LEGAL/FINANCIAL

Adrian Griffith, the current president of the Ryerson Towers board, joined after the earlier capital improvements were already under way. The 326-unit Mitchell-Lama co-op in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn set out on a $3.5 million project to replace the windows and the boiler, do façade work, resurface balconies, and redo the roof. The 2008 loan for that work was secured from the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), which did not require the board to hire a construction manager. This time the loan — a refinancing of the underlying mortgage plus money for anticipated capital improvements — came from the city's Housing Development Corporation (HDC).

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Anyone who lives in a co-op or condo understands all the time, money, and effort that goes into tackling capital improvement projects — never mind when it feels like everything in the building needs fixing at the same time. The unfortunate reality is, of course, that nothing lasts forever and nothing is exempt from wear and tear. So even if your building just spent a small fortune replacing the boiler, the windows, or the roof or revamping the lobby or the pool, it's important to keep an eye on things and stay ahead of potential problems with general checkups or simply by double-checking that no major problems have been overlooked. This is the type of situation where a walkthrough inspection can be advantageous to your building. 

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Won't somebody please think of the children? That's what one outraged parent wants the city to do after the co-op board at a posh building in Tudor City instructed her to bring her kid along to her interview. In the dog-eat-dog world that is New York City real estate you have potential buyers jumping through the hoops of the admissions process, which, for pet owners, may include taking your pet to the admissions interview so the board can give Fido or Fluffy a once-over. So if you have to let the board scrutinize your dog, is it okay for it to want to screen your kid, too? Joyce Kacin thinks that's just going too far. DNAinfo reports that, according to Kacin, "co-op board members at Woodstock Tower have instructed buyers to bring along their kids to interviews that determine whether they get apartments" — calling it a first for the city. According to the report, Kacin sent a complaint about it last year to state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Mayor Bill de Blasio, "claiming the co-op board made the unusual request to her — and that it was discriminatory." Kacin argued that asking parents to bring their children along to an admissions interview violates the city's Human Rights Law, "which makes it illegal to reject a purchaser for having a kid." It looks like things ended well for Kacin, who apparently buried the hatchet with the board president once it dropped its request to meet the kid after receiving a letter from Kacin explaining why she did not want to bring him along. While Kacin raises some valid issues, is it really that unusual for a board to want to meet a prospective buyer's child or children in person? DNAinfo says that most of the real estate experts it spoke to about Kacin's situation called the Woodstock board’s request to meet her child unique. One of them, however, said otherwise. Real estate law expert Adam Leitman Bailey told the publication that "the board was legally allowed to interview children, so long as the parents accompany the child and it doesn’t reject the potential buyer solely on the basis of having a kid" under New York law. Bailey points out that this is, after all, the city where five year olds "are interviewed to get into kindergarten."

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Last week, we took a look at the stage in the bidding process where boards get to meet vendors in person. In this fourth and final installment, we review making last-minute changes to bids, deciding who gets the project, and drawing up the contract. Sometimes you might have to request changes to all the vendors' bids after they've come in. "One contractor will say, 'You left [something] out of the request,'" says Warren Schreiber, president of Bay Terrace Cooperative Section 1 in Queens. "Sometimes it can be a contractor who is just looking to drum up more work, but in my experience, more often these are just people who are really knowledgeable, who have been doing it 20, 30, 40 years, and sometimes you'll reexamine the project and say, 'That's right, we did overlook this.'" When that happens, he says, "we ask [the vendors], 'Could you also give us a bid on this particular item?'"

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Installing air-conditioners is, or should be, serious business. For example, there are safety guidelines that must be followed to ensure nobody gets hurt. But is a building manager in a co-op on the Upper East Side taking things a little to the extreme? A shareholder who lives in the building writes to Ronda Kaysen in this week's Ask Real Estate column in The New York Times: "I have an air-conditioner in my living room window, which is one of two windows that look out onto the fire escape. The air-conditioner does not block access to the fire escape. However, my building manager says city rules prohibit an air-conditioner in a fire escape window. But the Bureau of Fire Prevention told me that I could have one in that window as long as it does not extend out onto the fire escape. Who is correct?" Who is correct indeed… Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer, and we've already had a few steamy days with plenty more in store for us. That means people will be dusting off those air-conditioners. Kaysen begins by reminding everyone that a fire escape "is not an unofficial balcony to be adorned with potted plants or blocked by an air-conditioner. A fire escape is what its name suggests: an escape route for people fleeing or fighting a fire. And it should be free of obstructions." That said, she adds that the arrangement the shareholder describes "might be permitted by city rules. In general, residents are prohibited from installing air-conditioners in fire escape windows. But they can install one in a fire escape window if the apartment has a second window onto the fire escape that is large enough to be used as an emergency exit." A small window will obviously not do, and, adds Kaysen, the air-conditioner should not extend more than five inches onto the fire escape balcony or obstruct the flow of foot traffic, according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Safety first, even if it means sweating a little.

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Early last week we told you about design-build — a time-saving and money-saving approach wherein a board hires an engineer to prepare job specifications for a given capital improvement project. But rather than send out requests for proposals to a number of contractors, who in turn, submit sealed bids for the job, in the design-build approach, an engineer functions as the contractor on the job. It worked for the Neptune, but is design-build for everybody? Here, we examine its downsides.

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Co-ops and condos with garages can take their security for granted. They hand out door openers to the residents and that's about it. But an unsecured garage can be the entry point for a burglar — not only to get into the garage and swipe someone's car, but also to gain access to the rest of the building and potentially do something worse. From the simple to the high-tech, there are a number of security measures boards can institute to prevent thieves from sneaking in the back door.

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The push to go solar is not a new one, nor is it necessarily a green one. Regardless of where you stand on the environmental agenda, making the move to harness solar power is an economic one. It's also an expensive one — at first. Depending on where you live (namely, how sunny it is), you can certainly save a lot of money in the long run. As with any investment, however, the upfront costs can leave you with a severe case of sticker shock, especially as rebates begin dwindling.

There's good news for those who are interested in sowing the seeds and reaping the beneficial rewards of solar power. Brooklyn Community Board 6 has launched Solarize Brooklyn CB6, a limited-time group-purchasing program led by Sustainable CUNY and the New York Solar Partnership with New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and the Mayor's Office of Sustainability. The program is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the New York Sun Initiative (NY-Sun) and is designed to make investing in solar power easier and more affordable for participating residents and businesses. 

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Earlier this year, Curbed put together a map of 18 rental-to-condo conversions that were in progress, just completed, or in the pipeline. A lot of those were on the Upper East Side, including the building formerly known as The Wellington. According to Curbed the condo will now be called 200 East 62nd Street — which is just as well since now it won't "be confused with Wellington Tower, 20 blocks north." There are no new renderings for us to feast our eyes on yet, but the developer, O'Connor Capital Partners, did release some juicy details. The building will consist of 115 condos, and units will include everything from one to five bedrooms. The ticket price? Units start at a cool $2.12 million. That may sound like a lot, but it's probably cheaper than Brooklyn.

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Board members who complain that meetings are too long are right to be annoyed. Although it's normal for a meeting about a major capital improvement or the annual budget to run long, there's no reason for them all to feel like endless marathons. If long meetings are causing qualified board members to quit, it can be a warning sign that something is very wrong. It can be a sign that someone on the board has become a problem or, more seriously, that the board can't make decisions or is working with professionals who fail to follow up. 

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