BAYSIDE

It all started with a noise complaint. And then another. And then another.

"We'd had issues in the past with people putting treadmills and other workout equipment in their own apartments," says Fred Warshaw, co-op board treasurer of the Bay Country Owners apartment complex at 23-25 and 23-35 Bell Boulevard in Bayside, Queens. "So this sometimes caused problems with the people below." Similar complaints were heard at its sister cooperative, Bell Owners, which has two buildings at 23-45 and 23-55 Bell Boulevard. 

One of the simplest ways for a board to take the pulse of its building is to send out a survey.

That's what boards of Bay Country Owners and Bell Owners, which run the co-op apartment complex at 23-25 and 23-35 Bell Boulevard in Bayside, Queens, did when they were deciding on whether to add a gym. Shareholders were surveyed about their interest in a new exercise facility, and whether they would use it. "We got the results and were pleased to see 80 people said they would join," says Fred Warshaw, board treasurer of the Bay Country Owners. 

Ronald Kaye moved into the sprawling, campus-like Windsor Oaks apartment complex in Bayside, Queens, in the 1960s. Back then, the garden apartments in 53 two-story brick buildings sprinkled across 40 acres were rentals. Windsor Oaks went co-op in the 1980s, and Kaye, an accountant, eventually became a shareholder, then a board member. Today, he's board president. When he joined the board in the 1990s, it had already established minimum sale prices as a way of protecting the value of all shares, a controversial practice known as "floor pricing." But as the property aged, disparities arose. How did this board find something of a fair solution?

In 2008, a worker at the Americana co-op in Queens discovered oil in a basement tunnel. Heating oil was leaking from the property's 25,000-gallon underground storage tank, seeping into the soil and threatening to spill into neighboring Little Neck Bay. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) began digging trenches into the courtyard and tearing up the concrete parking lot to see how far the oil had spread.

Cleaning up the mess cost the co-op a whopping $400,000 —  but if the oil had contaminated the bay, the fines would have been crippling. The crisis prompted the board to move away from heating oil and replace the two lumbering, outmoded and inefficient boilers installed when the co-op — a 16-story tower and a block of townhouses — was built in 1968.

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. New York City Controller John Liu wants to hear from co-ops, condos and others who suspect the Department of Finance overvalued your building for tax purposes. Plus, a Queens co-op is putting up signs to try to prevent people parking legally on a public street, the Attorney General gives developers an extra six months to digitize their offering plans, and a co-op board goes after a widow and widower. And speaking of boards, a lawyer tells how to collect arrears by cutting off amenities.

April 18, 2012 — Hurricane Irene brought a day of reckoning to The Seville, a 270-unit co-op complex in Bayside, Queens, last August. With leaks in six of 18 semi-attached townhouses, it was clear their 40-year-old roofs were living on borrowed time. “The question was whether you continue to put bandages on things, or looked to do something that is more life-sustaining,” says Felicia Chapman Jenkins, board secretary and a townhouse resident herself.

But the estimate for replacing all nine roofs at once before winter set in was nearly a quarter of a million dollars. Was there another way? Read more >>

... more on tax-fairness legislation introduced in Albany; whether no-smoking buildings affects apartment prices; a lobby renovation done right; and The Sheffield pools its resources. And for co-op and condo boards, an expert answer on who's responsible with bathtubs leak.