Saturday, December 3, 2016

Garodnick's Play




I'm glad that our departing councilman Dan Garodnick is placing a spotlight on the president elect's expenditure via his office and Trump Tower, but once again, I think good old Dan is stressing politics over reasoning. Is he also willing not to listen to and not be a lap dog for business high rises in his district? Is he also going to give back the donations made by his rich buddy SL Green for One Vanderbilt? Is he willing to not go and smile at the REBNY awards dinner? Is he willing to go after "the boys" who give money to the NYC Democratic Party, and probably the Republican Party if in power? Is he willing to say, "I'm sorry for accepting a third term as councilperson when I voted against third terms"? Is he willing to fight for the middle class and say f.u. to affluent concerns and reestablish Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village so that "families of moderate means might live in health, comfort and dignity in park-like communities and that a pattern might be set of private enterprise productively devoted to public service...."  I don't think he is on any of these things, so I just want him to go away and leave us in peace.

He won't.

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12/12/16 Just a placement so as not to mar our Christmas and Holiday cheers.  Current AirBnb hosting. Do you think Management knows? Oh, how is your composting going?

 

43 comments:

Frankie Fartalot said...

Danny Boy G...a political harlot of the lowest order.
The sooner he goes away the better.
He would take money from the devil himself.
All a bunch of whores.

Anonymous said...

How my opinion of Councilman Garodnick has changed in the past year! After the Blackstone deal, which he supported and advocated, I saw him in a different way.
At one time I thought that he had our interests at heart, but now I believe otherwise. He, along with our other politicians, look the other way as Blackstone destroys our QOL here. He appears to have no objections to this dorm/hotel dump this place has become. I refuse to go to another tenants meeting until they just let we the residents talk and gripe without the politicians sitting up on the stage. They made a deal with the devil.

Anonymous said...

hahahah First & foremost these are politicians. You don't actually think there is a moral vein in any of our elected officials. Remember str, we elected them. We - maybe not you nor I, but the others. We can only blame ourselves.s

Anonymous said...

Ftr, if Dan were gone and moved to Siberia, our landlord would be exactly the same and worse. No point blaming dan even though we can't stand him when the devil aint going away kiddos.

Stuy Town Reporter said...

You are correct, but I still want a politician who will fight for New York and this complex.

Anonymous said...

Guess how much a landlord received in tax deduction for empty storefronts? how come nobody no politician TALKS RE; THIS?

Anonymous said...

"Ftr, if Dan were gone and moved to Siberia, our landlord would be exactly the same and worse."

-----

Bullshit.

PCVST residents should own both the entire PCVST complex and our individual homes.

We should not be confronted with dog shit everywhere whenever we step outside our apartment doors. We should not be surrounded by nonstop partying transients churning through chopped up dorms. We should not have to ask Blackstone to enforce basic laws and regulations. We should not have to wonder if Blackstone will withhold heat this winter ...

DAN is a slave of Wall Street/REBNY predators demanding EVERYTHING from NYC/NYS politicians they shower with $$$$ 24/7/365.

The severely conflicted TA Board became Dan's puppet, abdicating their fiduciary obligations to act in the best interests of their PCVST neighbors/constituents.

Dan and the TA Board, elected to defend their PCVST neighbors/constituents against Wall Street/REBNY predators, betrayed their PCVST neighbors/constituents delivering EVERYTHING to the same Wall Street/REBNY predators they were elected to defend us against. It's called Honest Services Fraud.

Speyer spectacularly failed executing his business plan raking in multiple billion dollar windfalls pushing our historic middle class community out of PCVST. Blackstone spectacularly succeeded executing Speyer's business plan raking in multiple billion dollar windfalls pushing our historic middle class community out of PCVST.

Speyer won. Dan and the TA Board betraying their PCVST neighbors/constituents for Wall Street/REBNY predators ensured that 10 years from now Speyer can point at PCVST jumping for joy exclaiming, "Look at what used to be PCVST! My predictions came true! My vision is fully realized! I am brilliant!"

To betray their living, breathing neighbors/constituents, Dan and the TA Board had to conjure up a PCVST constituency that does not exist. They betrayed us for a fabricated constituency.

Lacking honest representation, PCVST residents lost EVERYTHING.

Anonymous said...

10:22 AM, you raise a very good point!

Anonymous said...

There is a basic complicating complexity about our district that never gets talked about. It has 3 major components: middle class residents (us, kips bay, tudor city, etc), some of the most important business areas of the city, and some of the most upscale residents in the entire country.

Tailor-made for not making everybody happy.

It's not a complete microcosm, but it is representative of one kind of diversity we have here.

How should any councilman run for office or conduct himself in such a district? Just representing the middle class? Just the business interests? Just the wealthy?
All of them?

What do people here think about that?

Stuy Town Reporter said...

I want our councilperson to be a fighter. I don't want him or her to be an open door to wealthy interests and play the middle of the road when talking (ie, bs-ing). I want to know our councilperson is on our side, meaning most of New York. Money is important, to be sure. But I don't want that person to sell his or her soul for money.

Stuy Town Reporter said...

I've watched Garodnick since he has been in office. While there are things I can agree with him, there are others things done or said where I just shake my head. He waited and got rid of Bloomberg on the East Side because he, Garodnick, want to have more influence than Bloomberg. But it is the same deal with some minor deviation.

As for this complex, tell me: Do you like what it has become?

Anonymous said...

I like the building list. If management can't take care of the broho party crowd and insane complaints of noise, then we can.

Anonymous said...


Outside of real estate people working in the middle of the district or living uptown, who else was affected by the sale here but us. No one. So there's no contest over who was in the clear majority. We were. So a true representative would have advocated for our interests, period. No matter what personal opinions that 'representative' might have had about how things should be, what he thought are the realities, what he thought is the future. An elected representative should represent.

What happened here is that political limitations and considerations took over.

To put this another way...how often did our councilman hold town hall meetings to find out what most of the people here wanted? I don't recall one. What I recall were a lot of pronouncements given through the TA. What I recall was a lot of closed door activity that resulted in pronouncements from the councilman and from the TA.

I think that if we did have a lot of town hall meetings where there were few speeches and more tenant discussion, and there would have been disagreement primarily between those who wanted to buy and those who wanted no buying offered but rather a benevolent rental situation.

Fine. The job of the representative is to figure out the majority and represent its interests, not to come back and try to sell us what went down as great when it was so-so at best.

Now that the sale is long over, there are issues here. You don't have to be a detective to find them. The dog situation gets worse every day, noise, bike riding, partitioning, MCIs, the growing impact of students...to name a few.

What are the majority feelings here about these issues? Our representatives should be making efforts to find out. Outside of the MCIs they do nothing.

And so what has been said at this site over and over is true. We have representatives who don't represent, who make no effort to truly represent.

Hopefully in November of next year, a lot of this will change.

Anonymous said...

Those tall, skinny buildings are so hideous and so out of sync with the beautiful and graceful tall buildings of Manhattan. They are simply an eyesore and lend nothing to the beauty of our magnificent skyline. Where do these "architects" study these days? The Lego Set School of Building?

Anonymous said...

A commercial business has a max # of people for fire regulations . Yet a 725 square foot rental can have 9 kids living in it and this is not a hazard?????????????

Anonymous said...

FYI, moms, dads, don't let the wee ones play around on the carpets in hallways. My child has a very bad rash and fever from something porters use to clean the carpets. Warning.

Anonymous said...

I thought there was a policy or code that new buildings had to be the same height or slightly taller than surrounding buildings. Is that wrong or did something change?

Anonymous said...

I'm smelling POT again!

Anonymous said...

His picture should fly high above corruption tower!

Anonymous said...

Garodnick is certainly not our representative and neither is the TA. We have NOBODY in our corner.

Stuy Town Reporter said...

>>I thought there was a policy or code that new buildings had to be the same height or slightly taller than surrounding buildings. Is that wrong or did something change?<<

With "air rights" there is no policy except the dollar.

Anonymous said...

With the current city council, the bigger the bribe the bigger the building. SEE CORRUPTION TOWER!

Anonymous said...

How is th M floor living? I ask as we cant stay in this one bedroom and there is a 2 available on M in our building. It seems dark, cold , noise?

Anonymous said...

"Garodnick is certainly not our representative and neither is the TA. We have NOBODY in our corner."

Mike McKee of TenantsPac is in our corner.

http://www.tenantspac.org/mission

So is Andrew Berman of GVSHP.

http://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/index.htm

Support both organizations. Time to think macro, not micro.

Anonymous said...

Hysterical that he is with DeBlasio on not funding Trump security.
We all know that if Hillary won, that tab would happily go to the people of NYC.
He is a hypocrite through and through!

Anonymous said...

There is a new animal-torturing - err, testing - facility on First Avenue and City Hall is encouraging them to build higher than originally planned. Does somebody get a kick-back or something when buildings go higher than the zoning that is in place?

Anonymous said...

@ December 5, 2016 at 6:22 PM
Mike McKee of TenantsPac is in our corner.
http://www.tenantspac.org/mission
So is Andrew Berman of GVSHP.
http://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/index.htm
Support both organizations. Time to think macro, not micro.

-----

Not distracted by Garodnick P.R. lobbyist troll.

We know who Mike McKee is.
We know who Andrew Berman is.
We know who Ralph Nader is.
We know who Elizabeth Warren is.
We know who is "in our corner."

STR is about PCVST. So let's think micro.

We definitely know who is not in our corner.

Garodnick, elected to defend us against Wall Street/REBNY predators, falsely proclaiming himself to be a tenant champion insults all his 25,000 PCVST neighbors/constituents he disgracefully betrayed. He hijacked a severely conflicted PCVST TA Board converted to his puppet so he could needlessly deliver multiple billion dollar PCVST windfalls - EVERYTHING! - to the same Wall Street/REBNY predators he was elected to defend us against.

EVERYTHING!
- Entire 80-acre PCVST complex worth $$$$ Billions
- Our historic PCVST middle class community's 11,230 homes worth $$$$ Billions
- Our exclusive access to Fannie Mae purchase funding worth $2.7 Billion
- 10.7 million square feet PCVST development rights worth $$$$ BILLIONS
- PCVST commercial/retail/parking worth $$$$ Hundreds of Millions
- NYC corporate welfare worth $220 Million

$2.7 Billion Fannie Mae purchase funding + 10.7 million square feet transferable development rights cleared a path for PCVST residents to own the entire PCVST complex and affordably own their individual PCVST homes. PVCVST could remain middle class affordable in perpetuity, but Wall Street/REBNY predators showering NYC/NYS politicians with $$$$ 24/7/365 demand EVERYTHING from them. Following orders, grateful, compliant NYC/NYS politicians taking $$$$ 24/7/365 from Wall Street/REBNY predators deliver EVERYTHING to them.

EVERYTHING! - Gardonick delivered EVERYTHING to the largest, most notorious Wall Street predator, Blackstone, demanding EVERYTHING from him in exchange for no benefit whatsoever - NOTHING! - for his living, breathing, long suffering middle class PCVST neighbors/constituents under assault by Wall Street/REBNY predators for 10 years.

The results are self evident. EVERYTHING for Wall Street/REBNY predators. NOTHING for PCVST residents.

This is what PCVST residents can look forward to:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/blackstone-groups-invitation-homes-files-confidentially-for-an-ipo-1480546946
Blackstone Group’s Invitation Homes Files Confidentially for an IPO

Prediction: After Blackstone securitizes a highly leveraged rent stream PCVST residents will be subjected to eviction wars when the economy inevitably tanks and market rents drop.

Time to think macro?
Always thinking macro, but not suckered into hopping aboard a bus joining Garodnick and his puppet TA getting taken for futile trips up to the corrupt swamp in Albany begging Garodnick mentor/Speyer slave Cuomo to do something real standing up against Wall Street/REBNY predators showering him with $$$$ 24/7/365.

More corrupt politicians have to be arrested. The political scandal going down on Rivington is chump change compared to the scandal going down here at PCVST. Preet should take a walk a few blocks north. All he has to do is follow the money.

Anonymous said...

"Hysterical that he is with DeBlasio on not funding Trump security.
We all know that if Hillary won, that tab would happily go to the people of NYC.
He is a hypocrite through and through!"

Hillary would not have been holed up in a Midtown skyscraper, emerging for trips to restaurants. She would have been in Washington or Chappaqua and the tally for protecting her would not have been borne by NYC taxpayers and there would not have been the massive inconvenience and disruption in the heart of the City.

Stuy Town Reporter said...

I don't know where she would be, but the Clinton Foundation is in NYC, Avenue of the Americas, 42nd Floor. Chappaqua, yes. The town of New Castle would have to pay or Westchester County, or perhaps the country. Who knows?

Anonymous said...

to the Main M floor living !!!! living on a main floor here is WORSE than terrible. Ask me.

Anonymous said...

Parents think long and hard about sending your kids here. The buildings are not safe, strangers walk in and have been seen to be lurking around young women and sometimes young men. It is dark here at night and if kids are coming in after even 9 pm it is not safe. You need a doorman building always in the city. I mean always. BTDT and stay away from stuy pc.

Stuy Town Reporter said...

On rare occasions, I am asked by someone from "outside" about living here and I am always truthful. It's not a bad place, for sure. And there are perks toward living here. But I am speaking as a tenant who is truly RS. I don't know about the people coming in who are paying at least twice as much, if not three times as much, to call this place home. They have to make a difficult decision. Even in Manhattan in general.

Anonymous said...

I agree with 6:30 concerning safety here especially at night. Although there is a public safety force, they are rarely to be seen at night. Management makes no effort to increase night patrols and I really do not understand the purpose of a private safety force if they are not out at night. The demographic is getting worse here. There are transient hotel guests coming in and out and you don't know anyone in the buildings anymore. Not a safe place after dark.

Stuy Town Reporter said...

Cannot disagree.

Anonymous said...

It certainly is not safe here after dark. Public Safety is rarely to be seen. I often here the young drunks braying and screeching their way home after midnight (especially on weekends) and sometimes a fight erupts. Never a PS officer to be seen. They have cameras all over the place, but I don't believe they are monitored. They are only good for reviewing an incident after the fact. Not even then if they don't want to. Remember the dog attacks? No PS footage or so they said.

Management has money to spend on the silly ice rink (which is a violation of the commercial zoning) and they must spend a fortune on their copious advertising, but they come up very short when it comes to spending money on Security. By Security, I mean a boots-on-the-ground live presence of Security.

As for transients, the place is teeming with them. I think they probably outnumber the bona fide tenants.

Stuy Town Reporter said...

Security. Not enough money. But don't forget our artificial Christmas tree! (I've been taking a look at previous real Christmas trees.)

Anonymous said...

PCV is generally four 2-BR apartments per floor.

Two 2-BR apartments on our floor appear to be corporate rentals occupied by 2-4 transients for a week, then empty for a week, then occupied by 2-4 different transients for a week, ... coming mostly late at night and leaving early morning. They seem to be here on business, keeping quiet with minimal polite, evasive conversation. They're definitely not tourists or loud, partying slobs on vacation for a week out on the town.

Stepping outside an apartment or elevator to encounter 1-2 well-dressed, confused, sometimes angry strangers standing in the hall with luggage always dialing furiously into a cellphone has become a fairly common occurrence on our floor. By default they act lost. When angry, they say the person meeting them isn't there and isn't responding. They don't want to call security. They're obviously coached to never identify who they are meeting or what the arrangement is.

Packages and delivery envelopes will accumulate outside a door during vacant weeks, then don't get picked up when the next set of transients take temporary occupancy. Eventually the packages disappear.

Twice during the past year we've introduced ourselves to never before seen transients informing us they are our longstanding neighbors residing next to us for more than two years.

Guess what luxury is now?

Not living next to a dorm.

Anonymous said...

I've had non-English speaking couples ring my doorbell because they were in the wrong building. I didn't even buzz them in - no need to because the doors are always open! I didn't ask them if they were AirBnB customers, but they probably were. It's happened a couple of times now.

Stuy Town Reporter said...

I've heard more "non-English" speaking couples than ever in Stuy Town. Makes me wonder what's up.

Anonymous said...

There are many foreign speaking people in my building too. Probably short term hotel residents. They are renting these apartments as dorms, hotels, and even flophouses and shelters. It is an outrage!

Anonymous said...

About that Airbnb map: If you go to Airbnb and put in some dates, you'll see STPCV with the flags for available apartments. But when you click on the flags, most of the pictures show that the apartments are elsewhere (different radiators etc.). If you select to rent the entire home, nothing may show up (depends on the dates, I guess). So much is deceptive on Airbnb. Even so, there's still activity here. Cuomo finally signed the law to fine the renters, which may help.

Anonymous said...

"most of the pictures show that the apartments are elsewhere"
-----
Disagree.

Most pictures clearly show apartments are inside ST & PCV. Occasional photo is from another location or disguised, but jump to kitchen/bath photos clearly reveal apartments inside complex, almost all with partition walls and lacking required 80% carpeting.
-----
"Cuomo finally signed the law to fine the renters, which may help."

Agree and Disagree.

Cuomo's law helps landlords target tenant violations the landlord chooses to pursue - RS. Cuomo did nothing to prevent landlord violations or prevent landlords from tolerating known violations the landlord chooses to ignore - MR.

Cuomo's law is intended to give landlords another tool to de-regulate affordable RS apartments.

Anonymous said...

Cuomo is no friend of rent stabilized tenants. He screwed us big time in order to stick it to DeB. Cuomo is a vengeful, hateful little man who belongs in the slammer. Oh Please! Preet, go get him!