By Joy Bergmann
Earlier this week, giddiness burst from residents of West 74th Street on the block between Broadway and West End Avenue. “Everyone is overjoyed,” a woman who’s lived on the block since 1978 told West Side Rag. “I’m ready to pop the champagne!”
The impetus for their delight?
A sidewalk shed came down, a construction fence went up, and a giant dumpster arrived in front of 231-233 West 74th Street, a pair of decrepit-but-landmarked 19th-century rowhouses that locals have called “a mess,” “a terrible, terrible problem,” and “the bane of our existence for 15-plus years.”
However, by Friday morning, the giddy mood had vanished. Peeved texts started flying among neighbors, announcing that workers were back, building a new sidewalk shed.
A shed crew member told WSR the prior structure had been up for approximately 10 years and had to be replaced. The new one will provide “more safety,” he said.
In 2022, WSR did a deep dive into the buildings’ backstory. Representatives for the owners said they had wanted to fix the crumbling facade and create renovated rental units on the property since filing plans in 2012. However, a basement resident of 231 was still in place then, stalling any progress.
WSR has heard conflicting reports as to whether that person has now left or will be relocating soon. The owners’ representatives have not responded to our update inquiries. A gate to the unit still has this note posted: “MAIL: Throw over the fence. Thanks.”
What might be next?
The Landmarks Preservation Commission approved a facade repair plan in April 2023, noting how its “deteriorated condition” warranted reconstruction work. Teams will dismantle the facade, catalog the bricks and other original material, and then rebuild it using as much of the old materials as possible – replacing some elements as necessary while preserving the “historic detailing and appearance” of the West End-Collegiate Historic District Extension.
Michael Notaro from MVN Architect LLC provided Community Board 7’s Preservation Committee with a detailed rundown of the facade plan in September 2022. He said the firm aimed to restore its 1940s look and sturdiness. When asked for an update, a representative for MVN said they were not authorized to comment.
Perhaps the only locals bemoaning any drastic changes are those who gather on the stoop at 231-233 West 74th Street to chat, eat, smoke, and drink. One habitué called it “the bar.”
If closing time is near, it would be “the end of an era,” he said.
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“The bar” needs to go.
Great reporting and context, including quote about “the bar!” A long long story for which we all await the next chapter.
It’s sad that someone can prevent progress for this long and create urban blight. The basement tenant should have been kicked out a long time ago and work should have been done!
All the developer needed to do was offer to buy out the tenant’s rent-stabilized lease at a mutually agreed-upon price. Happens every day.
And some tenants find no price, however high, mutually agreeable. They don’t want to leave home.
Everyone ultimately has their price. The story of the last holdout before demolition of the old Mayflower Hotel could begin (followed by the construction of 15 CPW) is legendary: https://nypost.com/2014/03/02/hotel-hermit-got-17m-to-make-way-for-15-central-park-west/
Why should someone lose their home because someone else got greedy? How is development progress for anyone but the profiteer? If they had been properly maintained all along, there’d be no problem. What’s truly sad is someone who doesn’t care when other people lose their homes, especially ones they have a right to keep. New buildings are not progress at all.
A development would have allowed more than one person to live here for the last 15 years. I think it is sad when people lose their home, but also when they never get the chance to have one in the first place.
Perfect storm of government regulations likely are behind this property going to rot and ruin; rent regulated tenant and landmark designation.
One cannot be touched long as he/she continues to pay rent (and sometimes non-payment is enough to remove). The other imposes a bizarre and vast litany of rules, regulations and other interferences that drive up costs and complicate doing anything to a property with such a designation.
Anywhere else such a building located on prime real estate should have, could have and would have long ago been renovated and returned to habitable status.
Nothing to stop renovation while apartments are occupied.
The developer just doesn’t want to do it.
Why should they? The “rights” of one person (the holdout) should not be protected to the detriment of everyone else.
The developer can also offer to move rent regulated tenant out to another UWS apartment for the duration of the work.
Your comment is out of touch with how many options are open the developer.
Hope this never happens to you when it’s your “rights”.
Late as 1980’s things weren’t that bad going by tax pictures. However, since then the property for whatever reasons has been allowed to deteriorate.
You can read LPC report and proposals for work to be done here:
https://www.nyc.gov/assets/lpc/downloads/pdf/presentation-materials/20221011/231-233-West-74th-Street.pdf
Maybe apartments for migrant families.
Absolutely not…help legal residents of NYC, including the elderly, veterans and homeless. “Migrants” broke the law to come here and should not be accommodated. Poverty & crime in a person’s home country are not a valid reason for asylum. Accommodating everyone who comes here from all over the world (with no vetting) makes a mockery of our laws and not fair to those who immigrate the LEGAL way…it’s ridiculous.
No, the migrants did not break the law to come here.
It’s 100% legal to cross the southern border WITHOUT a visa and apply for asylum in the US. The problem is immigration courts are so overwhelmed that there are years-long waits for cases to be heard and nowhere to house migrants while they wait, so they are released into the general population to wait years for their court date.
It’s Congress’ job to change the law. Executive orders don’t last.
It is legal to cross the southern birder at a LEGAL POINT OF ENTRY & apply for asylum. It is illegal to cross the southern border willy-nilly, that makes soneone an illegal immigrant not an asylum seeking migrant. Whatever your personal feelings are about it, they are one’s feeling to have but this is the actual law.
This is the inevitable result of rent regulation. Buildings get run down and decrepit. Tenants who are paying a pittance in rent can’t be removed.
Meanwhile, the neighborhood gets stuck with a dangerous eyesore.
Pathetic.
Inevitable? I think you need to look that word up in a dictionary. There are nearly a million rent-stabilized units in NYC and the majority are in reasonably well-maintained buildings. The reason these building are newsworthy is exactly because they’re the exception.
Buildings are not being well maintained in NYC because of myriad rent regulations . Landlords of small buildings cannot recoup the costs of upgrading apartments/buildings. Therefore they simply don’t rent them out because they are losing money by doing so.
The reasons for the work delay in the previous WSR article are absurd (linked early in the article). This is rent regulation run amok.
The two buildings couldn’t be worked on because a single tenant living in the basement moved to Portugal and died, but getting a permit for the building was on hold because of a court case proving the tenant was gone. Not sure if there were squatters, because I’ve definitely seen signs of occupancy in the basement unit over the years.
So, instead of multiple new apartments we get zero because of rent regulation “protecting” a basement unit surrounded by a crumbling building.
Those buildings are falling down. The are cracked and leaning and must be razed immediately! Not everything can be saved. Sometimes you just have to move on. Those buildings are one big rumbling truck passing by away from collapse. Do you want your loved ones on the sidewalk when they come apart and end up in a dusty heap on the ground? If I was a personal injury lawyer I would just stand out front handing out business cards. Enough with the fake outrage. When they do collapse you can be outraged that someone was still being allowed to live in one of them and had the entire thing come down on top of him.
Simple solution.
1. Provide a temporary apartment at the same rent.
2. Provide the original apartment at the same rent.
3. The Court would most likely approve of that solution.
The other apartments at market rent will do very nicely for the landlord.
Seems the landlord lost a decade of profits.
You might think that it would be enough to offer a temporary apartment at the same rent (with coverage of moving costs), but it is not. Nor is it enough to provide the original apartment at the same rent. The tenant has an absolute right not to move and therefore to demand anything they want in exchange for moving. That gives the tenant the right to “hold up” the landlord for anything they want, and often the demands are well in excess of ten years of rent. The landlord can do nothing unless the tenant agrees. So a rational landlord does nothing.
I’m not opposed to rent control, but I do think there are issues around this – there should be a process for pushing the tenant to accept a reasonable offer, and for making sure the offer is fair and reasonable. This kind of situation is actually one of the things that is problematic about rent control – not the control on the rent itself, though landlords would certainly enjoy being able to pay more, but the way in which all the restrictions play out to make it difficult to maintain and improve the properties, even if landlords are willing to accept lower profits. We would all be better off if we could discuss this rationally, without either the “it’s all the fault of high property taxes! and liberal policies!” or the “it’s all because landlords are greedy! no one has a right to property rights in their property!” positions.
The photo says “little or no displacement.” What does that mean?
The real issue here — though certainly not to minimize the social and/or criminal issues that the scaffold “dive bar” bring to the neighborhood — is actually PUBLIC SAFETY. The twin buildings are tremendously structurally compromised and could collapse just like the Billingsley Terrace in the Bronx (Morris Heights) this past December, or the infamous parking garage collapse last year in the Financial District, where someone was killed. Nobody saw either one coming. But these buildings are notably suffering from deferred maintenance, which is obvious from the front facades, but nobody even knows what the condition of the buildings rear facades look like or the interiors. It might be as bad or worse.
One good development was the City Council just passing a bill last Thursday requiring “proactive inspections” for HIGH-RISK buildings, The “Billingsley Terrace Structural Integrity Act” requires the DOB to create a proactive inspection program to identify potentially dangerous buildings under predictive technology. The agency would analyze information including a building’s age, history of violations and 311 complaints. If a corrective action plan is issued, the DOB would carry out inspections and issue violations if landlords fail to comply.
These two buildings already have glaring warning signs and the DOB needs to take action ASAP, if the landlord refuses to. Unfortunately, the bill won’t take effect for 180 days after passing into law. Let’s hope the buildings don’t collapse before then.
Similarly, does anyone have an update on 131 West 70th? It’s such an eyesore. This is the only thing I can find: https://www.westsidespirit.com/news/city-powerless-to-seize-buildings-from-landlords-who-fail-to-pay-property-tax-bills-due-to-covid-era-law-CA2750217