I Like Nice Things, Or The Quietest Neighbor (Excepting A Cemetery, That Is) Is A Vacant Lot

First chowder, now condos (.pdf):

All Joe Chan wanted to do was bring a “Manhattan-style” condo tower to a run-down block in Boerum Hill.

And then all hell broke loose.

More than two-dozen people gathered recently in front of a vacant weed-infested lot owned by Chan. The purpose: to stop Chan’s 11-story tower after he likened its aesthetics to that of the evil island on Brooklyn’s western front.

“Manhattan-style,” he had called it.

Them’s fightin’ words in Boerum Hill.

“We don’t want what he has proposed,” explained protest organizer Deborah Kaufmann, who lives next door to Chan’s empty lot, formerly an auto garage. She believes his 11-story “tower” will spoil she calls the neighborhood’s “brownstone” look — though she readily
admits that her four-story home, 100 yards from the 14-story Gowanus Street Houses on Hoyt Street, is a regular old house and not one of the storied 19th century models.

“Manhattan is a borough full of very tall buildings and the canyons they create. Brooklyn is a borough of brownstones and similarly sized buildings,” explained Lydia Denworth, president of the council. “Manhattan has been built one way and Brooklyn another. We like the way Brooklyn’s been built and we want to keep it that way.”

Ironically, Chan believes he’s doing the Baltic Street homeowners a favor by turning the broken-concrete lot into a glossy new tower. To him, Manhattan equals wealth and wealth equals “nice” — and who doesn’t want that?

“I don’t know why [the neighbors] don’t want a nice building, they’d rather have an empty lot with rats,” Chan told The Brooklyn Papers, adding that he had never faced such opposition in Queens or Manhattan.

The idea that Manhattan would oppose that which is “Manhattan style” seems odd, but no matter.

Then there’s this from a Manhattan-style apologist:

“I don’t agree, but towers aren’t perceived as good neighbors anymore,” said Robert Scarano, a prolific architect whose seven-story South Slope tower has been caught in limbo since the stricter zoning became law last year.

Scarano isn’t siding with his critics, but merely showing that he’s another Manhattan-style architect who is willing to listen.

To a point.

“I’d like to hear the community opposition,” he told The Brooklyn Papers, “if [someone] tried to build the Williamsburgh Bank Building tower today.”

He’s got a point there, you know. The Williamsburgh Bank Building is pretty ridiculous . . .

You Can’t Stop The Donald, You Can Only Hope To Contain Him

Trump takes SoHo:

Donald Trump’s newest addition to the Manhattan skyline may come in the form of a 45-story luxury high-rise on the sleepy eastern edge of Hudson Square.

The developer and reality TV star unveiled plans this week to construct the condo-hotel, which would have 400 rooms, at 246 Spring St. between Varick St. and Sixth Ave. Sean Yazbeck, the latest winner of “The Apprentice” — Trump’s reality show — will be given the reins for constructing the project, dubbed Trump Soho Hotel Condominiums New York, which could break ground before the end of the year. Trump’s team hopes to open the hotel’s doors in 2009.

“We’re trying to build something that will change the landscape of Soho,” said Julius Schwarz, executive vice president of the Bayrock Group, the managing partner in the project, which is also being developed by Tamir Sapir, the ex-cab driver who famously paid $40 million for the Duke Semans Mansion on Fifth Ave. Two of Trump’s children, Donald, Jr., and daughter Ivanka, will oversee the project with their father.

The luxury hotel, equipped with an outdoor pool, a 30-person screening room, restaurant and members library, will be more pied-a-terre than short-stay hotel. Geared toward the hip, wealthy, 30-something crowd, every unit in the Handel Architects-designed building will be sold individually to buyers who might live there year-round, from time to time or seasonally. All owners will be free to offer up their Rockwell Group-designed units as hotel rooms, if they so choose. If built, this will be the first all-condo-hotel of its kind in the city, said Schwarz.

“We really wanted to create something that had that hotel feel,” he said. “We wanted a place that people could go to and use room service.”

The neighbors can barely contain their excitement in welcoming The Donald to the mix:

But building the luxury condo-hotel may not be so simple. The area is zoned for manufacturing, which does not generally permit long-term-stay hotel uses.

“No way, they can’t do that here, it’s against the zoning,” said architect David Reck, chairperson of the Community Board 2 Zoning Committee.

. . .

Some nearby residents are less than thrilled to see a 45-story tower crop up in their neighborhood.

“It’s terrible. It’s an abomination in a low-rise neighborhood,” said Sean Sweeney, director of the Soho Alliance. But Sweeney doubts there is much that can be done to stop a tall building from coming — the law allows for large buildings there and the developers purchased the air rights from a nearby property to supplement the height.

“What can you do? There’s nothing you can do to stop it,” Sweeney said.

You Don’t Think I Can Wedge A Reference To “Wooly Bully” In A Story About Rent Control? Just Watch Me!

A rent control story for the ages:

For three decades, Lisa Dittmer has been on a collision course with her landlords — one involving the peculiarities of real estate and rent control in New York City — that culminated yesterday in a lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn.

For those unaccustomed to the range of comedy and heartbreak those factors can produce, it is worthwhile to begin with this: By law, Ms. Dittmer says, her monthly rent is $94.18, roughly the price of a pair of sneakers that will get you laughed off any basketball court in the city.

Ms. Dittmer moved into her apartment on the top floor of a three-story building in Bay Ridge in 1965, about a month before Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs released “Wooly Bully.”

“To date,” her lawyer wrote with lawyerly reserve, “plaintiff continues to occupy said apartment.”

The best reason, and perhaps the only reason, to occupy the same apartment for 41 years is rent control, a program established to address a housing crisis in postwar time, post-World War II time in particular. Under those rules, Ms. Dittmer’s rent for the apartment at 319 82nd Street was set at $80.72 a month in June 1970 and raised to $94.18 in March 1983, according to the lawsuit.

But since 1976, the lawsuit says, she has often been charged more than that. A lawyer for Ms. Dittmer, Colleen Buckley, said the amount she paid ranged from the maximum legal rent to as much as $570 monthly.

The suit contends that the landlords willfully ignored the fact that the apartment was rent controlled. The plaintiff is asking for $350,000:

Since 1976, the lawsuit says, Ms. Dittmer has been overcharged, in total, $84,465.80, which works out to $237.93 a month.

In the lawsuit, Ms. Dittmer, who did not return calls seeking comment, is seeking $253,397.40, or three times the total overpayment, plus lawyers’ fees and interest, for a round total of $350,000.

How Do I Like The Hawks? I Love All Hawks!

Lola and Pale Male, feeling the heat from the Zahns, have relocated to the West Side. Just one bit of advice — repeat after me, “I love the hawks! I love the hawks!”:

The city’s most famous red-tail hawks, Pale Male and his main chick, Lola, have apparently left their upper East Side roost for a fancy new perch atop the Beresford on the upper West Side.

“I love the hawks!” Seinfeld told the Daily News yesterday as he left his Beresford co-op and got into his silver Mercedes-Benz M350. “I can’t get enough of the hawks.”

Pale Male and Lola could be seen yesterday flying to and from their new address overlooking Central Park in the 22-story building’s rococo southeast tower. One of the birds appeared to have twigs in its beak, leading observers to believe they are building a nest.

Actress Glenn Close, who lives in the tony building on Central Park West, was surprised to learn of her new neighbors upstairs.

“What hawks?” Close asked The [Daily] News. “I love hawks.”

Let’s Lynch The Landlord!

Landlords are going to great lengths to catch rent control scofflaws:

Landlords are resorting to a new weapon in their war with tenants over rent stabilization — hidden cameras trained on an occupant’s door

“The whole building is paranoid now,” said Bryan Lurie, who last week found a camera hidden inside an electrical box outside his $360-a-month West Village studio apartment. “My friends told me I should have my apartment swept for bugs.”

With the housing market growing stronger, landlords are becoming so desperate to lower the boom on low rents that they are spying on tenants in search of any transgression that would let them tear up the lease.

“Tenants are absolutely horrified, and they should be,” said Jenny Laurie, director of the Met Council on Housing. “It’s very ugly. Tenants are feeling enormously pressured.”