Conceived in controversy and born in bitterness, Manhattan\u2019s 789 West End Avenue has turned into a healthy and prosperous success story.<\/p>\n
By Bill Morris<\/b><\/p>\n
It was conceived in controversy. Born in bitterness. And raised on a diet of conflict and acrimony. <\/p>\n
Not exactly a prescription for a long and healthy life. Yet in spite of its troubled youth, it has managed to turn itself into a healthy, attractive, and very prosperous adult.
\n\u201cIt\u201d is the co-op at 789 West End Avenue, 13 stories of well-groomed brick at the corner of 99th Street. Entering its gleaming lobby today, walking down its wide hallways, stepping into one of its 63 high-ceilinged apartments, it\u2019s hard to imagine that the neighborhood was once marginal, that apartments went begging, and that none of the residents wanted to pony up even $30,000 in 1981 to join the co-op under a non-eviction plan. <\/p>\n
Today, apartments in the building sell for as much as $2 million. But that staggering bit of math is only part of what makes the story of 789 West End Avenue a classic New York tale. The real story, as always, is the people. <\/p>\n
The main player in the drama was the building\u2019s owner, the late Sidney Hirth of P.J. Hirth Real Estate. Some tenants who resisted the co-op demonized him; others praised him for being hard-nosed but fair. <\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, my interest is not always the same as the tenants\u2019,\u201d Hirth said in 1983, when bitterness over the conversion was at a rolling boil. \u201cMine is to make money.\u201d <\/p>\n
Hirth\u2019s sworn enemy was Joe Simonetti, president of the tenants\u2019 association, a social worker who laughingly described himself as \u201cyour basic Upper West Side lefty intellectual.\u201d At the time, Simonetti decried the city\u2019s budding co-op movement as \u201ca disaster for cultural integration,\u201d and he fretted that the Upper West Side was being \u201chomogenized.\u201d <\/p>\n
Subsequent developments in New York real estate have made him a visionary to some, a naive fool to others. <\/p>\n
\u201cI happen to think I was pretty prescient,\u201d says Simonetti, now 53 and still a social worker. \u201cThe co-op movement has made Republicans out of a lot of people, more conservative, more homogeneous. Manhattan doesn\u2019t have a whole lot of room for the middle class today. It\u2019s either rich or poor.\u201d <\/p>\n
Elizabeth Borden, who moved into the building two years before the conversion and is now a shareholder, vividly remembers the acrimony that wafted down the hallways in those early days. <\/p>\n
\u201cAt that time there were a lot of old-time West Side, rent-controlled, rent-stabilized tenants,\u201d says Borden, 66, a real estate broker who served on the co-op\u2019s board for a dozen years. \u201cThey thought they shouldn\u2019t own real estate.\u201d <\/p>\n
Sometimes the acrimony got personal. One shareholder who bought in from outside the building in the co-op\u2019s early days said that simply riding in the elevator with resentful tenants could be an unpleasant experience. \u201cThey look at me like I\u2019m stealing their apartment,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
In fact, the tenants\u2019 initial aversion to buying into the co-op was unprecedented, says David Goldstick, the attorney who handled the conversion for the owner. Of the more than 800 conversions he handled in the course of his career, Goldstick says 789 West End was the only one in Manhattan where not a single renter had an interest in negotiating a deal at the time of the initial offering. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat was unusual,\u201d says Goldstick, now 75 and retired. \u201cBut you have to remember the times. That area was so undesirable [in the early 1980s] that Hirth had trouble renting apartments, let alone selling them. It was a few years after President [Gerald] Ford told the city to drop dead. But more importantly, most people didn\u2019t have the money \u2013 and interest rates were 18 percent. The only way you could induce people to buy was to give them an incredible deal.\u201d <\/p>\n
Hirth initially offered apartments at about $8,000 per room, according to long-time residents. Goldstick urged him to give insiders a healthy discount, but Hirth resisted. Goldstick says insiders showed no interest in negotiating; insiders say Hirth was unreasonable and inflexible. Talks broke down before they got started, and the majority of residents signed a no-buy pledge. Simonetti, of the tenants\u2019 association, blames the breakdown on the posturing of the association\u2019s high-powered lawyer, David Clurman. <\/p>\n
Life went on. By the early 1990s, shareholders slightly outnumbered renters, but the mass turnover Hirth had anticipated showed no signs of materializing. With several costly capital improvements looming, dozens of renters decided the time was ripe to re-approach Hirth. <\/p>\n
Borden, the former board member, was one of them. So was Natalie Lukas, a teacher at New York University who is the current board president. They were able to buy into the co-op at prices roughly in line with what Goldstick had urged Hirth to offer a dozen years earlier. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s ever been a building on the West Side where, 12 years after a co-op started, insiders could purchase their apartments for 50 percent off the prospectus price,\u201d Borden says. \u201cBut timing is everything.\u201d <\/p>\n
This was the tipping point. When Borden and Lukas and company bought into the co-op in 1993, just over half of the units were shareholder-owned; today the figure is 95 percent. <\/p>\n
In an interesting footnote, even Simonetti decided that since he couldn\u2019t beat them, he might as well join them. He bought into the co-op in 1986 after negotiating directly with Hirth. \u201cI realized this was the way the city was going,\u201d Simonetti says. \u201cYou\u2019re not going to get that genie back in the bottle, so you might as well go along.\u201d <\/p>\n
He sold his shares in 1999 and now lives in Westchester County but still works in the city.
\nThat city is a different place than it was a quarter of a century ago, of course, and the current complexion of 789 West End Avenue reflects the changed times. The shareholders today are an upscale melange of executives, venture capitalists, lawyers, and retirees. <\/p>\n
Indeed, the building\u2019s glossy aura makes it easy to forget that there are still a handful of renters living there. Monica Berent, 68, a retired teacher, moved into the building in 1976 and now pays $830 a month for her rent-stabilized, two-bedroom apartment. <\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes people in the building snub me,\u201d she says with a shrug. \u201cBig deal. So you own your own apartment. So does everybody else in New York.\u201d <\/p>\n
But the open bitterness of the early days is now a dim memory to most residents \u2013 if they remember it at all. One shareholder speaks glowingly of the building\u2019s \u201ccommunity spirit.\u201d Another praises the \u201cterrific staff.\u201d A third describes the residents as \u201ca very cohesive group.\u201d And there\u2019s universal agreement that Hoffman Management, which took over managing the building in 1997, is running a tight, efficient ship. <\/span><\/p>\n The budget is balanced. A refinancing of the mortgage last year boosted the reserve fund to over $1 million. Yearly increases in maintenance costs are small, ranging from 3 to 5 percent. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve invested a huge amount of money \u2013 close to $2 million \u2013 on assorted capital improvements,\u201d says long-time board member Roger Mesznik, a professor who was one of the first insiders to buy into the co-op in the 1980s. \u201cFor us, it\u2019s now a very comfortable building.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Conceived in controversy and born in bitterness, Manhattan\u2019s 789 West End Avenue has turned into a healthy and prosperous success story. By Bill Morris It was conceived in controversy. Born in bitterness. And raised on a diet of conflict and acrimony. Not exactly a prescription for a long and healthy life. Yet in spite of<\/p>\n