Tribeca’s Independence Plaza North residents hope Stuy Town ruling applies to them

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]

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