Tishman Speyer's Surprise Wake-up Calls for Last Minute Shoppers

Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village last minute shoppers were given a delightful surprise this early Sunday morning by not just one free wake-up call, but two!

The first wake-up call came between the hours of 5:00AM and 6AM, when the pipes in many buildings began banging like crazy--and persistently.

"This is typically a sure fire way of waking up tenants," explained George Hatzmann, the managing director of ST/PCV for Tishman Speyer, whom I woke up at his Long Island home with a call at 9AM, wishing to find out more about this surprise Sunday amenity. "We realized this week," Hatzmann went on after two yawns, "that many of our tenants still have not finished or even started their holiday shopping, and today is a great day for early morning bargains at places like Macy's and Lord & Taylor. So what better way to send our Season's Greetings to residents than to provide this wake-up call, so that they can get their asses in gear and shop till they drop. Of course, just between us and off the record, I hope our rent-stabilized tenants do shop and drop--drop dead--so we can change over their apartments to market rate ones. But please don't quote me on this, I'm in enough shit already with that statement I made about pushing harder to get one of our disabled RS tenants out of Stuy Town!"

I assured Mr. Hatzmann that I would keep this confidence to myself, and then proceeded with my questioning, in between his sleepy yawns. What about the second wake-up call, which happened after 6AM, the snowplows, salt trucks, etc, with all their beeping and motor noises?

"Ha, that was fun!" Hatzmann replied jovially, interrupting a deep yawn in his excitement. "We already had that planned out last night. We figured there would be a tenth-of-an-inch of snow coming down during the night; that gave us the excuse, however flimsy it may seem. Anyway, if the banging pipes didn't wake up residents, surely our running and beeping snowplows would. And those boys do like to ride around in those things and back them up all the time!"

On behalf of all last minute shoppers in our community, I thanked Hatzmann and his company, Tishman Speyer, for being so considerate to us tenants this Sunday morning. But I had one concern:

"Is this going to be an MCI?"

"Oh, no, no," Hatzmann assured me. "We are already maxed out on MCIs that we will be hitting residents with starting next year. No, this is just our gift to tenants. Take it in the spirit in which it was intended."

"Thank you, Mr. Hatzmann. I hope you have a very pleasant holiday, you and Mr. Jerry Speyer and Mr. Rob Speyer."

"Yeah, you too. But next time don't call me up this fucking early. I need my sleep!"