The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Stuy Town Reporter took a tour of the complex this last week to check out how things are going in Stuyvesant Town. Thank goodness for nature and its resiliency. There's much welcome greenery now, and the lilacs are in bloom and smelling sweet indeed. A more careful inspection reveals, however, that Stuyvesant Town is not being cared for that much and that the best of what we see is chiefly the result of earlier efforts, with some patches of flowering plants sporadically added to make several barren patches look nice--initially.

Before we get to the landscape tour, let me mention that the problem of the nightly and early morning noise from three dumpsters on the east edge of Stuyvesant Town still exists. This abrasive and thundering noise is one violation after another. The fact that Tishman Speyer has gotten away with this for so long is a scandal. Dan Goradnick promised tenants that something would be done about this noise over a year ago (seems like two, by now), but still nothing has been done. Give Dan a call at (212) 818-0580, and ask him what's up.

Here are the three culprits:



Meanwhile, relief was supposed to have been an interior garage for the dumpsters that would lessen the noise considerably (or so the theory goes--I have my doubts). The garage certainly looks finished:



So what's the holdup?

My tour of Stuyvesant Town took me to the Management Office, where I noted that most of the monitors watched by security are of areas outside Stuyvesant Town, of the sidewalks that border the complex. Several monitors are set to the interior of buildings, but I was hard pressed to find any monitor that was focused on the grounds of Stuyvesant Town. (I maybe saw one.) This lack of monitoring the interior of Stuyvesant Town seems very peculiar to me, as it is precisely the interior of Stuy Town that is lacking in security overall. Oh, and here's my tour photo of the Security Booth in the Oval :



Empty.

Now, to be fair, the guard booth is manned at times, and periodically one does see a patrol car or, gasp, security on bicycles. More frequent sightings occur whenever Lux's blog, or this one, notes a lack of security.

Though the lilacs are in bloom, the groundskeeping is rather shabby, particularly as one heads from west to east in Stuyvesant Town. Here's is the east end, an area that once housed the planting graveyard of Stuy Town:




You can see beautiful lilac bushes to the right, but a disaster everywhere else. Below, another area in the same region. Not so hot, is it?



Here's what you see if you enter Stuyvesant Town from Ave. B:



The back of 535 East 14th Street, below, looks like a slum. Welcome to Luxury Living, Rob Speyer-style!



But, guess what? The closer you get to the rental office on 1st Ave., the better and more attentive the groundskeeping. To the left is a lovely and lengthy row of lilac bushes:



The back of one of the 300 number buildings on 1st Ave. As expected, looking good.



But incompetency always wins. The Oval, once the pride of Stuyvesant Town, awaits its Farmer's Market: