MANHATTAN

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, if you look into the windows of people's homes, you're a peeping Tom ... unless you take photographs and put them up for sale. Then it's legal to spy on people because, hey, it's art! So ruled Judge Eileen Rakower after Tribeca  parents sued a voyeuristic creep — the New York Post's word — who shot pictures of their kids and sold them for up to $10,000 each (without paying or even getting a release form from the unwary models.) Homeowners beware.

We've also a lawsuit between condo-owners over what they say is their building's overpriced gym, a reminder that clothes make the doorman, and did you know that New York City apartments aren't considered "luxury" until they cost $3 million? Plus, for condo and co-ops boards, tips on noisy neighbors and meeting minutes.

At 1150 Park Avenue, an 89-unit Manhattan co-op, the board decided to convert to a dual-fuel system that could run on No. 2 oil or natural gas, says Daniel Storr, the board treasurer. Storr reports that his building and others in the neighborhood had a deal with Con Edison to service the area as long as they made necessary internal changes to accommodate gas service.

Dumpy. Once upon a time, that was the best word to describe the lobby at 1150 Park Avenue, a Carnegie Hill co-op in Manhattan that featured imitation 18th-century green fabric, English-style furniture in the lobby and wallpaper that imitated stone in the vestibule. "The lobby looked dilapidated, tired and old," recalls board president Lillian Brash.

As the housing market heats up, many co-op and condo boards are taking a fresh look at their lobbies and realizing that if shareholders and unit-owners want to get top dollar, the lobby needs to wow a potential buyer. But renovating a lobby is an expensive undertaking that can cost anywhere from tens to several hundred thousand dollars. Eager to keep costs down, many condo and co-op boards are looking for ways to refresh their lobbies without draining their capital reserves.

The 21-story cooperative at 201 East 66th Street, completed in 1961 and converted to co-op 20 years later, had three aging elevators that broke down frequently. Only two of them went all the way to the basement. "They were kind of limping along," says Jon Shechter, resident manager of the self-run building.

The board decided it was time to replace them with a newer, more efficient system. Yet the building also had to resurface and waterproof its 115-car parking garage and needed to upgrade its mechanical system. Together, the three projects would be expensive: Replacing the elevators alone would cost $750,000, and the new mechanical system could run to about $1.7 million. And the board did not want to levy another assessment on weary residents.

The past three years have been a dizzying time of capital improvements for the residents of 201 East 66th Street, a 21-story co-op at Third Avenue in the Lenox Hill neighborhood of Manhattan. The building finished a major façade improvement, replaced all its elevators, and will soon overhaul its mechanical system. Perhaps even more impressive: the board has not raised maintenance fees to pay for the work, although it did levy an assessment. The secret to the building's success lies in an unusual combination of cheap debt, a hands-on board and in-house management.

The co-op at 201 East 66th Street in Manhattan heats both its apartments and its domestic hot water with steam purchased from Con Edison. Steam heat is expensive, since it's generated at a Con Edison plant and then piped into the building through city pipes. Not only is the 52-year-old building saddled with an expensive and inefficient system, its equipment is aging and its chiller for air conditioning needs to be replaced. Could co-generation be the answer? And if so, how do you sell it to your board and residents?

Jeffrey Sosnick was first shown an apartment in his Central Park West building in 1982. The property was converting from a rental to the 227 Tenants Corporation, a cooperative. "The broker," he remembers, "said, 'Prewar — like pre-World War I!" As Sosnick — the co-op board president for 30 of the 31 years he's lived there — describes, "You feel like you're going into some European apartment house because of the design elements."

That's one reason the 20-unit building is part of the "Upper West Side-Central Park West" historic district designated by New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) — and one reason why a window-replacement project ballooned from a $400,000 budget to $571,000. On the one hand, that triggered the first special assessment in the co-op's history; on the other, it may have added compensatorily to its apartments' value.

The installation of new windows at the Central Park West co-op had ballooned in cost from $400,000 to $571,000, since the building is in a landmarked district and the windows had to be historically accurate. "The shareholders were mostly sanguine" about paying for the overage, says board president Jeffrey Sosnick, and everyone was happy with the results. "However," he adds, "as a result of all these additional costs it became necessary for the first time in our history to declare a shareholder assessment," for $70,000. "We had always prided ourselves on never spending more than we had."

Was the Landmarks Preservation Commission asking too much? Did the co-op want to cut corners that would harm the heritage of New York City? And where was the architect in all this? In Part 2 of our story about one co-op's dealings with the LPC, we offer an oral history describing the aftermath.

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, union workers say they're getting a Bronx cheer, Christine Quinn gets a nod in Queens, and a City Council candidate gets endorsed by a board in Brooklyn. Plus, a condominium board near the U.N. sues a law firm, and if you've ever wondered if you can legally photograph or shoot video of fellow residents breaking rules, find out now.