Photo by Eliane Vanderborght of Tai-Chi in front of Bethesda Fountain early Sunday morning.
September 21, 2015 Weather: Partly Cloudy, with a high of 73 degrees.
Notices:
Lots of great local events this week! Local writers read their work in Riverside Park on Monday night, and many other free and cheap events are on our calendar this week.
There are also several community board meetings this week.
Check out the calendar for all of this month’s community board committee meetings here. See all the agendas here. The board will review liquor license applications on Wednesday.
Congratulations in order to two local high school students: “Two students from Fiorello H LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts, Calvin L Schwartzberg and Austin J Zambito-Valente have been selected as National Merit Scholarship semi-finalists for 2016. These seniors ranked in the top one percent of the 1.5 million high school juniors who took the qualifying test a year ago.”
The NYC Yarn Crawl is coming up from Sept. 25-27. Knitty City is involved. Learn more here.
News:
The South Pierre, a building at 160 West 71st street, was incorrectly declared “unoccupied” on building permits, and tenants said they weren’t being protected from construction dust. The building is owned by The Brodsky Organization. “Tenants said they feared the construction was part of an effort to try to get more rent-stabilized tenants out. ‘The city is not as vigilant as it could be,’ Susan Schwartz, a tenant leader in the building, said. “When the tenants are complaining, it doesn’t seem to carry a lot of weight.'”
A bias suit against the board of The Dakota was dismissed. “The suit touched off one of the ugliest co-op battles in the history of Manhattan real estate. The board members — many of them powerful business leaders in their own right — fought back, saying in depositions that they had rejected Mr. Fletcher because he had only $50,000 in liquid assets, millions in debt and mounting losses at his businesses.”
The 24th precinct has closed its investigation into two people allegedly impersonating police officers inside a UWS building. “On Aug. 20 three unknown men entered 50 W. 93rd St. and told the doorman they were members of the NYPD. The men had badges on chains around their necks and were armed, according to residents. The building’s superintendent told the Spirit that tenants in two rent-stabilized apartments were questioned as to how long they’d lived in the building and wanted to know who they lived with…Canns said the building’s owner, Stellar Management, has aggressively been trying to get rent-stabilized tenants out of the building.” Stellar says it “has not participated in any wrongdoing or illegal activity regarding the impersonation of law enforcement at the building, nor have they ever engaged in harassment towards tenants in the building.”
A New York Times video about the West 90’s talk a bit about this history, but it leaves out a lot, including all the area’s urban renewal buildings, for instance.
A legal ruling and changes in rent-stabilization laws may mean that many apartments that lost rental protection may actually still be stabilized.
Good heavens! The pope’s visit may delay availability of the iPhone 6S at the UWS Apple store and other locations.
The story about armed men with badges, who claimed to be NYPD, showing up to harass tenants at Stellar Management’s apartments is all kinds of screwed up. Not sure why this was deemed not a criminal matter.
I agree; I live right next to that building and it’s scary. It warrants further investigation.
From my understanding, upon political pressure the NYPD did indeed open an investigation. All surveillance videos were reviewed, residents were questioned, and leads were followed. All resulting in nothing , , , nada. There was no clear evidence of such an occurrence other than heresay.
However, something ‘fishy’ is taking place in this building were some residents are taking advantage or abusing their rent stabilized apartments. It appears they are trying to use the management’s past history against the Mgmt company by claiming management abuse. This might backfire on them, as it appears there is no relevant fact to back this up.
It just takes a bad few tenants to ruin a building. And the same can be said about a management company.
hmmm – that doesn’t follow from the West Side Spirit report. It sounds like either:
– a tenant submitted a false police report (I don’t think this is plausible, but it sounds like what you’re saying happened)
– someone tampered with evidence in a criminal investigation
– the police could release a sketch of what the armed men look like
Crying Wolf probably happens more that we think.
Tampering with a criminal investigation would land someone in prison , , , doubt someone would do that, but you never know.
With regards to a sketch? with all the surveillance video inside, outside, and up/down the street, you would think someone matching the description got caught on tape. The fact that nothing was released lends me to believe the police have nothing on tape.
Lets keep on eye on this one , , ,
Eliane,
Beautiful photograph, have returned several times to this site just to enjoy the photo.
Tks