200 E. 16TH STREET

When Ellen Kornfeld took over as manager of 200 East 16th Street about ten years ago, "It was a beautiful prewar building but it looked like a slummy kind of thing," she says, noting that the 80-year-old cooperative's facades, hallways, lobbies, boiler, roof and elevators needed serious repair.

What a difference a decade can make. "It's now a beautiful building," Kornfeld, vice president of The Lovett Group, observes. "I've never been in a building where everything has been done, year after year after year after year," she says. "Over ten years, each project dominated and took over our lives for a year or more."