Looking Ahead

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis


The prospects of Metropolitan Life selling the Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper
Village complex raises the question of what will happen to the properties, the
largest apartment complex in Manhattan. More importantly, how will such a
sale affect our neighbors, the over 25,000 people living in the 110 buildings, in 11,250 apartments on
the more than 80 graceful parkland acres?

To answer the question, we turn to Josh Barbanel of the NYTImes, to find
that condos are the trend. Despite thousands of apartments on the market,
7,000 new ones have been applied for in the first half of 2006. Sales had
slowed but have recently picked up, and his sources state that the market
is extraordinarily strong for the higher priced apartments. Condo
conversion by the buyer/sponsor is probably the direction for ST/PCV,
should the sale materialize.

Let’s also spend some time looking to what happened to the Met’s first
foray into mass housing, the Parkchester development, now a condominium
colony.

The Parkchester housing development consists of 171 residential brick
buildings on 129 acres of Northeast Bronx between Tremont Avenue and the
Cross Bronx expressway. It has its own subway to Manhattan, 45 minutes
away, the #6 Lexington Avenue train. There's also a post office, a public
library branch, an Art Deco theatre (now a multiplex), a 100,000 sq. ft.
Macy’s (a tenant since 1941), some national retailers and a number of
smaller stores, coffee shops and restaurants; a complete city within a
city.

In its time the largest housing complex in the US, it was begun in 1938 and
completed in 1942. With 12,271 apartments for 42,000 working people, middle
income tenants, with a central oval park, landscaped grassy plots,
featuring a Fantasia fountain, it was a successful prototype for the ST/PCV
design, planned in 1942-3 and completed in 1947. All three
projects were approved by the City Planning Commission, despite
discriminatory tenant selection practices, later overridden by court
decisions. To serve the ethnic communities, the Met had also built a
separate but equal facilities development in Harlem, Riverton Houses.

For two decades Parkchester was a fine housing site for its tenants. But
trouble was brewing, the surrounding communities were declining, crime and
poverty were spreading. The trend was unmistakable, and the Met started
neglecting the upkeep, not throwing good money after bad. It sold
Parkchester to developer Harry Helmsley in 1968, and he converted the two
sections into condos, North in 1974 and South in 1986, despite strong
opposition from tenant groups and their elected representatives. But the
real estate market continued to drop, buyers were faced with losses, and
the sponsor cut expenses. In 1998 Helmsley and his partners sold the 6,362
money-losing apartments that he still owned, including 700 vacancies kept off the market for fear of rent control, to the not-for –profit Community Preservation
Corporation, a group founded to use bank financing in rescuing struggling
communities. By that time the tenancy had changed radically, from nearly
all white to predominantly ethnic.

CPC’s for-profit subsidiary, CPC Resources, set up a Parkchester
Preservation Corporation, financed through the value of the ex-Helmsley
apartments, bought for $4.5M. That was the collateral for financing the
badly needed renovations, to be paid for by higher condominium charges (reportedly increased by $30-80 /mo) over 30 years, by abatements of real estate taxes obtained through laws adapted by NYS Legislature, by cheap mortgage insurance from the state, and bysavings through individual metering of gas and electricity formerly paid
from condo fees.

There were long struggles before these solutions were
adopted by the tenants’ organizations, amidst faltering condominium prices,
foreclosed apartments, problem tenants moving in (that’s condo control, or
lack thereof), some drug dealing, prostitution - the crime and poverty
problems of the South Bronx creeping into this not-so-any- longer
middle-class environment.

But the PPC put over $30M immediately into repairs, particularly the
decrepit plumbing system, electric wiring, masonry and window upgrades. As
the real estate market moved upwards, so did Parkchester values.The tenancy
also changed, with many hard working Asian immigrant families joining in
and becoming active in improving the area. Investors were induced to screen
potential buyers and renters, and a moratorium was imposed on the sponsor
not to dump apartments. The one bedroom apartment worth $22,000 in 1996 now
may be $95,000 today, and a three-bedroom unit will sell at $215,000.

Today, after an expenditure of nearly $200M, the PPC’s owners, banks and
insurance companies, have seen a boost in the value of their investment. The owners of the apartments have, once again, livable quarters in
decent surroundings, the rental vacancies are being filled, and new buyers
are pleasantly surprised at the comparatively low prices, pleasant
surroundings and conveniences.

This recital of riches-to-rags-to-riches describing a sister property of
ST/PCV may or may not be of value to the people facing a radical ownership
change in Midtown Manhattan; essentially it illustrates the validity of the
real estate maxim of “location, location, location.” SP/PCV is not facing
the population shifts that Parkchester experienced; on the contrary, the tenancy may
be looking at a rising market, with the attendant benefit of capital
gains, and the added ability for heirs to inherit valuable property. And,
of course, one does not have to buy if one does not want to.

On the negative side, it does cost more to buy and pay both a mortgage and
a maintenance fee than to rent, particularly particularly when current
tenants, or at leat some 75% of them, are under rent stabilization. To counter that, a sponsor always offers a below market price to current tenants, and there’s the
tricky “sell it to a speculator and let him pay your costs” option, like a
reverse mortgage.

But that is a different subject.

Wally Dobelis thanks the sources of this research article, Josh Barbanel,
Julia Vitullo-Martin and Liz Lent, and their publications, The NY Times, NY
Sun and The Cooperator, not forgetting the sundry Internet resources.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis


This will not go down as one of Robert Altman’s great movies, but it does have a special significance for those of us who have treasured A Prairie Home Companion on Public Radio over the years (32 at last count), both enjoying and sometimes getting peeved with Garrison Keillor, like a smartass [SMARTYPANTS, SNOOT/SMARTNOSE IF YOU HAVE TO EDIT??????] capricious child. Public Radio’s WNYC station is a local favorite, and the station has cared for the neighborhood, notably the Stuyvesant Square area, about which some of us have spoken on the Leonard Lopate interview program.. As to how the PHC author, GK as he is called on the set, feels about the show and the audience, see the movie.

The theme of the movie is that the APHC’s home base, Fitzgerald Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota (named for the writer, a native) has been sold to a Texan parking lot investor, and the show must fold. All the regulars are there for the last show. This is a charmer from the getgo, with GK intoning the old mantra, News From Lake Wobegon, “where the women are strong, the men good-looking and the children above average,” and masses of country-style performers flowing about the opening scene, talking over each other, sort of a Nashville thing you’d expect from Altman. Then it parts company from the standard radio format, with Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin imposing their own flavor, as a talkative show business singer family, Yolanda and Rhonda, the Johnson Sisters (Streep once tried for opera), pining for their ma and the old days, and Lindsay Lohan as Streep’s bored teenager who writes poems about suicide.

Singing acts follow each other, not losing the tempo when Molly the pregnant stage manager (Maya Rudolph) drops the script portfolio during a commercial for duct tape (a PHC standard) and GK must improvise, involving Tom Keith the show’s sound effects virtuoso, who successfully accompanies the presenter’s imaginary voyage with creaking door, ghost, storm, jungle and animal sounds, until a discombobulated Yolanda (Meryl Streep) takes over and serves up such a farrago of images that the maestro must fold. But by then the script turns up and all is well.

A major player, Guy Noir, a Chandleresque private eye (“it is a dark night in the city that knows how to keep its secrets, where on the 12th floor of the Acme Building a man struggles with life’s everlasting questions”), the show’s security officer (“only temporary, owing to a case of the shorts”) played by Kevin Kline, discovers a strange woman in white (Virginia Madsen) walking through the theatre, an angel, and hopes that she may prevent the closing. But the omens are there, when Chuck Akers (L. Q. Jones), an old-time singer, dies in his dressing room.

Dusty and Lefty the APHC’s philosophical cowboys, a poet and a chaser, played Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly, turn up as singing cowboys, using the occasion of the closing to let fly with their best collection of dirty story songs, much to the discomfort of the stage manager, played by PHC regular Tim Russell, GK’s foil in the radio show’s Dusty & Lefty and Noir/barkeep dialogues, and grand master of accents and impersonations (President Bush, Maurice the snooty headwaiter). Another all-around actor, Sue Scott, who plays the sultriest mezzo-voiced temptress in the Guy Noir episodes, as well as the indifferent wife in the Catchup Advisory Board dialogues with GK, also alternating as his multi – voiced singing duet partner, was hidden as a yenta-ish hairdresser helping the players get their acts together and telling the lumbering GK walking up on the stage to zip up – or was that Molly? The sleep-wandering PHC spirit is catching.

To continue with the show’s regulars hidden in faceless roles - Rich Dworsky is in the background, leading the stage All-Star Shoe Band in perfect music accompaniment, looking like a backwoods Einstein; Pat Donohue the great all-purpose guitarist and sometime vocalist is doing his usual, unidentified, as are the violinist and sax player Andy Stein, bass man Gary Raynor and drummer Arnie Kinsella.

The first half of the show is a total charmer, until the Texan turns up and starts criticising APHC from the sponsor’s box, and the acts start repeating, or so it seems, and the angel pulls its strings. But the theatre does go down, and goodness knows who else, when the angel once more enters the final scene. Roger ZaLeznick, the co-author of the show, was once a writer of an angel serial, so go figure.

Having gone from seeing Meryl Streep as the totally believable chatty and slovenly country singer to the urbane executive terror of the fashion magazine world, in The Devil Wears Prada, just a week later, I am struck by her ability to change her persona. Not unexpected, it is just the suddenness. Both movies stayed with me for days, particularly the latter, because of its recapitulation of life as we know it in the big city. Happily, both were pleasurable and positive, upbeat counterfoils to the depressing real world news.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

If you are shocked that you never noted this before, neither did the New York Times, nor the Post. This information comes from the Readers Digest people, who, getting tired of the badmouthing our fellow citizens have been subjected to, sent out 36 reporters in 35 major cities worldwide, sampling whether people would hold doors open for others, help passersby in picking up dropped papers, and thank buyers for purchases. New Yorkers won, hands down, The story, when reported by the Associated Press, was widely discussed, surprising even the RD editors, who had placed it well back in the magazine.



The findings came as no surprise to this East Midtowner, who has observed his fellow citizens in acts of courtesy every day, starting with the morning elevator riders, who, preoccupied with the worries of the day, nevertheless exchange nods and casual words, nine times out of ten. The percentage drops to 60% upon arrival at work, in the office elevators.



At the Union Square Lexington Avenue subway station, where the same turnstiles are used for entry and exit, the passenger flow is seamless in both directions, as people wordlessly make room for each other, without a clash. That is also noticeable in the passageways when the streams of rush hour travelers switch back and forth between the IRT, BMT and LL lines.



Pushing one’s way into a crowded subway car is another challenge, easily accomplished with a liberal use of excuse mes and thank-yous, sometimes accompanied with a remark about one’s boss being a tyrant. Surprisingly, a number of young people, and some not so young, will offer their seats to the elderly or infirm. As to the sprawlers who spread out over two seats, there are very few, sitting upright and looking challenging, or sometimes sleeping, maybe pretending to sleep.



Subway conductors and bus drivers have thankless jobs. They respond to your hellos and thank-yous, and sometimes will actually hold the door open a trifle longer for you. Policemen like to be greeted, and an observation about a nice day is appropriate. Women are reluctant to exchange casual pleasantries, but a smile works just as well. More smiling is good for the giver and the receiver.



Now back to the real survey, the Readers Digest report. To obtain some uniformity in this non-scientific research, the New York tests were performed in various Starbucks coffee shops. One might think that the trained baristas would give us an unfair advantage, but my guess is that Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s checkout clerks are as good if not better at the thank-yous than the coffee servers’ 95% score shows. This is true throughout the high-visibility stores. As for holding doors open, 90% of us passed the test, and 55% aced the document drop. Men scored 63% on the latter, vs. 47% among the women, understandably, what with worries about being embarrassed by tight skirts and low-slung jeans. The reporters encountered men and women of all races, ages, professions and income levels, with no remarkable differences in the level of courtesy, except that men were more prone to help women in holding doors open and picking up papers.



On the global scale, ranging downwards from New York’s 80%, were Zurich (77%) and Toronto (70%). In the high 60% ranks were, in order, Berlin, Sao Paolo, Zagreb, Auckland, Warsaw, Mexico City, with Stockholm, Budapest, Madrid, Prague and Vienna following. Below them, at 57%, London, Paris, Lisbon, Johannesburg and Buenos Aires were clutched together, with Amsterdam slightly below. In the 40% came in Helsinki, Manila, Milan and Sydney, then Bangkok, Hong Kong, Jakarta, and Taipei, with Moscow, Singapore and Seoul dragging bottom. Finally, in the 30s,Bucharest, Kuala Lumpur and Mumbai. Former colonies and the ex-Communist countries seem to be still weak in showing regard for fellow human beings.



Of the former colonizers, at least England is taking the findings semi-seriously, BBC News has gone into their own research and find that their Geordies, the people of the coal-mining district of Newcastle, score 77%, with the Scousers of Liverpool close behind. Londoners check in at 55%, while the Scots of Edinburgh and, particularly, the Brummers of Birmingham pull the numbers down, at 48 and 43%



What do we learn from all this? Reader Digest says that if you can make it with a smile and a thank-you here, you can make it anywhere. Maybe that is what makes New Yorkers great, all of the above plus a larger preponderance of liberal brains.



Lost in the discussion about courtesy is the banner article in the same issue of Readers Digest, 10 New Ways to Lose Weight Now, the summer weight-loss special by Paula Dranoff, long-time health writer and editor, and a neighbor. Nice going, Polly!



This column thanks the editors and writers of Readers Digest.. Feel free to comment, at wally@ix.netcom.com.