EAST VILLAGE

Douglas Steiner of Brooklyn’s Steiner Studios has secured a $130 million construction loan from Bank of America Merrill Lynch to erect an 82-unit luxury condo building in the once-crusty, ever-glitzier East Village.

Steiner, who lives in the East Village, told Commercial Observer  that luxury condos in the neighborhood are “not the oxymoron people might have thought it was 15 or 20 years ago. We’ve seen a huge pent-up demand for luxury services in the East Village, and only a few have been done.”

Steiner acquired the property at 438 E. 12th St. for $41 million in 2012 from Mary Help of Christians Church. The site, which housed a church, rectory and private school, was originally intended as a 158-unit rental building with 22 of the units set aside as affordable under the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s Inclusionary Housing Program.

Score another one for luxury over affordability.

Thousand-foot condo towers for billionaire owners may be the big New York real estate story right now, but there are, happily, little stories that continue to go against the grain.

Here’s one: a century-old synagogue has been spared the wrecking ball by an ingenious new condo development. The Adas Yisroel Anshe Mezritch congregation, which has been worshipping at 415 E. 6th St. in the East Village since 1910 but recently fell on financial difficulties, has agreed to let East River Partners create three condo units on the upper floors of the building. In exchange, the developer will pay the congregation a $600,000 up-front payment, an annual contribution of $20,000 a year for the next 198 years, and a $180,000 “fit-out allowance” to rebuild the ground-floor sanctuary and basement space, as reported by The New York Times.

Two of the three upper-floor condo units will have the synagogue’s original stained-glass windows, some of which include Stars of David. The units will sell for $2.95 million to $4.39 million.

Charles Knapp, the pro bono lawyer for the synagogue, said East River Partners “were the saviors of this shul.”

It's a nightmare scenario. An explosion and fire yesterday in the East Village leveled three buildings. Brickunderground.com has compiled some helpful information for New Yorkers who want to know how they can keep something like this from happening in their homes, if possible, and what to do if it does. First and foremost, it stressed Mayor Bill de Blasio's message from yesterday's press conference: if you smell gas, call 911 or Con Ed immediately. Brickunderground.com also reminds everyone to not overload their outlets, urges people to call 311 if their fire escapes look suspiciously rickety, and offers some information about apartment insurance. For more information on what happens when a building reports a gas leak, check out our coverage of last year's fatal explosion in East Harlem.

A day after an explosion and fire in the East Village leveled three buildings, we are learning that at least two people are missing, 20 people were injured (3 of them critically), and at least 80 have been displaced. DNAinfo reports that the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and other agencies are taking a closer look at contractor Dilber Kukic. The Bronx-based general contractor, who survived the explosion, performed work at 121 Second Avenue in the past year. He was also "already under the scrutiny of Manhattan prosecutors in an unrelated case. He was arrested last month for an alleged role in a widespread bribery scandal involving city inspectors." In an exclusive interview Thursday, Kukic told DNAinfo New York "that he and the son of the [building's] owner had just opened the basement door to check a gas odor when the room blew up, knocking them off their feet and sending debris raining down on them." Kukic added that he carried Michael Hrynenko, who was seriously injured, outside. Kukic suffered burns and was treated for smoke inhalation. His firm reportedly had finished plumbing and partition wall work at 121 Second Avenue six months ago, but Kukic added that his firm hadn't worked on the basement. When DNAinfo asked him in a second interview about his arrest February, Kukic reportedly hung up the phone. 

What does the developer of a high-end residential building do to sell an apartment in a condominium that is still being built? At the sales gallery for Greenwich Lane, a large residential complex being built in Greenwich Village where St. Vincent's Hospital once stood, they show potential buyers the Table, reports The New York Times, which describes it as "an 84-inch iPad on steroids." And it's been doing some heavy lifting. The Times reports that the Table helped to sell 100 apartments before the developer even had the chance to produce the first brochure. Just a tap and a swipe and voila! It's just one of the tools in a technological arsenal that developers across the city are leveraging to sell, sell, sell. As the old saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention, and this technology is pretty impressive. Welcome to the world of tomorrow. 

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, it's co-op shareholders vs. rental tenants at Chelsea's London Terrace over access to a pool. We've also news of a new, retroactive property-tax abatement; the Brighton Beach bathrooms get put on hold; and as Stevie Wonder sang, we're very superstitious, writing's on the wall — just not the wall of the 13th floor. Plus, for boards, co-op taxes are up, and Concourse Village workers are up in arms.

The single biggest complaint among co-op and condo residents? Probably the neighbors' noise. And at one condominium in Park Slope, Brooklyn, that noisy neighbor is nothing less than a DJ who produces music — in a studio in his apartment. After months of fruitless negotiation between neighbors, the condo board told the DJ that a music-production studio violates zoning laws and to either soundproof the place or wear headphones while playing music. The DJ refused to do either — and, incredibly, the condo board backed down! What recourse do the DJ's neighbors have? The New York Times' Ronda Kaysen examines options in her "Ask Real Estate" column. She also helps an East Williamsburg reader wanting to know about rent-to-own apartments, and discusses an East Village co-op board whose members are paid for their service.

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.

The five story co-op at 199 East 7th Street has been around since that part of the chi-chi East Village was still known as the Lower East Side. The name transition was just beginning when Mary Veronica Santiago-Monteverde and her late husband Hector Santiago moved there in 1965, more than a quarter-century before the rent-stabilized walkup was converted in the co-op boom of the eighties.

And three decades down from that, the fate of a 79-year-old widow will impact like a meteor on everything co-op boards think they know about their grandfathered, rent-stabilized tenants.

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, police erroneously force a doorman to let a delinquent owner into her condo apartment — while almost simultaneously, a judge is ruling that she pay up first. Add the fact this occurred at the condominium where Joan Rivers is board president only goes to show that no matter who you are, board members (as another comedian put it) get no respect, I tell ya. Except here, of course, and for boards we've news of a lawsuit against an insurance agent who procured inadequate flood coverage, efforts to keep an alleged hoarder away and that graffiti on the side of your building? It may be worth six figures.