http://therealdeal.com/blog/2015/12/18/blackstone-ivanhoe-cambridge-close-on-5-3b-stuy-town-deal/
It's theirs. My gut feeling: Not much will change. Hopefully it won't get worse.
The partitioning of apartments will continue, the packing of students into apartments will continue, the dog refuse stains will continue, the presence of breeds not allowed will continue (along with weight limits being ignored), the circus amenities will continue, the noise of morning and weekend construction and seasonal leaf-blowing will continue.... As before, there will be temporary attempts made to address the problem on some of these issues, but after a week or two, it will be back to the same old, same old.
62 comments:
Unfortunately I believe all your comments are spot on.
Nothing will change. Probably will get worse.
The ONLY concern of our new overseers is to maximize profit.
They are a business and that is their raison d'etre.
Surely QLL issues be damned.
I have some incredibly noisy and vile neighbors upstairs.
Carpeting or taking off their high heels at 3:00AM? Surely you jest.
I called management.
NOTHING!
Any suggestions?
I know MANY people have the same issue.
Happy Holidays to all and ESPECIALLY you STR.
You are truly a gem!
God Bless!
link corrected
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/19/nyregion/dollar5-45-billion-deal-for-stuyvesant-town-completed-after-threatened-lawsuit.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fnyregion&action=click&contentCollection=nyregion®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0
$5.45 Billion Deal for Stuyvesant Town Completed After Threatened Lawsuit
PCVST middle class is burnt toast.
TO our NYC Council Member Dan Garodnick and PCVST TA Board elected to protect their neighbors/constituents:
Just like Mayor Bloomberg 2006, you betrayed your PCVST neighbors/constituents by aligning with Wall Street/REBNY predators killing off our historic PCVST middle class community to exploit and squeeze every conceivable nickel out of PCVST.
Worse than Mayor Bloomberg 2006, you actually financed the 2nd Wall Street/REBNY predatory transaction by delivering PCVST middle class residents' exclusive access to $2.7 billion Fannie/Freddie purchase funding to Wall Street/REBNY predators instead of your PCVST neighbors/constituents for whom Fannie/Freddie was intended to finance a genuine tenant led purchase delivering genuine tenant led ownership.
Middle Class PCVST residents should own both the entire PCVST complex and their individual PCVST homes, not Wall Street/REBNY predators supported by Garodnick and the TA.
Speyer walking away from PCVST unscathed provided genuine opportunities for PCVST tenants to own both the entire PCVST complex as a group and affordably own their individual PCVST homes IN PERPETUITY. Instead, Garodnick and the TA kicked their PCVST neighbors/constituents in the teeth by confiscating middle class PCVST tenants' genuine PCVST ownership opportunities, which they delivered instead right back into the hands of greedy Wall Street/REBNY predators.
Speyer won. Speyer is laughing. Speyer loves Garodnick-TA for ensuring his predatory PCVST business plan will be successfully realized.
December 19, 2015 at 9:18 AM
Well yes STR, that's kind of what happens when tenants don't control the property. Then again, Blackstone loves us so who knows.
I hope they get rid of Compass Rock and put in a competent, caring management company.
I see that in T&V Daniel Garodnick is complaining about the lack of plumbers and the unconscionable long wait tenants have when their sinks and drains are backed up. This has been going on for a long time. That guy is always a day late and a dollar short.
I'm so sick of hearing quotes from that Steinberg woman, thanking Dan, kissing this ass and that ass. She obviously ranks herself as very important, but she has done fuck all for the tenants. She and the rest of the TA, along with Garodnick, need to go away and say away. They are NOT our friends. Garodnick is just in this to enrich his old law firm, Paul Weiss, and to further his own career, which I hope comes to a grinding halt at the end of his ill-gotten third term.
Unfortunately, I agree that there will be little or no change. Despite Blackstone's friendly promises and promotions, there will still be dormification and dog problems.
I am not optimistic at all.
One would hope, since they've made a long-term commitment to be here, that they will address the QOL issues that the last two managers ignored. If nothing else, it's a pain in the ass for their people to be fielding the same complaints, day in and day out.
Sure, they're here to make a profit. News flash - so was Met, back in the "good old days".
You need to contact 311 or a lawyer. Many legal groups in the city are now helping tenants as landlords are not. Remember the landlord is in violation of your lease and the law will hold them to this. For a few hundred dollars our friends contacted lawyer and has upstairs neighbors carpet wall Ti wall. They had young kids 2 to 5 years and has to or move.
The ship left the pier a long long time ago.
It is in their interest to have many complaints and spend lots of cash on fixing up. Which are just bandaids. Then the LL can show a loss. Ask for additional assessments and Mci charges to cover costs. Chest cheat cook books. Duh
so is there a real problem or lack of real floors and walls here? I hear my neighbors piss, literally pissing and coughing. Management should fix this. Gross.
Worse. The market rate will enter into the lottery for the rent stabilized apartments and they will do anything to get their hands on one. the market rate tenants want the rent stabilized apartments and they want the remaining 5000 out. Blackstone wants to raise the RS apartments to the $3200 and the market rate want to lower their rents to the capped RS apartments. Some market rate tenants are already talking about it in our building. They got a break on the mci charges that were unfairly allocated and now the market raters in our building want more, they want the RS apartments. Their greed is a lot worse than CW ever was.
Both De Blasio and Cuomo could have ended the affordable housing crisis and the excess of empty towers doing one little thing - ending 421A - the unnecessary welfare program for billionaires. Both De Blasio and Cuomo made sure 421A would be renewed, affordable housing would remain a crisis, and towers would be built.
Mr. Dorego testified that the law’s continued renewal was an “absolute necessity” for Glenwood. Without it, he said, the cost of city real estate taxes — the largest component of a luxury high-rise’s operating budget — would make building such towers unfeasible, in part because lenders would not finance them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/19/nyregion/real-estate-firms-power-is-laid-bare-in-fall-of-albany-leaders.html
Glenwood Leonard Litwin money
"During that decade, about $700,000 went to the Neighborhood Preservation Political Action Fund, a group linked to the city’s largest landlord group, the Rent Stabilization Association.
When it came to the governor, Glenwood was considered such a reliable contributor that his fund-raisers suggested to the developer that it spread what would become a multiyear million-dollar donation “into biannual installments,” according to documents uncovered by investigators from the Moreland Commission, an anticorruption panel that Mr. Cuomo created in 2013, but abruptly disbanded nine months later.
Glenwood also funneled money to Mr. Cuomo indirectly: On a single day in 2011, 10 of the company’s L.L.C.s combined to give a total of $500,000 to the Committee to Save New York, a group of business interests that spent $16 million to support Mr. Cuomo’s agenda during his first two years in office.
The company’s money also flowed to Republicans through other channels. In 2013 and 2014, more than $500,000 went to Jobs For New York, a group that separately spent about $1.9 million on Republican campaigns last year. Jobs for New York is run by the Real Estate Board of New York; that organization received more than $150,000 from Glenwood-tied L.L.C.s over the 10 years covered in the printout. (Mr. Litwin and Mr. Dorego have sat on the real estate board’s executive board.)
Emails entered into evidence at the Skeloses’ trial provided powerful context for the purpose of Glenwood’s spending.
Skelos was bribing Senators to betray their constituents, funneling money from Glenwood to chosen Senators.
Emails entered into evidence at the Skeloses’ trial provided powerful context for the purpose of Glenwood’s spending.
In one email, Glenwood’s chief political strategist, Richard Runes, who testified at Mr. Silver’s trial, wrote to a lobbyist for Glenwood, “Please send me the list of senators Dean asked us yesterday to help before the next filing date.” The lobbyist wrote back with the names of seven candidates and the amounts to be donated, totaling $92,300. The names were forwarded to Mr. Dorego a week later, under the subject line “List from Skelos”; the donations were made.
Several weeks earlier, Mr. Runes had written to Mr. Dorego with a similar request, seeking $100,000 for the New York State Senate Republican Campaign Committee, $30,000 for Mr. Skelos’s campaign committee and more than $50,000 divided among five other candidates. A copy of a printout of the email listed the individual L.L.C.s that ultimately made the donations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/19/nyregion/real-estate-firms-power-is-laid-bare-in-fall-of-albany-leaders.html
"Garodnick and the TA kicked their PCVST neighbors/constituents in the teeth by confiscating middle class PCVST tenants' genuine PCVST ownership opportunities, which they delivered instead right back into the hands of greedy Wall Street/REBNY predators."
Sounds pretty accurate to me.
Skelos and Silver were nothing compared to how NY top law office ranks in the country for most corrupt.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/08/27/did-your-states-attorney-general-make-this-infamous-list/
5:49, even more sickening is this:
With a law that governed rent regulations set to expire in 2011, Mr. Dorego testified that he and other real estate executives were called to two meetings with state leaders in June, one at the governor’s office in New York City and one at his office in Albany.
At the meeting in Albany, Mr. Dorego testified, he and other executives met with Mr. Cuomo in the governor’s office. And then they were summoned by Mr. Skelos, who sought to reassure them. Everything, Mr. Skelos said, “seemed to be falling in line.”
Leaves no doubt as to where our Governor's allegiances lie. This guy is such a rat-faced phony it's nearly unbelievable. Publicly, he proudly declares he's in favor of rent reform, that regulated tenants can rely on him; meanwhile he's giving his Big Real Estate donors a literal seat at the table (no doubt at the head of the table) during negotiations.
From the flyer slipped under the door this weekend: "Please make all rental payments payable to the new ownership entity: For residents of PCV: BPP PCV Owner LLC. For residents of ST: BPP ST Owner LLC." Does anyone know the significance (or not) of having PCV rent payments separated from ST rent payments? Seems like a change from the past.
Response to 4:01 pm who wrote, "so is there a real problem or lack of real floors and walls here? I hear my neighbors piss, literally pissing and coughing. Management should fix this. Gross." Yes there is a problem, 4:01. Since the renovation of the apartment upstairs, sound from all manner of intimate as well as routine human anatomical noises passes through our ceiling in the bedroom and bathroom. Emphasis on All. Bodily. Noises. Cries of passion, daily gastrointestinal processes, and so on.
I hope the entire Campus Rock management level staff will be replaced (anyone who had a role in setting policies for resident services).
Agree.
>>From the flyer slipped under the door this weekend: "Please make all rental payments payable to the new ownership entity: For residents of PCV: BPP PCV Owner LLC. For residents of ST: BPP ST Owner LLC." Does anyone know the significance (or not) of having PCV rent payments separated from ST rent payments? Seems like a change from the past.<<
This is curious.
I think they have had the two properties separated for a few years now with the rents going to two different places. I thought Eastdill had done that and they filed in Albany under new entities a year or two ago.
RE: 2 separate legal identities . When CW 'acquired' STPCV, CW legally separated ST and PCV (ST paid a different legal entity than PCV). It seems that Blackstone will follow. Suspending belief that Blackstone is up to something evil (!), I'd suggest the separation has to do with Fannie Mae/Wells having an easier time in placing the bonds for the debt of this purchase since Fannie may see it easier placing two 'smaller' loans than one 'huge' loan. In this scenario, the separation of PCV and ST are just a matter of simpler financing.
BUT ... [fill in your conspiracy theory] . Previous history at STPCV suggests the crazier the theory, the greater the probability of truth (sadly).
MORE: Now that ST and PCV are two separate assets with two separate legal owners, DON'T WE REQUIRE TWO SEPARATE TENANT ASSOCIATIONS??? Can we finally rid ourselves of the self-serving and self-dealing existing TA and elect 2 entirely new boards, elected fairly and without connections and ties to outside or personal interests?
We will know the new owners are different when they get rid of the ear-splitting "concerts" in the summer , tear down "The Courts", eye-sore monstrosity that it is, ENFORCE carpet rule and dog regulations, and get rid of the dorm-like chopping up of apartments.
Until any of that happens, as far as I'm concerned it is all PR crap and total bullsh*t.
They can wipe their you know what with their "tenant survey".
Actions speak louder than words.
And don't forget, it is a business.
They are here to MAKE MONEY, MAXIMIZE PROFITS.
Get it? Smell the coffee...or should I say smell the dog feces in the hall.
Just had an excellent maintenance experience on a Sunday. Within three hours my toilet problem was diagnosed, a part was brought in and a valve fixed. Hoping that this good service continues under the new ownership. Maybe it is a good omen of things to come. the jury is still out though until they tackle the dormification and dog issues.
They kind of owned and ran the property all along.
The leaf blowers were out typically early and noisy this morning.
BTW, there should be more Public Safety officers around. Many times I see not one in the Oval area, and when I do, it's the same guy. Where are others?
I agree with Hippo, and have said it time and time again... these people are here to make money. They will continue to raise the commercial tenants rents, commercialize the property, whatever it takes. The sole job of Blackstone is to make $$ for the stakeholders. If they do not do that, they lose their jobs. Guess what - they care about their jobs more than they care about us.
I expect minor changes:
1) Management will stay the same under a different name. This has been the case in all previous property management changes - they keep the long-term workers (HaberSHAM) and replace upper-management. Most of these workers are good employees and just do what their bosses tell them.
2) They will continue to commercialize the property.
3) Don't expect the MCI's to stop.
4) They want as many apartments to go from old-fashioned RS to the $3,200 RS. What extremes they will go to remains to be seen.
5) Don't expect the dormification to stop.
6) Expect crime to continue to rise with the increased population. Security can only do so much, and I don't expect an increase in the # of security guards.
I am sure that I forgot many a things, but we all know one thing to be true - that
the TA and Dan will continue to pat themselves on the back for "preserving" affordable housing while doing nothing about everything else that affects our daily lives as tenants of PCVST.
The public safety officers are headquartered at 2 Oval. They can usually be seen smoking and chatting in front of the building.
Aren't the leaf blowers also the same guys who are 'security'? might as well be - oh porters could fill in too. Ours arrives daily at 8 30, leaves at 4 pm. garbage still left out in the open, floor not cleaned. Almost every day.
The noise from neighboring walls has to stop. What if anything is the TA doing, what is the new landlord doing? Why don't they fix the fucking sound problem? I'm honestly hearing my upstairs neighbor throw up and take a crap.
>>They want as many apartments to go from old-fashioned RS to the $3,200 RS.<<
That's the thing. The deal that Dan and the TA applauded established $3,200 as the base rent that Blackstone can attain for old-fashioned RS tenants. Why wouldn't they go for it?
$3,200 ??? Don't forget that the $3,200 base rent is adjusted over time ( tied to increases in adjusted median income). I'd bet that the $3,200 increases on January 1st (10 days from now).
December 21, 2015 at 5:26 PM
And they opened the door for the market rate to get these RS apartments if they help management evict the RS by any means, lies, deceit, harassment. These negotiations they had benefit Blackstone, not tenants. Just watch. The market raters will enter the "lottery" for the RS Homes.
3200 is low. Most MR paying much more. Even for one bedrooms.
Are lottery winners paying $3,200 protected by RS?
I still see STUDENTS moving in here!
I constantly smell POT smoke in my elevator. I'm thinking about calling the NYPD and telling them people are smoking illegal drugs in my building. That's AFTER I WARN management that I am doing so. I have had it here and DO NOT CARE! I know you are reading this Danny-boy!
This place has become a dump. A DUMP!!
They could have easily paid for their own campus security in PCVST instead of scamming working class, forcing us to pay for it with a jack up of our rents
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/22/us/nyu-presidents-penthouse-gets-a-1-1-million-face-lift.html
NYU ripping of PCVST and Students
Members of New York University’s faculty have issued a blistering 14,000 word report on how NYU has been gouging its own students (and their families) to raise billions for gratuitous real estate transactions and lavish compensation packages for NYU’s own top executives.
Concerned about their students’ ever worsening financial plight and wild spending by NYU’s Board of Trustees, the professors, many of them members of NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan (NYUFASP), spent this past academic year researching NYU’s financial practices. Interviewing scores of students, both undergraduate and graduate, and studying the fine print in NYU’s own documents, the professors “followed the money” to reveal:
Students Going Hungry Regularly, Becoming Homeless, Signing Up for “Dating Services” to Pay Tuition, Fees, Insurance
NYU students pay the highest tuition in the United States, currently $71,000 per year. They are also socked with thousands more in phantom fees, health care, insurance and other costs. Most of the students interviewed preferred anonymity, for obvious reasons, but were happy to have their tales finally told in public. “It was frightening to hear these stories, and to know that our students are suffering in ways and numbers that even we didn’t imagine,” said Jeff Goodwin, NYU Professor of Sociology.
http://markcrispinmiller.com/2015/05/how-nyu-squeezes-billions-from-its-students-and-where-that-money-goes/
But while students suffer:
NYU milks its poorest students, charging Pell Grant recipients, whose families make $30,000, $25,462, or 84% of their entire household income. (Yale, Harvard and Columbia charge $6,000/$7,000.)
NYU charges full tuition for semesters students spend abroad throughout the “Global Network University,” even though the courses in those programs are all taught by part-time instructors (who get no benefits). “They’re making a fortune on tuition in London,” the former director of NYU/London told the professors. “No matter how high you pay, you pay part-time.”
NYU’s students aren’t allowed to rent rooms or apartments in those cities, but are required to live in NYU-owned buildings, forcing them to spend up to 60% more than it would cost them to rent locally. “Clearly, we are being ripped off,” a senior told the professors, writing from her cramped NYU apartment in Berlin.
NYU profits hugely off its giant cohort of international students—11,164, more than any other U.S. University. They pay a higher tuition, and their other costs appear to be over $5,000 more than those imposed on the US students here. While the latter are required to buy, for health insurance, only NYU’s “Mandatory Plan” ($2,424), the international students must buy that as well as the more expensive ($3,236) of the plans that NYU calls “optional.”
NYU students and their families also pay further thousands, every year, in unexpected “fees” and “nonrefundable deposits.” “I had to take out loans just to cover my fees and health insurance,” a sophomore said. (“I can’t believe NYU charged so much extra crap,” another said.)
While NY schools like CUNY, Columbia and Cooper Union publish their fees openly and clearly, the many extra costs at NYU are mostly buried in the fine print; and they also vastly higher than at other schools. (For students applying to live in campus housing, Columbia charges a housing fee of $100. NYU’s housing fee is $1,000.)
http://markcrispinmiller.com/2015/05/how-nyu-squeezes-billions-from-its-students-and-where-that-money-goes/
Out of Control Real Estate Acquisition
Despite proclamations made to the City Council that the proposed Sexton expansion plan in the Village – with an estimated price tag of well over $1 billion (which includes the Zipper Building, whose cost is projected to be $1 billion alone, and will be the largest and most expensive building to ever be built in the Village) – would take care of all of the school’s physical needs there, NYU is still blowing millions on Village real estate including 404 Lafayette/708 Broadway ($157 million, not including renovations), 383 Lafayette ($74 million, not including new construction). (The report also details the millions and millions that NYU’s out of control expansion in other parts of the City and the world have cost.)
NYU’s real estate portfolio includes an embarrassing number of residential “mansions” as well, including, for example, three for “Law School Faculty:” a $3.6 million luxury 4 bedroom condo at 845 West End Ave., “…with Calacatta gold marble, as well as radiant heat floors” (according to International Business Times); a $3.5 million luxury condo at 166 Perry St., “The 1,875 s/f corner apartment … has a glass curtain wall and views of the Hudson River. It has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a powder room and home office, along with 10-foot ceilings and a five-fixture master bath” (according to Real Estate Weekly); and a $5.2 million condo at 455 Central Park West (“a 26-story tower attached to the French Renaissance chateau at W. 206th St.”) “The duplex apartment has a round living and dining room with 37-foot-high ceilings and Central Park views, along with three more conventional bedrooms” (according to Above the Law).
Why and How the NYU Board of Wall Street and Real Estate and not One Professor is running the City
“It must be noted that NYU’s Board of Trustees is one of the largest such Boards in the US, with 95 members, but includes not one professor. It’s uniquely dominated by Wall Street bankers, hedge fund managers and real estate tycoons and we think that helps explain the direction the university has taken, which is decidedly not about educating our students,” said Mark Crispin Miller, NYU Professor of Media, Culture and Communication, and President of NYUFASP. “With leadership like that, it isn’t hard to understand why NYU has the highest tuition in the country, and the worst financial aid; and, therefore, students graduating with the heaviest load of student debt in the United States—40% above the national average,” said Miller.
NOT ONE PROFESSOR ON THE NYU BOARD
NYU student housing practices is making a fortune for the Board while it is hurting students and the communities
PCVST does not have hundreds of illegal hotels yet hundreds of golub notices were sent to RS tenants last summer
The Attorney General and Paul Weiss Rifkind are working together combining forces to eliminate RS tenants from PCVST with a May 20 2014 subpoena they hoped would increase the number of evictions but instead showed PCVST is not running illegal hotels.
De Blasio made a deal where MR tenants can sign up for the RS homes when the RS are evicted by Paul Weiss and the Attorney General
The deal and the investigations are dirty. They are making up their evidence.
PCVST is more and more international students, the money train for the NYU billionaire board of directors.
A website with valuable information
http://nyufasp.com/
While Bratton said that the new policy applies to weed that is in open view (a big shift), it does not apply to weed that is being burned. People caught smoking weed will continue to be arrested. (It's also still probably not a great idea to wave your bag around in public, regardless of its size.) Pot-possessors with outstanding warrants will be taken into custody, as will people who can't show I.D. "An officer ultimately has to make the judgment on the scene," said de Blasio, suggesting that people whom the cops deem suspicious or uncooperative might also be subject to arrest.
PEOPLE, CALL THE NYPD IF YOU SMELL IT! P L E A S E!!
With an NYU board of directors of Billionaire Hedge Funds, Real Estate and Wall Street and the NY Housing headed by the biggest Wall Streeter Blackstone and now Mulrow is Cuomo Chief of Staff it is no wonder the Attorney General and the TA law firm Paul Weiss have done nothing about the illegal DOB chopped apartments, illegal 3+ unrelated occupancy, and thousands of dorms in PCVST.
Has anyone renewed or received a new lease with the new management owner? Last year ours was a fucking nightmare as they were total piss ants to us. Just wondering what I have in store for renewal in March. Or not , seeing too many nice buildings with lower rents now. Happy Holidays ST reporter & many thanks.
the only time plumbing problems are diagnosed and corrected so quickly is when there is a toilet back up and you cant flush the toilet or is it impacts on another apartment and an overflow would result if you flushed.
Speaking to the plumbers - there is a real shortage. Don't expect this kind of service as a routine experience. i.e. two weeks for a plumber to resolve most issues.
Schumer and Cuomo are anti-reform, anti-citizens, pro-special-interest and land-developers-with-deep-pockets and anti-tenant. Schumer is behind pioneering new neighborhoods as Hudson Yards and the soon to be new stabilizers in Stuyvesant Town.
Schumer, Flake and Cornyn — who appear bent on allowing major developers continued access to the program.
Critics of current U.S. campaign finance laws have long worried that politicians could become biased towards the industries that bankroll their campaigns, tilting legislation in favor of well-connected corporations.
Grassley, the EB-5 reform proponent, seemed to make this point in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday. “This failure to heed calls for reform,” he said, according to the Des Moines Register, “proves that some would rather side with special interest groups, land developers and those with deep pockets.”
http://therealdeal.com/blog/2015/12/21/eb-5-champions-in-congress-show-strong-financial-ties-to-real-estate-industry/?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=popular_widget&utm_campaign=posts_popular
So that is why the Ag Schneideman and former AG Cuomo never subpoenaed or investigated NYU scandals. 95 billionaires on the board! Silver Skelos are small potatoes compared to these two. These two combined are small potatoes compared to Schumer.
MERRY CHRISTMAS. HAPPY HOLIDAYS. HAPPY AND HEALTHY NEW YEAR. TO STR AND EVERYONE.
GOD BLESS US, ALL OF US!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! And a Happy, hopefully Joyous New Year!
Thank you STR.
It will be a very Joyous New Year if we see the departure of Compass Rock and the indictment of Cuomo. I'll drink a toast to that!
ditto on the cuomo indictment that would be SWEET!!!!
and merited
Double the ditto on the Cuomo indictment! He is the worse
Not really new owners but another entity created to keep the property on the same course set out by Speyer and all the others.
It is all the same pot of money with these real estate folks. They just move it from her to there to here and call themselves by different names with all the same players.
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