Powerful Partnerships: Stuyvesant Owners and Jordan Cooper & Assoc.
333 East 14th Street
July 2, 2014 — Once a week, we'll go behind the scenes at a co-op or condo who has been with the same management company for decades. Want more management marriages? Check out Habitat's upcoming July/August print issue!
The building could be called the Phoenix, it's recreated itself so many times. "And we've been able to grow with them," property manager Paul Brensilber says of the board and the building, a 206-unit co-op at 333 East 14th Street that his company has managed since 1989. Jean Verrico has been on and off the board, Stuyvesant Owners, Inc., from the beginning; currently the vice president, she remembers how the co-op went through two management firms — one large, white-glove operation that proved inept, and a smaller shop that reportedly mismanaged money — before hooking up with Brensilber, the principal at Jordan Cooper & Associates.
"They helped us very much through the bankruptcy of the sponsor," which left 19 unsold units in the co-op's hands, Verrico says. "It was a tragedy then, because [the difference] between the rent and the maintenance was unbelievably bad. Half of the tenants had their rent frozen while they waited for repairs to be done."
From Depths of Debt
The property, adds Brensilber, has "gone on an incredible journey from the depths of debt to great success. They had a huge mortgage; they had millions in arrears; they closed out a sponsor." The co-op has survived an auction and a sponsor default, and wrestled through the challenges of taking over and reselling the sponsor's units. It has made capital improvements to every system in the building, and coped with changing demographics and a changing neighborhood.
"The whole Lower East Side has completely gentrified," Brensilber notes. The building, on the north side of dividing-line East 14th Street, sits on the edge of that once-hip neighborhood. "When we first got involved here, this was a wasteland," Bensilber continues. "It used to be nobody wanted to live below 34th Street. Now, nobody wants to live above 14th Street. The personality of the neighborhood and of the building [have] changed."
From Artists to Bankers
At the time Brensilber took over, the co-op was populated by solid middle-class types: nurses, mid-level managers and artists, among others. "Now you have entrepreneurs, lawyers, bankers and people who work for Fortune 500 companies," says the manager. The building itself has come a long way from the near-financial meltdown of the sponsor default. It is solvent, paying its mortgage down from $7 million to just under $2 million. Twenty years ago, Brensilber reports, units were selling for $29,000; they are now being resold for $800,000.
Verrico, retired from MetLife, says 25 years of co-op living have taught her that "you have to be alert; you have to be very financially careful where your money goes because we had so many problems at the beginning [with finances]. When the building converted, we didn't realize this was a multimillion-dollar business. We were caught up very short, very quickly. We learned."
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