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KENSINGTON HOUSE

 

John Devall, a managing agent and account executive at Orsid Realty, remembers it well: "There was a lot of discussion — a lot of discussion. Rand, the engineering firm, attended one meeting, and presented all the pros and cons, and we talked about the numbers. Then at that meeting, the board still wasn't decided. It was a tough decision."

The debate Devall remembers was at Kensington House, the 195-unit co-op at 200 West 20th Street. Built in 1937, the Art Deco building, now populated mostly by young professionals, had seen better days. The main problem was a continuous string of leaks over the years, which, admits Devall, baffled the manager and the seven-member board. "We had performed some inspections and we couldn't quite figure out where the problem was," Devall recalls. "We had been doing interior repairs the entire time."

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