Daily Archives: September 7, 2016

Four new MCIs pending for ST/PCV

Blackstone representative Nadeem Meghji, pictured at a meeting last October, tells ST-PCV tenants the owner will not use MCIs as a tool to inflate rents. (Photo by Sabina Mollot)

Blackstone representative Nadeem Meghji, pictured at a meeting last October, tells ST-PCV tenants the owner will not use MCIs as a tool to inflate rents. (Photo by Sabina Mollot)

Requests are for facade waterproofing, water heaters, video intercoms and ADA ramps, but Blackstone says it will walk away from $10M in potential fees

By Sabina Mollot

Blackstone’s management company for Stuyvesant Town, StuyTown Property Services, announced on Wednesday that it will be filing for four MCIs for work done in the complex starting two years ago.

The MCI (major capital improvement) projects are for: building façade waterproofing (which the owner said was mandated by law), upgrading the hot water heaters, video intercoms for Peter Cooper Village buildings and the installation of ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant ramps.

If approved, the cost that would be passed onto residents in the form of a permanent rent increase that a spokesperson for SPS expects will be on average around $8 per month per apartment. While applications don’t guarantee an MCI will be approved, based on community history, the state housing agency, the Division of Housing and Community Renewal, has never met an MCI it didn’t like.

MCIs will be filed for 54 building addresses, a few with multiple filings, according to SPS spokesperson Paula Chirhart. The intercom MCI will be for all Peter Cooper buildings, while the ADA ramp one will be for just two buildings, 400-410 East 20th Street and 430-440 East 20th Street, with a shared ramp at each building. As for the intercoms, the new system will have its own wiring instead of using tenants’ land lines. The water heaters are being replaced, because, according to Chirhart, at this point, the cost of repairing them would be higher than buying new. The waterproofing work is the result of inspections which take place every five years, with work being done if the inspection shows it’s necessary. That work is being done at 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 Peter Cooper Road, 511 and 531 East 20th Street and 510 and 530 East 23rd Street.

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Opinion: The late great Andrew Cuomo

By former Assemblyman Steven Sanders

After decades of late state budgets and years of sleepy gubernatorial ineptitude, including one governor who was forced to resign following a prostitution scandal, Andrew Cuomo came roaring into the Albany State House vowing to change things. Almost six years later one must wonder what has happened to that guy?

His first term was punctuated with bold and aggressive action. It was “I won’t take no for an answer” style of leadership. Cuomo negotiated six consecutive on time budgets saving local governments millions of dollars. He reigned in Medicaid overspending costs which was threatening to bankrupt the state treasury with its yearly double digit increases. He limited property tax hikes, saving homeowners a bundle. He pushed a recalcitrant Republican State Senate to pass a marriage equality law legalizing gay unions and new restrictions on the sale of guns and ammunition just days following the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

But faced with the greatest crisis of public confidence in state government history, Governor Cuomo seems to have lost his nerve and his edge. The last number of years have seen a parade of public officials, mostly from the state legislature, indicted or convicted of felonies and abuse of their official positions. It culminated with the conviction and ouster of the leaders of the State Assembly and the State Senate, one a Democrat and one a Republican. Each now faces years in prison.

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