[Updated 6:03 p.m., Dec. 10, 2010, with a comment from Stellar] As temperatures dropped below freezing this week, tenants at Independence Plaza North said they were left in the cold, literally. Many residents of the 1,331-unit complex at 310 Greenwich Street in Tribeca, owned by Stellar Management, told DNAinfo that their radiators are lukewarm and they bundle up just to keep from shivering in their apartments, and that the problem is a recurring one. “It’s horrible,” said tenant Janet Moore. “All winter I keep the oven on. Everyone I talk to, no one has heat.” Diane Lapson, president of the Independence Plaza North Tenant Association, said more than a dozen tenants complained that their apartments are not warm enough. [more]
Posts Tagged ‘independence plaza north’
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Laurence Gluck, Independence Plaza NorthManhattan landlord Laurence Gluck illegally deregulated rents for tenants at Tribeca’s Independence Plaza North while simultaneously receiving J-51 tax breaks from the city, a state Supreme Court judge ruled yesterday, taking a page out of the book on Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, where a similar ruling was handed down last year. At the 1,331-unit IPN, at 80 N. Moore Street, Gluck facilitated the complex’s exit from the state’s Mitchell-Lama rent-stabilized housing program in 2004 and subsequently jacked up the rents, according to Crain’s. The tenant-led suit argued that Gluck should not have been allowed to raise rents while still receiving tax breaks from the city. Yesterday’s ruling reverses a March state decision that said the rent increases were justified because Gluck repaid the city for the tax breaks when he discovered that they would be problematic. While Gluck is likely to appeal the decision on the five-year-old lawsuit, it represents the latest in a string of setbacks for the landlord, who lost his massive Riverton Houses complex in Harlem to foreclosure earlier this year after failing to convert its 1,230 rent-regulated apartments to market-rate rentals. [Crain's]
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Laurence Gluck, Independence Plaza NorthManhattan landlord Laurence Gluck illegally deregulated rents for tenants at Tribeca’s Independence Plaza North while simultaneously receiving J-51 tax breaks from the city, a state Supreme Court judge ruled yesterday, taking a page out of the book on Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, where a similar ruling was handed down last year. At the 1,331-unit IPN, at 80 N. Moore Street, Gluck facilitated the complex’s exit from the state’s Mitchell-Lama rent-stabilized housing program in 2004 and subsequently jacked up the rents, according to Crain’s. The tenant-led suit argued that Gluck should not have been allowed to raise rents while still receiving tax breaks from the city. Yesterday’s ruling reverses a March state decision that said the rent increases were justified because Gluck repaid the city for the tax breaks when he discovered that they would be problematic. While Gluck is likely to appeal the decision on the five-year-old lawsuit, it represents the latest in a string of setbacks for the landlord, who lost his massive Riverton Houses complex in Harlem to foreclosure earlier this year after failing to convert its 1,230 rent-regulated apartments to market-rate rentals. [Crain's]
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Laurence Gluck, Independence Plaza NorthManhattan landlord Laurence Gluck illegally deregulated rents for tenants at Tribeca’s Independence Plaza North while simultaneously receiving J-51 tax breaks from the city, a state Supreme Court judge ruled yesterday, taking a page out of the book on Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, where a similar ruling was handed down last year. At the 1,331-unit IPN, at 80 N. Moore Street, Gluck facilitated the complex’s exit from the state’s Mitchell-Lama rent-stabilized housing program in 2004 and subsequently jacked up the rents, according to Crain’s. The tenant-led suit argued that Gluck should not have been allowed to raise rents while still receiving tax breaks from the city. Yesterday’s ruling reverses a March state decision that said the rent increases were justified because Gluck repaid the city for the tax breaks when he discovered that they would be problematic. While Gluck is likely to appeal the decision on the five-year-old lawsuit, it represents the latest in a string of setbacks for the landlord, who lost his massive Riverton Houses complex in Harlem to foreclosure earlier this year after failing to convert its 1,230 rent-regulated apartments to market-rate rentals. [Crain's]
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Laurence Gluck was within his rights when he began charging market-rate rents at Independence Plaza North, the state’s housing agency has determined. Gluck, who took the 1,339-unit building at 80 North Moore Street in Tribeca out of the state’s Mitchell-Lama housing program after purchasing the property in 2004, began destabilizing rents gradually in a deal with tenants and the city, but by now, now one-bedrooms rent there for as much as $3,800 per month. A tenant-led case at I.P.N., charging that Gluck should not have been allowed to deregulate rents because he was still receiving J-51 tax abatements at the time, has been brewing at I.P.N. since 2005. But while the case was reminiscent of the one lost by Tishman Speyer last year at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, in I.P.N.’s case, the city mistakenly continued to grant Gluck tax breaks for two years after he removed the building from the Mitchell-Lama program. After he stopped receiving the abatement, Gluck repaid roughly $17,000. In April, Judge Marcy Friedman of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan asked the state’s housing agency, the Division of Housing and Community Renewal, to issue an opinion on the case. Friedman can now accept or reject the agency’s decision.
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Across town from Tishman Speyer’s Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, residents of Independence Plaza North at 80 North Moore Street in Tribeca are hoping the recent rent-stabilization ruling applies to them, too. At the 1,339-unit I.P.N., a case brewing since 2005 argues that tenants’ rents should be stabilized because their landlord received tax abatements through the city’s J-51 program. The state’s highest court recently ruled that the investors owe $200 million to Stuyvesant Town residents who were overcharged on their rents for the same reason. Stephen Meister, an attorney who represented the Real Estate Board of New York in the most recent Stuyvesant Town appeal and also represents I.P.N.’s landlord, Laurence Gluck, said the cases are quite different. In I.P.N.’s case, the city mistakenly continued to grant Gluck tax breaks for two years after he removed the building from the Mitchell-Lama middle-class housing program in 2004, Meister said. After he stopped receiving the abatement, Gluck repaid roughly $17,000. In April, the I.P.N. case was turned over to the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal, which expects to issue an opinion no earlier than January. [Downtown Express]
