenants of both the rent-stabilized and market rate kind. And we expect tenants to go nuts if the building is sold - we wonder how lease rights will be handled. Hilariously, someone from an investment bank emailed us to ask us if we had any information about the buildings to aid in "research." All we can say is that if i-banks are researching deals on blogs,we're putting our money in pumpkins futures - they should peak around Christmas. Check out the official Peter Cooper Village Stuyvesant Town site for market rentals and the Stuyvesant Town Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association website for information.

Rent stabilized tenants are bracing themselves for tonight's Rent Guidelines Board meeting where the board will most likely vote for a hike. Expect things to get incredibly noisy tonight! Actually, we imagine the basement of Cooper Union might implode from the feelings of self-pity, anger, and entitlement from both sides. The rent increases owners are asking for is 8%, because of higher gas prices and real estate taxes. And not only that, owners may also ask that rates remain only for one year leases - no more two year leases the tenants can lock into. Newsday says that 9,200 apartments left rent stabilization last year, the biggest number ever. The commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development Shaun Donovan added that though rent stabilization is one important part of affordable housing, "it's not as effectively targeted or as affordable as other units that we're doing in the mayor's plan and a lot of units that we're trying to preserve because it's not targeted to the people who need it the most, and the rents aren't set in any way that aligns to the income levels of the people who are living there." Which can be a valid argument, because there are some people who live in rent-stabilized apartments but don't really need them. At the same time, the rental market overall is crazy, and who can blame people for get their best deal?

As usual, Thursday morning finds us trolling the Stuyvesant Town Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association bulletin boards, looking for tasty morsels of real estate gossip. Today's find was a doozy-- one of the tenants posted a note asking for people to anonymously post their rents, and a frenzy of revelation ensued:

A judge ruled that Met Life can start moving towards a photo ID system for residents at Peter Cooper Village, BUT residents won't be barred from the building if they don't have a photo ID. Huh? This is like King Solomon cutting the baby in half, because Gothamist can just imagine some serious clashes between tenants without IDs and the management. This judge's order will stand until April 14, when the entire case is more fully addressed. The tenants had filed a suit, claiming that needing to have their photographs on ID cards was invasive - and dangerous if their Social Security numbers were put on them as well.