River Arts Apartments Co-Op President Steps Down, Receives Standing Ovation

When Ed Lloyd stepped down last year as board president at River Arts Apartments, in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood, he got a standing ovation from shareholders. Having helmed the board at the three-building, seven-story, 244-unit co-op complex on Riverside Drive West for 34 years, the praise was well earned. The Boston native was a former Financial Executive at three national organizations, retiring in 2020 as COO and CFO of UNICEF USA. He spoke with Habitat about how his work experience served him well on the River Arts Board.

In at the start. My wife Carole and I lived right down the street from River Arts and moved here in 1975. We were one of two or three African-American families in the building. It was rent stabilized and rent controlled before converting to a co-op in 1983. I became interested in assessing and understanding the needs of the building before deciding whether I could add value to the co-op’s growth by running for the board. 

One of the major challenges River Arts had faced was a courtyard that had caved into the garage below in 1983. Luckily no one was killed, but the building had to be evacuated. The cave-in required repairs and renovations, including reinforcing steel supports and concrete. That complex underground work later led to our decision to expand our indoor garage from around 100 spaces to 165 by knocking through a wall. Aside from being an amenity for our residents, it brought in additional income to the building. 

Compliance challenges. Recently, all of our issues revolve around numerous local laws added by the city that have become more intense and onerous. We had to do facade work — brick repair, pointing, and lintels — a major job since our buildings take up two whole city blocks. Right now we're doing FISP work on the buildings’ four exposures that is costing us millions. On top of that, the scaffolding is extremely expensive, costing thousands of dollars monthly and is a blight on the neighborhood. Hopefully, we’ll finish early this year and it can come down. In addition, our preliminary garage specs to comply with Local Law 126 show that it’s going to be extremely costly to meet the city’s requirements. We’re financing that with a two-year assessment. Future local law requirements will be a major challenge, and all co-ops will have to studiously plan to meet these financial pressures.

Our budget is in the $4 million range, and our financial health is good, thanks to a combination of maintenance, assessments and financing over the years. Smart investments with our reserves have enabled us to undertake large projects.

Energy efficiency is of paramount importance. We've taken advantage of a Con Edison program for buildings like ours with flat roofs where they blow in fiber insulation in the space between the roof and the top apartments to keep heat in during winter and keep the heat out in summer. We also installed rooftop solar panels many years ago, converted to LED lighting, and to clean gas heat. Our boilers are in good shape, but antiquated and we know at some point will have to be replaced. 

In-house management. The manner in which our building has been managed has been an important part of our success. We spent a lot of time on whether we wanted to be self-managed or managed by some outside company.  When I started as president, we were self-managed by a resident. Then we experimented with outside management: this lasted about a year because it was clearly ineffective and not meeting our needs.  That’s when we decided to go back to an in-house structure. The building required an office on site where people could approach and say, “Here’s my problem.” Jack Fogle has been our building manager for the past 28 years, and his leadership has been invaluable.  Our sponsor, Martin Levine and his management partner Steve Gold, also have an office in the building which has produced an incredible working relationship.

The building is called River Arts because from the beginning many artists were in residence. This is still the case and it creates a very positive vibe. On any given day, you can walk through our halls and hear singing or an instrument being played. We have a diverse mix of shareholders and renters: educators, those involved in the music industry and doctors. In fact, flu shots are given every year by a doctor in the building.

Group effort. As for my standing ovation, I was surprised, because I didn’t see my role as running the co-op, but overseeing a good nucleus of committed board members. You want shareholders and residents to be knowledgably engaged in their community. To that end, we have strategically created appropriate committees to deep dive areas of their interest, such as the appearance of our building, a finance and outdoor glen committee.

This June, Carole and I will celebrate 50 years of marriage. We moved into this building right after our honeymoon! Our appreciation for River Arts has only grown over those 50  years. Our child was born here,  and it remains such a family friendly building  that many of the children we watched grow into adulthood have remained, purchased units of their own and are raising a third generation here! Now that’s a testament to the strength of a very special community!

If I had to do it all over again, I would gladly do so.