Market Rates Are For Chumps And Suckers

Fortunately there are many spots on community boards and the like; work your way up:

A rent-stabilized apartment in New York is a precious find. Which could explain the indignation that greeted the disclosure that Representative Charles B. Rangel was occupying four of them in the luxurious Lenox Terrace towers in Harlem, where Gov. David A. Paterson also has one.

Throughout the city, the well-connected (or just plain lucky) have been able to snare such prizes and retain them over the years.

But few rental buildings in the city have been as hospitable to public officials, past and present, as the Rudin Management Company’s high rise at 215 East 68th Street, where a shouted, “Good morning, your honor!” could turn every head in the lobby.

A fancy white brick monolith of 608 apartments between Second and Third Avenues, the 33-story structure, built in 1962 — when a seven-room unit went for $615 a month — is home to an unusual concentration of luminaries of the public and private sectors.

Some entered as rent-stabilized tenants; some retain that status, while others are paying deregulated prices, though often below what today’s bloated real estate market could command.

Former Mayor David N. Dinkins lives there, as did a predecessor, John V. Lindsay. Norman Goodman, the New York County clerk, and Burton B. Roberts, former administrative judge of State Supreme Court in the Bronx, are tenants, as are Betty Weinberg Ellerin, former presiding justice of the state’s Appellate Division, First Department, and Justice Jacqueline W. Silbermann, administrative judge of the civil branch of State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Also Howard Safir, a former police commissioner; Thomas Von Essen, a former fire commissioner; and John Roland, the former WNYW-TV/Channel 5 anchor.

Richard Aurelio, a deputy mayor under Mr. Lindsay, used to live there. So did Andrew P. Beame, a lawyer and grandson of another former mayor, Abraham D. Beame; Hazel N. Dukes, the former president of the Off-Track Betting Corporation who pleaded guilty to embezzlement; and Melvyn Altman, a lawyer who did time for racketeering. Tony Bennett once lived there, and so did the songwriter Sammy Cahn — until, his widow says, they were forced out to make way for a preferred tenant.

In fact, some residents say, there are still so many boldface names on the roster you could practically establish a city government right in the building.

“As you mention it, there are a lot here,” said Justice Roberts, in seeming wonder.

$150 Million Could Fund Tenafly’s Budget Needs For Six Years

But I guess you have a better view at 15 CPW:

Remember that rumored $90 million listing at 15 Central Park West? It was nothing.

Dolly Lenz, New York City’s most gargantuan real estate agent, broke astounding news at Portofio’s Four Seasons get-together this morning: “There are a few apartments on the market at 15 CPW, a new development on Central Park West, asking somewhere between $80 and $125 million — three different apartments — and one quietly on the market at $150 million,” she said.

Wowzah. Brokers have already made it known that two condos in the Robert A.M. Stern-designed blockbuster building are being offered at $80 and $90 million, so Ms. Lenz’s quote not only means that there’s a third apartment on the market in the building for somewhere between $80 and $125 million, but that there’s a fourth spread whose owner wants $150 million.

That would be more than any single-family residential property in New York City has ever asked for.

See also: Borough of Tenafly, New Jersey 2008 Municipal Budget.

West Side . . . War Of Words!

The Mayor is sounding a little defensive:

A war of words erupted yesterday as Mayor Bloomberg reacted angrily to comments made by Sen. Charles Schumer suggesting the city has its priorities wrong in turning Manhattan’s far West Side into a business district.

“The city’s priorities are clear,” the mayor said. “We set the city’s priorities. They don’t come out of Washington, and the city’s priorities are the West Side, getting it going and getting the rail line going there.”

He was reacting to a speech Schumer gave earlier in the day, when he said the city should shift its focus from building office and apartment towers above the MTA rail yards west of 10th Avenue and instead concentrate on constructing a new train station named after the late Sen. Daniel Moynihan.

“I appreciate all the senator’s views on Moynihan Station. His part of the job is to bring us the money,” Bloomberg snipped.

Bloomberg also rejected Schumer’s call to put the Port Authority in charge of building Moynihan Station inside the Farley Post Office building, calling it a “terrible idea” based on the agency’s difficulty rebuilding Ground Zero.

Schumer said he has every right to make suggestions about West Side development, since he’s helped secure more than $100 million from Washington for Moynihan Station.

“It is equally important for a responsible senator to watchdog how that money is spent,” he said.

Yes, People Really Live Like This

And some of them might even be your friends:

Living in a top-floor walk-up in New York City is a mixed blessing.

Sure there are those stairs; all those stairs. There is the moment of dread when you look up the stairs and contemplate the trek up, up and up, carrying groceries, children, luggage, furniture, whatever.

But that’s not all there is. In the current real estate market, top-floor walk-ups may well be the best deals. They can also be quiet spaces that are flooded with light and that have open views of the city, especially if they peek out above their surrounding neighbors. In some cases, they also have a deck or terrace that can become an outdoor living room with the twinkling night sky as a backdrop.

. . .

Since 1968, the city has generally required builders to install elevators in all new residential buildings that have five or more stories. But under certain zoning provisions, a five-story building can be built without an elevator.

Brokers say there are some developers in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who have gotten approval to build five-story walk-ups by setting the top floor back from the front of the building and by keeping ceiling height under eight feet.

At five stories, “having an elevator would mean pretty significant common charges,” said Roberto Gonzalez, an agent at Bond New York. “Developers will do walk-ups because they want to be competitive, and they want to use as much of the footprint as they can for living space as opposed to an elevator shaft.”

David Kazemi, a vice president at Bond New York, said that walk-ups don’t seem to bother many of the young professionals looking to buy in Williamsburg. “A lot of people prefer it actually because they don’t want the luxury high-rise lifestyle,” he said. “That’s not the point of living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.”

. . .

People who live in top-floor walk-ups say they have a variety of coping mechanisms that help them deal with the daily hike up the stairs.

Ms. Stern said she learned very quickly not to focus on the number of steps. She counted and knew the exact number at one point. “But that was discouraging because then I found myself counting every time I went up,” she said. “It was much better when I stayed focused on the mission and the goal of just getting home.”

Big shopping trips to the grocery store are replaced by more frequent and smaller purchases, and heavy items like kitty litter might be put on the Fresh Direct order, along with a generous tip to the delivery man.

Mr. Gonzalez, the Bond agent, recently bought a fifth-floor walk-up for himself in Williamsburg, and he said that he had learned to become more organized to avoid having to run up and down the stairs several times a day to retrieve forgotten items. “Before I leave the house now I have a little saying: ‘Money, keys, phone. Money, keys, phone. Money, keys, phone,'” he said. “Because if I forget one of them, that’s when I regret the top floor.”

Mr. Nguyen, the owner in Inwood, said the one thing that he takes special care with is the trash and recycling. “I make sure it’s well secured for the trip down because I don’t want it breaking,” he said.

Also, after spending a week personally gutting and renovating the apartment’s kitchen with a friend, he said, “If I’d known what all we had to go through, I’d have probably hired somebody else to do it.”

He and his friend hauled up 15 kitchen cabinets, two 7-foot-tall storage units, countless bags of grout, boxes of tile and piles of new floorboards. “We sort of had to do a lot of maneuvering and we had to shimmy a lot of things around corners on the stairs to make it fit,” he said. “But it’s amazing what you can do with sheer will and determination.”

Mayor Bloomberg On Transportation Priorities

In case you thought it would be a good thing for the City to control transportation projects, there’s this — Hizzoner paying a little too much attention to the wrong parts of the Power Broker:

Bloomberg said Friday that a week or two ago, developer Jerry Speyer expressed concerns about whether the city would complete the 7 subway line extension critical to the $1 billion project.

“If I were you,” the mayor said he told Speyer, “I would make absolutely, positively sure that we are going to build that subway before I put one dime of my own money in.”

The MTA’s announcement Thursday night that it had canned the Tishman-Speyer deal came without warning to the mayor, City Hall insiders said.

. . .

Neither Bloomberg staffers nor Tishman-Speyer representatives would discuss the outcome of the hour-long talk at Bloomberg’s London apartment Friday.

“The plan isn’t dead by any means,” Bloomberg said before the sitdown. “All these things go though many cycles.

“The No. 7 line is going to get done,” the mayor added, “and it will be so far along before I leave office that nobody’s going to be able to stop it.”

Plans for the site include thousands of units of housing, commercial skyscrapers, a school and parkland.

Oh, well as long as there’s a park — and a school! — Robert Moses would smile, since he popularized the “get as far along as possible and make ’em take it back down” philosophy of urban planning (recently embraced by Bruce Ratner, among others).