Tag Archives: patients first

Letters to the Editor, Sept. 11

Owning won’t end problems with students

To the Editor:

I fully support Larry Edwards’ demand for a conversion “that is affordable to all the tenants who live here today and to those who have been living here for 30 to 40 years or more.” (Town &  Village, Sept. 4).

However, assuming that owning an apartment will prevent transient college students from noisy partying at all hours is unrealistic in today’s real estate market. The neighboring universities will merely buy up blocks of apartment condos or co-ops as investments and turn them into student dorms with the same “howling in the courtyards,” and “waking up their neighbors at 3 or 4 in the morning.”

As for affordability, only stronger rent stabilization laws can keep apartments within the middle class, not “ownership.” Today’s “market rate” for two-bedroom Manhattan co-ops ranges from $750,000 to over a million. Families earning under $300,000 a year will be shut out.

This has nothing to do with building owners, the Tenants Association, or elected officials – all  are powerless against the so-called “free market.”

And for wealthier people who can afford to “own,” they might still find themselves living next door to howling students. They might as well join the party.

Elliot Markson, ST

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Letters to the editor, Sept. 4

Cartoon by Jim Meadows

Cartoon by Jim Meadows

Time to own is now, before students take over

To the Editor:

Here we go again. The big move-in by students, new grads and those just starting their first jobs.  The SUVs and U-Hauls are here with hopeful parents bringing the usual bric-a-brac items needed for city living. And it’s three or four to an apartment to split the rent that no one else can afford alone. Say hi to them and ask how long they might be living here, and they will say a year or two and then on to other pastures.

Unfortunately these people will be heard howling in the courtyards when they come home from their weekend drinking and bar hopping and then on to clip-clop with their high heels on the uncovered floors to wake up their neighbors at 3 or 4 in the morning. They use the laundry carts as moving aids to get their things from street to floor. But none of them will help create a viable community where neighbors get to know each other over the years. They are just here to fill their “dorm” time and for the landlord to fill vacancies when there are few others.

So what’s the solution?  It’s time for PCV/ST to be converted into co-ops or condos. Where people will own what they live. Where neighbors will be neighbors who care about each other and care about what they own. Demand that this be done.

Demand that CW do this. And at a reasonable conversion rate that is affordable to all the tenants who live here today and to those that have been living here for 30 or 40 years or more.  If CW won’t comply, demand that they do. Get someone bigger than them so they will. If the Tenants Association can’t do it, find someone else who can. If our elected officials can’t make it happen, vote for those who want it converted and who will make it happen. It’s time. We have all been waiting long enough and we don’t want to wait any longer.

See you when I own my apartment. And everyone is a proud owner.

Larry Edwards, ST

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Patients First center has closed

By Sabina Mollot

Patients First had reduced its hours before finally closing.

Patients First on First Avenue had reduced its hours before finally closing.

Patients First medical center, a family health practice that had done business in Peter Cooper Village for 21 years, closed its doors on August 21.

Patients of the clinic, which had previously been run by Dr. Glen Marin, were alerted in a written notice two weeks ago that if they couldn’t continue to see Marin at another practice he runs in Oakland Gardens, Queens, that they could contact an internist named Veronica Zaharia.

An employee reached at Zaharia’s office on Tuesday confirmed that Zaharia is now taking appointments for any interested former Patients First patients. Her practice is located at 237 East 20th Street.

In July, Town & Village reported that Patients First had reduced its hours to just two days a week and had reduced its staff.

At the time, an employee said the office at 350 First Avenue was in danger of losing its lease. CWCapital declined then to comment on lease negotiations and this week declined to comment about what future plans, if any, there were for the space.

However, Marin may have had other problems besides his lease. When asked this week for the reason for the closure, an employee at the Queens office would only say that the Manhattan location “had some issues.”

But there were also license issues.

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