LEGAL/FINANCIAL

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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During January, Habitat Weekly will advise boards on how to deal with a quartet of natural-born killers. This week: carbon monoxide.

Carbon monoxide can kill. It's a nasty, insidious killer, too, sending you into slumberland before it takes you down.

Carbon monoxide, or CO, is produced through "incomplete combustion," which occurs when a flame doesn't have room to breathe. Odorless, colorless, and tasteless, CO exists in devices that burn fossil fuels, such as oil burners, furnaces, water heaters, fireplaces, and parked cars. If you develop headaches or dizziness, or become tired, and nauseous you may have CO poisoning. The best remedy is to open all windows, get out of the house, and call the fire department.

But the best way to deal with it is to stop it in its tracks.

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Their long nightmare is finally over. Years of litigation between a developer and the residents of three luxury condo developments in the Financial District and Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood came to an end last week.

New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced that the developer, Africa Israel Investments, Ltd., must resolve numerous construction defects at the three buildings, surrender control to the condo boards, and pay a $2 million penalty to the city for improperly taking 421-g tax breaks, as reported by The New York Times. The agreement also calls for Africa Israel, owned by Lev Leviev, who broke his partnership with Shaya Boymelgreen, to put an undisclosed sum into escrow for bilked buyers.

Among the defects at the buildings – located at 15 Broad Street (across from the New York Stock Exchange) and 20 Pine Street in Manhattan, and 85 Adams Street in Brooklyn – were brown tap water, leaky walls, buckling floors and incomplete fire-proofing.

“Today’s settlement is a warning to property developers in New York state,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “Those who collect the enormous profits that flow from offering real estate securities in New York will not be allowed to shirk their obligations to purchasers and the public.”

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It’s one of the worst feelings a co-op or condo board member will ever experience: You have good reason to believe that a fellow board member is taking kickbacks from a vendor or contractor. Before you start pointing fingers – or going to the authorities, or filing a lawsuit – keep in mind that there are right ways and wrong ways to tackle this devilishly ticklish situation.

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Other than tattoos, nothing is forever. The long list of perishables includes last year’s fashions, Downton Abbey and your co-op’s bylaws.

Experienced real estate lawyers advise boards to update their bylaws at least once every 10 years – in order to keep abreast of the ever-evolving Business Corporation Law, which governs co-ops. Periodic bylaw updates will improve the quality of life in your building and, in the bargain, protect you from lawsuits. Best of all, it’s not terribly time-consuming or expensive.

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In a move that goes sharply against the grain of recent history, the shareholders in a Brooklyn Heights co-op have voted against allowing their board to pursue the sale of their commercial property to a condo developer who was offering $130 million.

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