Battle Lines Drawn, Landlords Flexing Collective Muscle; Tenants Seen As The Enemy

New York Magazine reports on how city landlords are quietly coming together to educate themselves on how to better evict tenants:

A recent seminar, sponsored by a landlord group cutely called Community Housing Improvement Program, brought together Manhattan moguls and mom-and-pops who may own a building or two in the outer-outer-boroughs to get a primer on putting their problem tenants out on the street. After paying $50 and making small talk over muffins and coffee one morning in the chandeliered conference room of the New York County Lawyers’ Association on Vesey Street, the sold-out crowd of 225 settled in to listen to the lawyers.

. . .

Attorney William Neville recommended getting friendly with the postman to see whose name is on the mail and subpoenaing ATM records to see where the tenant banks. His biggest thrill? “Showing that [tenants] are lying.” Lawyer Lauren Popper said that it’s sometimes worth hiring a P.I.: Her favorite gumshoe once posed as a patient to catch a psychiatrist using his rent-stabilized apartment as an office while living elsewhere. Ultimately, they were steeled by the possibility of a jackpot—the flip side of the no-account-tenant horror stories. Belkin bragged that he might be able to get $10,000 a month for an apartment he recently wrestled out of rent control. The previous rent? Three hundred dollars. A ripple of excitement went through the audience.

Neo-Vanderbiltism Blocked For Now

The owners of an East Village building that was to have become a latter-day Vanderbilt Mansion are blocked, for now at least, from actualizing that dream:

A wealthy couple’s attempt to convert an East Village tenement into a luxurious mansion by evicting at least 10 rent-stabilized tenants was blocked yesterday by a judge.

The judge ruled that the landlords had failed to get permission from the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal to cancel their tenants’ leases.

The decision dashed — at least temporarily — the hopes of Alistair and Catherine Economakis to turn the five-story walkup into their own private home, featuring a library, a gym, a nanny’s suite, five bedrooms and six bathrooms.

The tenants, who said rents at the 104-year-old building range from about $600 to $1,200 a month, were relieved by the ruling, but expected the Economakises to appeal.

“I feel very good about it. It means we can possibly stay,” said Ursula Kinzel, an editor who has lived in her fifth-floor apartment for more than 20 years. “It’s been extremely stressful. It’s been a nightmare.”

. . .

The Economakises and their lawyer could not be reached for comment. Catherine Economakis’ mom is a dean at Columbia College, where, ironically, she teaches courses in urban studies that examine city social and economic problems.

Some backstory.

Note To Carpetbagging Manhattan Architects And Developers: Take Your Fancypants Skylights Back To Chelsea, Son, Because Around Here We Like Our Essays Dark, Dank And Inscrutable

That faceless warehouse space in the unhip spot down by the river is now an “essay in light”:

With the cacophony of pile drivers and backhoes in the background, Hugh Hardy and Darlene Fridstein emerged from their rented black sedan and surveyed one of New York City’s fastest-gentrifying neighborhoods: the waterfront of Long Island City, Queens.

The two-story red stable they came to see, for sale for $3 million — to any enterprising artist, writer, small businessman or anyone else interested in urban pioneering — possesses one of the world’s best views of the Manhattan skyline.

. . .

Exactly one week later, Mr. Hardy and his staff produced plans for a wowie-zowie renovation of the space, as well as a verbal blueprint of the couple who would live in it.

“He’s abandoned Merrill Lynch and she’s left her job with Cosmo,” the architect postulated. “They’ve embarked on their second careers; he’s a sculptor with a ground-floor gallery. He designs his sculpture with a computer. She’s writing an extraordinary book about his work.”

As to the plan for the stable, “it’s an essay in light,” he said. “We’ve opened up the hayloft,” Mr. Hardy continued. “We’ve done a little glassy balcony in the front, with sort of an Italian feeling, to admire the staggering view. We carved out the back, and threw it away. The couple now has a long and narrow pool with a spigot — a fountain — a tree and a fabulous spiral staircase. After the somewhat subdued openings that take place here, they can throw a wild party!”

. . .

The interior, Ms. Fridstein said, would be sparse, but elegant. “She’s a French furniture collector; there’s no matchy-matchy in this space,” she said. “They like tables and chairs from the 30’s and 40’s; Jean Prouvé; beautiful iron folding chairs. The carpets are woven from combinations of linens and silks, with a slight sheen.”

She paused. “There will be no dog.”

Just Think How Low The Monthly Maintenance Will Go If We Get Whole Foods As The Tenant!

Only in New York, Kids, only in New York:

By almost any measure, the Brooklyn House of Detention, 10 stories of razor wire and wire-mesh windows in Boerum Hill, is a repellent sight.

But, the city reasons, it need not be so. So, to attract people other than criminal suspects to the 760-bed jail, the Correction Department has decided to convert part of the complex into 24,000 square feet of retail shopping space.

“The site is going to be redeveloped,” Martin F. Horn, the correction commissioner, said in an interview this week. “One way or another, retail is going to be there.”

Under Mr. Horn’s jail-with-retail plan, three sides of the block that the jail now occupies, along Atlantic Avenue between Smith Street and Boerum Place, would be converted to one-story retail space beginning this summer. The jail entrance, now on Atlantic, would be moved to the fourth side of the block, along State Street.

. . .

Which retailers would be asked, or be willing, to open a shop on jail property remains to be seen, several city and local elected officials said. But Mr. Horn and several elected officials in Brooklyn, including Marty Markowitz, the borough president, and David Yassky, a city councilman from Brooklyn Heights, floated a few ideas this week.

An upscale food market, Mr. Horn suggested; a children’s clothing store, Mr. Yassky offered; law offices, Mr. Markowitz mentioned.

Mr. Markowitz, who is known to gush about how great Brooklyn is, said that even a boutique hotel on jail grounds would be nice — but only if the city razed the existing structure and rebuilt it from scratch.

“If it’s designed in such a way that the guests feel totally comfortable,” he said yesterday, “why not?”

Mr. Markowitz added that although he would prefer to see the jail closed permanently, if it is to be open it should also have retail and, preferably, residential space.

I Hate That I Even Know What “Pied-A-Terre” Means

Hey, it must be fun to be a carefree empty nester, but your pied-à-terre is driving up the cost of my rental:

Once a pied-à-terre had a whiff of rarefied wealth, suggestive of an apartment kept by a well-traveled European baron, a Hollywood star or even a Greenwich, Conn., mogul who might use it to stash such amenities as a mistress.

But while second homes have always represented a sliver of the New York City real estate market, sales in this category are booming, and the surge is being driven to a surprising degree, realtors say, by a relatively new breed of buyer: hard-working, middle-aged suburbanites.

. . .

The people likely to own these hideaways are usually two-income couples whose suburban house has soared in price and who use the resulting equity to take out a loan to buy a Manhattan flat. From there, they can lap up the culture they starved for while raising the children.

“The baby boomers are on their second childhoods when their kids get out, which is a different attitude than their parents had,” said Dottie Herman, chief executive of Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate. “In the suburbs, most of life is about the PTA’s. Then all of a sudden the kids are older and they’re in their early 50’s, and they still have life and they want to go back to the city.”

These boomers might have simply gritted their teeth and driven back after an evening out on Broadway, but in many cases failing eyesight and a less patient disposition make drives back to Chappaqua or Short Hills less tolerable. At the same time, they are not quite ready to give up suburban friends and suburban pleasures, like golf and a backyard barbecue.