Curbed Knickerbocker Village

Curbed NY had the following article about a buyout for Knickerbocker Village on 7/20/07:
LES's Knickerbocker Village Set for Buyout Battle?
Knickerbocker Village, completed in 1934, is a limited dividend housing development subject to regulation by state housing law, and owned by Knickerbocker Village Inc, which in turn is controlled by Cherry Green Property Corp.... Knickerbocker Village's owners have been trying since at least 2002 to deregulate the apartments, which were developed under 1926 affordable-housing legislation that was a precursor to Mitchell-Lama. The property is now the only New York City rental subject to Article 4 under the state's Private Financing Housing Law.
The only way to remove the severe restrictions of an Article 4 rental is to convert the apartments into Article 4 co-ops and then deregulate them, which is why the real estate company was talking to the tenants association, [Knickerbocker Tenant Association's Bob] Wilson said.
[Cherry Green Property's Robert] Gershon said a change in ownership was not up to the tenants. "If you are listening to the tenants' propaganda then you are off the mark," he said. Department of Housing and Community Renewal spokesman Dan Irizarry said there appeared to be no precedent for a conversion from an Article 4 rental to an Article 4 co-op. It was not immediately known how the process, if it is allowed, would proceed.

I include here some of the comments from this post. It gives you an idea of who is living in Knickerbocker now and the real estate machinations involved in trying to find affordable housing now in NYC:

And so goes another group of entitlement whiners who'll shut their mouths and walk away for the right price.
By dash3456 at July 20, 2007 1:23 PM

I'm guessing if you offered dash a rent controlled apartment below market rate he'd be more than happy to be an entitlement whiner.
By Bing at July 20, 2007 1:31 PM

How would this be a windfall? At $250 million for 1590 apartments, that's less than $160,000 per apartment. Isn't the average apartment in Manhattan now worth over $1 million? Even if these are way "below average" in condition and location, they have to be worth more than that.
By Yiz at July 20, 2007 1:32 PM

I live two blocks away from Knickerbocker. These are low income folks. This is not like Stuy Town/Peter Cooper which is largely white, upper-middle-class folks with expensive cars and summer homes.
By snot at July 20, 2007 1:37 PM

Is there some data that actually supports that claim #4? It would be interesting to see if that was really true (and not just some urban legend).
By Bing at July 20, 2007 1:39 PM

this one is relatively attractive compared to other projects and subsidized housing...has street level retail, isn't set back at strange angles, preserves the grid...basically its NOT "tower in the park" crap

i can see this coverting sucsessfully to private free market ownership
By me at July 20, 2007 1:39 PM

Word on the street is that Apollo is the company looking to buy Knickerbocker.
By Anonymous at July 20, 2007 1:41 PM

My advice to tennants is to hold out for $2500 a square foot.
By TK at July 20, 2007 1:41 PM

Dash, fuck off. Quadruple your housing costs and see how happy you are especially when there's no place for you to go. Loser
By Anonymous at July 20, 2007 1:44 PM

Just imagine if these were market rate apartments... Things would be a lot better for everyone involved if they were.
By Bing at July 20, 2007 1:45 PM

gotta love the entitled leeches who enjoy top floor water view private terraces

oh, on your tax dime
By seven at July 20, 2007 1:54 PM

with that much money they can buy in any middle class nabe in brooklyn or queens or staten island in form of down payment.
By armchair_warrior at July 20, 2007 1:56 PM

I live in knickerbocker. there are income limitations for persons applying for apartments and every year, residents file tax records with the owners to ensure that they are within the income restrictions. If residents make more than the income limit, their rent is raised a certain percentage, the more their income goes up, the more rent they pay. Yes, there are people with balconies and river views. It is located Chinatown/Two Bridges, not the lower east side.
I just moved there two years ago and consider myself very lucky. The tenants association is very active, but mostly older Italian residents who have lived there for 40+years. They won't give up without a fight and have raised their own money for the ongoing litigation to keep the property under Article 4.
By nice at July 20, 2007 2:08 PM

see what one can build if one knows the clay minings of the area and how to bake them, in a time when the maSSES ARE BROKE and willing to work cheap for affordable housing and the government is laisse faire, why not do it again at 160 storys and priced at 160,000 a unit with new infrastructures that facilitate commerce trade and manufacturing and transits equatable to the next new long century..or let the big bussiness leeches bleed you out and away from a great city a group of diverse forbearers of ours,/yours built.or let then again the neo carpetbaggers call you the scummy leeches not deservant of what is yours
By anon at July 20, 2007 2:12 PM

dash..is a sour sport who never got a peice of the action..and has to pay for it coming and going.. obviously the new generation...yet speaking the truth and humorously..
By anon at July 20, 2007 2:22 PM

behind every rent regulated apt is a developer/owner who willingly entered a deal with the state to reap financial benefits.

no one shits on the big guy (developer-owner), only the little guy who's just the lowest & smallest benefactor / yet most visible person in the chain benefactors.

all sorts of wealthy people and corporations are subsidized in all sorts of ways, but god forbid a regular person benefit in a clearly understanable way the can be summed up in a soundbit.
By anon at July 20, 2007 2:22 PM

If you read the article on the Real Deal, the tenants want the property sold for a LOWER price in order to maintain the units as affordable housing. They want the property sold at a low price so that the new owner can get a decent return while maintaining below market rents.

Unfortunately, the tenants do not own the building and would have limited influence on whether the building is sold and on the price of the sale.

The new owner is counting on getting the building out from under some arcane rent program (Article 4) and bringing the building under rent stabilization.
By Joseph at July 20, 2007 2:22 PM

note once again...free market is not equal to fair market as in free trade and fair trade.
By anon at July 20, 2007 2:24 PM

I turned one down already...with my dog-eared copy of Atlas Shrugged in my hand.
By dash3456 at July 20, 2007 2:27 PM

#19 that isn't true (although it is true in this case). Most of the rent controlled stock in NY was initially regulated by the federal Emergency Price Control Act (EPCA) of 1942, which landlords had no say in.
By Anonymous at July 20, 2007 2:35 PM

These projects is what LES is truly about, the real LES, not the BULL SHIT BLUE CONDO, THOR and all that other crap that is going up. NEW YORK CITY is not NYC that it once was, BUNCH OF BITCHES UP IN THAT ISLAND, and they all have the MONSTER!
By SLK at July 20, 2007 2:39 PM

Good for you Dash, what would you do if your landlord told you he was quadrupling your market rent...bet you'd be whining like a little girl.

No I wouldn't, I'm Dash, I don't whine or complain. I'm smart and I know all. I'm a credit to mankind etc.
By Anonymous at July 20, 2007 2:45 PM

30.

And Douche, BTW I own so why would I be whining about something that doesn't effect me
By Anonymous at July 20, 2007 2:47 PM

dash3456, I have to apologize to you for my earlier comments. And I respect your position.
By Bing at July 20, 2007 2:48 PM

pardon my noble obligaese (duh} and biting the hand that feeds me but I think you will find the makings of a billion or more of these villages in the pollution zone created by the GENERAL ELECTRIC MINING AND MANUFACTURING COMPANY, (that they refused to clean up or maintain?) before they became the finance company and the rails to transport them, if the politicans did/did not destroy them in payment for kickbacks in dollars rather than goods and services, of which john Q public will pay for either way...........
By anon at July 20, 2007 2:53 PM

so lets call it ugly and common and too high priced at 25,000 a unit, But in a somewhat interesting location
By anon at July 20, 2007 2:55 PM

If you are so upset with RS, move to Rensaleer and vote for Joe Bruno. If that is not an option, contribute to his and other NYS Republicans campaign chest, who want to remove RS laws.

Put your money where your mouth is. I do. I contribute to the Dems who support RS and other affordable housing programs.

send the poor people to newark
By yeah at July 20, 2007 3:20 PM

FYI this property has been marketed (very quietly) for some time by a very prominent nyc broker...from what I have heard, the entire deal hinges on whether the court will overturn the previous ruling that stipulated that the building cannot leave article IV...so the buyer will either pay a much lower amount (if the court rules in favor of the tenants again) or a considerable sum of money (well over the $250 mentioned in the RD)...

ANARCHY!! ANARCHY!! RE is more emotional in NYC than abortion is in Alabama
By Anonymous at July 20, 2007 4:12 PM

And real estate in NYC is much more valuable than aortion in Alabama.
By Bing at July 20, 2007 4:13 PM

my in-laws moved in to knickerbocker about three years ago through the lottery they hold annually. It's a really nice complex, not fancy, lot's of older italian and chinese people as well as younger chinese families. They previously lived in a rat-infested tenement (yes they still exist) walk-up on Broome St. for the last thirty years so I am delighted that we could find a nice affordable place for them to live with an elevator (they are in their seventies) and still stay in Chinatown. The economic diversity of neighborhoods in close proximity makes Manhattan an interesting place, god knows there's enough condo developments going up, why can't they just leave this one alone?
By wishful thinking at July 20, 2007 4:44 PM

Wishful thinking - the reason they don't leave it alone is that it's unfair to me that I don't have regulated housing. I pay taxes too. Guys like me want the unfairness to stop - so we push to get everything (but need based housing) deregulated.

Subsidized housing should be for the needy and handled by the government on a case by case basis. Not a sweeping general regulation placed on most property owners. Even the RGB is finally agreeing with me. The current system doesn't work.

Subsidized rents should be for the poor and the disabled - the term "lottery" is proof enough that the current system doesn't work. Why should someone win the lottery by getting a regulated unit - it's unfair to all market rate tenants who didn't win the "lottery."

the funny thing about this deal is that the tenants would actually be better off if the project left article 4 and became Rent Stabilized (this is what the previous proposal offered).

The rent increases under Rent Stabilization have been less severe than those under Article 4. The only difference would be that if a tenant moves out, the unit could become fair market.

So essentially, the tenants are saying that they would rather pay more and live in a facility that is kept to minimum standards rather than have affluent neighbors and better kept building.

Although its understandable that the tenants are skeptical of any change, they should also look at things a little more pragmatically.

#54 I think you missed my point
my in-laws are poor - their only income now is social security - the lottery they "won" was basically how KV picks randomly from all the eligible low-income families that apply for apartments there. They still pay rent of course and it's not cheap for them, my wife and I help them out with that. But it's not $3,000 a month either.
Maybe there are some people cheating the "low-income" definition to live there but it doesn't look like it to me having been there 100+ times over the last three years.
Anyway, just my two cents.
By wishful thinking at July 20, 2007 5:12 PM

I was looking at 35 Monroe Street (currently under development) the other day a for a Sales Comparison and passed by Knickerbocker Village for the 1st time. I must say I am quite impressed with it. Certainly is far from any subway and it's Two Bridge, but feels very much a part of Chinatown, so the retail services are hard to come by for now, but it should be very popular with the help of a particular plan to revitalize the East River Waterfront in front of the development.

The fact that it's built in 1934 is also fascinating to me. It was built during the time of the First Houses (East 3rd Street bet. Avenue A and 1st Avenue) - back when public housing meant realy quality and community fostering architecture and layouts.

It worked with Knickerbocker for 75 years.
By Mother Theresa at July 20, 2007 6:33 PM

that may be the realistic answer to the boomers problem of having no retirement savings, sell their houses a enormouis profit and move into govt built affordable, called rent controled, rent stabilized units?///// not
By anon at July 22, 2007 3:08 PM

I agree with SLK all the way. Wtf is up with that BLUE condo crap and that thor hotel anyway. The projects running along the FDR are what now make the real LES. The old tenement buildings are now taken over by these huge companies.
By Lawrence at July 22, 2007 11:38 PM

Hey, I'm a midwest investor.. New York City is so cool! I'm getting really horny at the notion of a buyout and taking so many wrecking balls to those eyesores! Ultra premium mega lofts ohhh yesss!!!!! million dollar rents oh goddddd

The two markets with the biggest shortages of rental housing are San Fransisco and New York. These are biggest "rent control" cities in the nation.

Gee, what a coincidence, huh guys? It's all a coincidence. Government had no hand whatsoever in messing up the market so bad that there are shortages and resulting sky high prices. If you understand that "rent stabilization" generates the exact opposite of it's stated intent, you must hate poor people.
By likwidshoe at July 26, 2007 6:40 AM

I live in Knickerbocker Village. I'm fortunate, not a leech. I refuse to pay market rent. Period. Knickerbocker is not the first affordable building that I've lived in. Ths is not the first lottery I have applied to either. I have applied to almost a hundred in the last 10 years. This "lottery" people are referring to is also not a secret: it was published in the NY Times, Daily News and the New York Post. The demand for affordable housing is very high. My income fits into the limits. I have a problem with people who will pay market rent. As long as there is a demand for housing people will pay whatever the landlord wants. Eventually, this neighborhood ( with no Starbuck's) will be doomed................and everyone will be talking about how living parallel to the Manhattan Bridge( plus the non-stop roar of the trains) is so cool..............and expensive.
By Bor at November 1, 2007 9:36 PM