MANHATTAN

The Churchill, a cond-op in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan, is widely considered one of New York City's finest buildings. Yet, until recently, the 30 staff members who open the doors, greet residents, help with packages and fix the leaks were lacking the polish of the building's exquisite lobby. "We have an excellent staff, but they needed to hear and see the basics," says Ronald Kaslow, president of the board. "We saw that even some of our better people [could use some advice]." 

The board then did something novel in the world of residential real estate: It sent them to "school" for "customer care."

The engineer's 10-year plan for 240 East 46th Street called for virtually a total makeover — renovating the lobby and replacing the roof, boiler, both elevators, water tank and all hallway carpeting and wallpaper. The cost would come to about $1.7 million. Now the big question: How would the condominium association pay for it?

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, a Chelsea condo board has won its battle with a downstairs gym, New York City investigates possible fraud by Lower East Side co-op board members and a Queens co-op says it's not soulless. The Comptroller says the City goes too easy on water-bill deadbeats, raising rates for the rest of us. An expert answers: Are condo boards as powerful as co-op boards? And Law & Order's Richard Belzer sells his co-op. Dun dun!

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, we already knew that Class 2 properties — co-ops, most condos and rental buildings — carry an unfairly higher tax burden than Class 1 properties such as single-family homes. But a recent Furman Center panel of academics and other experts — including a former Dept. of Finance commissioner and the deputy director of the New York City Independent Budget Office — quantified just how much: Class 2 is taxed at a rate almost five times higher than Class 1. Check out the first article below for details.

Among the other news this week: a co-op's attempt to evict a 78-year-old over minor hoteling and a condo board's ongoing suit against a bad-neighbor gym.

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents.

This week, a co-op shareholder in Queens complains about a neighbor's noise and gets heard in court, and a condo board in Chelsea sues a commercial gym over weighty noise issues. A newspaper says almost half the buildings that object to Cite Bikes don't get them, but you can't wait till you know they're coming. Bike 22. What's the latest luxury amenity? On Park and Fifth Avenues, it's private restaurants just for residents and guests. Plus, Leonardo DiCaprio buys a "wellness" apartment in Greenwich Village. Yeah, we didn't know what that was, either. Sounds nice, though.

Hank Haynes bought an apartment at 240 East 46th Street in 1990, four years after the building was converted from a rental to a condominium. It didn't take him long to realize he'd bought into a world of woe. Phone calls were not returned, problems were left to fester and rancor was the rule of the day.

"When I moved in, there was a tremendous amount of animosity between the sponsor and the people who had bought apartments," recalls Haynes, 67. "People were unhappy with the management company, which was owned by the sponsor." To further increase the discontent of the unit-owners: The property manager and the accountant also worked for the sponsor. Times were tough at the 100-unit building.

When breakdowns are a regular event and patchwork is no longer cost-efficient, it may be time to upgrade your elevators.

That was the thinking by the board of managers running the three high-rises that comprise Towers on the Park condominium association at 301 Cathedral Parkway in South Harlem and 300 Cathedral Parkway and 220 Manhattan Avenue in Manhattan Valley. “It was 25 years, and the elevators’ long work life had come to an end,” says Jane Reynolds, one of the nine residents who sit on the board.

Called the “Father of Soho,” Lithuanian-born American artist George Maciunas was a visionary. In the late 1960s, he stopped the city from running a highway through (and razing) the neighborhood south of Manhattan’s Houston Street by buying dilapidated loft buildings, converting them to co-ops, and then selling them as places where artists could live and work.

Now, one of those buildings — a loft co-op at 537 Broadway — has gotten a major facelift. And just in time, too.

By all accounts, the original Schwab House was a beauty to behold. An extravagant, 75-room mansion located on Riverside Drive between West 73rd and West 74th Streets, it was constructed for steel magnate Charles M. Schwab and has been called “the grandest and most ambitious house ever built on the island of Manhattan.” It combined details from three French Renaissance châteaux and took four years to build at a cost of $6 million. After Schwab’s death, however, the building fell on hard times. It was demolished and replaced in 1951 by a 17-story, 633-unit building that was also called the Schwab House. It went co-op in 1984.

Now, in a small way, some of its predecessor’s grandeur may be returning to the property. 

The limestone base, decorative fireplaces and beamed ceilings of 51 Fifth Avenue recall a bygone era of ease and elegance. It's little wonder, then, that the 1928 building was chosen to represent the home of the characters on the hit 1990s sitcom Mad About You. For those with longer memories for distinguished luminaries, former New York Governor Al Smith moved to 51 Fifth after losing the presidential election to Herbert Hoover, and lived there until the 1940s.

Last year, luminance of a different sort was on the mind of one building employee. At night, the superintendent, Zoltan Papp, would watch the sun go down from his office at the 89-unit Greenwich Village cooperative. Then the floodlights in the backyard would come on — and stay on all night, casting chiaroscuro shadows in the empty outdoor space until a timer switched them off at dawn.