LEGAL/FINANCIAL

Many New York City hospitals are on life support. Every time one gives up the ghost, it seems a developer is ready to convert the building – or the land – into condominium apartments. The former St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village – now known as Greenwich Lane – is one of the most visible examples. The penthouse there was priced at a heart-stopping $29 million.

The latest entry in this trend is Gramercy Square, a $350 million condo complex that will occupy the site of the Cabrini Medical Center, which closed in 2008, the New York Times reports. ( www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/realestate/from-hospital-to-condo.html?_r=0 )

A troika of real estate interests – Clipper Equity, Chetrit Group and the Read Property Group – are creating 223 condo apartments on the 1.4-acre site by demolishing some of the original buildings, modifying others and adding one new structure. The property extends from East 19th to East 20th Street, between Second and Third Avenues in Manhattan.

The development will include nearly half an acre of landscaping, designed by MPFP. The project’s architect is Woods Bagot. Indoor amenities will include a pool, a golf simulator and a wine room. A bit of country club living right here in the city.

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At a 30-unit condo in Queens, leaks had been a fact of life since the first unit-owners moved in a dozen years ago. After repeatedly patching the sources of leaks in the roof and exterior walls – as well as repairing water damage in the affected apartments – an exasperated member of the board said, “We can’t keep throwing money at this. Let’s get an engineering report.”

Be careful what you wish for.

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Ever get the feeling your property taxes are too high? That something just doesn't seem quite right about them? Follow that instinct because sometimes it pays to challenge a bill from the city’s Department of Finance (DOF).

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When President Dwight Eisenhower proposed the interstate highway system back in the 1950s, he crowed that it would require enough concrete to make “six sidewalks to the moon.” Today, the unsightly, unloved New York City fixture known as the sidewalk shed is giving Ike’s interstates a run for their money.

There are now 9,000 sidewalk sheds in the city, according to the Department of Buildings, up from just 3,500 in 2003. That’s 1 million linear feet – or enough to encircle the island of Manhattan six times, as reported by Crain’s. Eat your heart out, Ike. Some sheds, which are supposed to be temporary, remain standing for a dozen years or more.

The proliferation of sidewalks sheds and scaffolding can be attributed to two factors: the current building boom; and a 1980 city law, passed in the wake of a lethal masonry collapse on upper Broadway, that requires regular facade inspections and repairs to all buildings over six stories tall. Since then the city council has added new provisions, giving rise to the $1 billion sidewalks shed, scaffolding and facade-repair industry.

Sidewalk sheds may be unloved – they take up sidewalk space, cut off light and hurt businesses – but the need for them was highlighted in December, when a large section of bricks came loose from an Upper East Side high rise and crashed to the street. No one was injured, and the sidewalk shed may have been a factor.

“New York is insatiable right now when it comes to sheds,” says George Mihalko, a shed equipment supplier in New Jersey. “I’ve never seen anything like it in 30 years.”

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Every co-op seems to have at least one: the disruptive resident who never stops bombarding the board with complaints. Unfortunately, co-op boards can’t dismiss the impossible-to-placate shareholder as a whiner and a mere nuisance. Boards need to determine if all complaints are legitimate, and then act appropriately. It sometimes requires the skills of a psychiatrist, a diplomat and a cop.

But it can be done.

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Your co-op needs a cash infusion – either to replenish an anemic reserve fund, replace the roof, or do major facade work. What’s the best way to raise the money?

Co-op boards that decide to refinance their underlying mortgage usually run into an unpleasant fact of life: a prepayment penalty that could make a re-fi unwise, or even impossible. If so, it might be time to go to Plans B, C, D, even E.

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Bank buildings are doing it. Synagogues are doing it. Now a former farm for the aged poor is doing it too: converting to condos.

Last week the New York City Council gave its blessing to a plan to turn a derelict 96-acre campus on Staten Island, known as the Farm Colony, into 344 condo apartments for residents over the age of 55. Thirty-four of the apartments will be set aside as affordable – that is, for families with incomes under about $150,000.

The council approved a plan by the city’s Economic Development Corp. to sell 45 acres to Raymond Masucci, a Staten Island developer, for $1 million. At a cost of $91 million, Masucci will rehabilitate five buildings, tear down five others, and preserve a 112-year-old dormitory as a “stable ruin.” He will also build three six-story apartment buildings and 14 townhouses on a property that was once a working farm for the aged poor.

The Farm Colony closed in 1975 and fell into decline. The new development, inside Staten Island’s first historic district, will be called Landmark Colony.

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In our wired age, access to an apartment building’s cable box – with its links to telephone, television and Internet service – is a crucial matter. If your building’s box is inside an apartment, your board is in a sticky position of needing to ensure that repair crews have access to the box for the benefit of all residents, while also protecting the resident of the apartment against damage, vandalism, theft or any other mishap that could lead to hard feelings and ugly lawsuits.

It’s a high-wire act. Make sure you don’t slip and fall.

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An art deco gem in the Financial District of lower Manhattan has become the latest to join a growing trend: former bank buildings that are being converted into luxury condominiums.

The conversion plan for One Wall Street, a 50-story icon designed in 1931 by Ralph Walker as headquarters for the Irving Trust Co., has won the approval of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), YIMBY reports. Macklowe Properties, which bought the building from Bank of New York Mellon in 2014 for $585 million, plans to turn the landmarked structure and adjacent annex into 524 apartments, with two commercial spaces on the ground floor, one of which will occupy the famed Red Room. The plans, prepared by the architects Robert A.M. Stern and SLCE Architects, do not specify what will become of the four-story observation room on top of the building.

Stern told the LPC he is excited to bring the building “back to glory.”

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Assessments have been the traditional vehicle for condominiums to raise money for repairs and capital improvements. However, assessments have a couple of drawbacks. First, they usually take a fair amount of time to collect since most unit-owners don’t have a lot of idle cash available. Second, most assessments place the entire financial burden of capital improvements on current unit-owners instead of spreading it over the useful lives of those improvements.

Borrowing tends to be a much more equitable way to fund such expenditures because the interest cost and principal repayment occurs over an extended period of time, more in line with the likely lifespan of the building components being repaired or replaced.

Maybe a combination of the two would be best for your building.

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