While the Ace Hotel has drawn a trendy clientele since opening in May 2009 at 1186 Broadway on the corner of 29th Street, the remaining few single-room-occupancy tenants living there are none too pleased by the changes that have happened to their home, according to the New York Post. Roughly 30 rent-stabilized tenants currently live in the hotel, some of whom pay just $500 a month for their pads. But residents there, who tried to stop the building’s conversion to a hotel with a lawsuit in 2008, say that hotel developer GFI Development is trying to push them out by ignoring routine maintenance requests and barring them from the hotel’s common areas. [more]

The New York City Housing Authority has signed a 20-year lease for
62,400 square feet of office space in the Telecom building at 470
Vanderbilt Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn. According to GFI Development,
which purchased the building two years ago, NYCHA is consolidating a
number of its offices around the city into the new location. The lease
marks the first major tenant to come to the building, now less than 50
percent occupied, since GFI bought it two years ago. [more]