NYT: NYC's Stuyvesant Town, Peter Cooper Village up for sale

[DeepModem Mom]

110-Building Site in N.Y. Is Put Up for Sale
Metropolitan Life is putting Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village — a stretch of 110 apartment buildings along the East River — on the auction block.


(Fairchild Aerial Surveys, Inc.)
The sale of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, shown in 1947, would transform a complex built for World War II veterans.

Metropolitan Life is putting Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village — a stretch of 110 apartment buildings along the East River — on the auction block.

With a target price of nearly $5 billion, the sale would be the biggest deal for a single American property in modern times. It would undoubtedly transform what has been an affordable, leafy redoubt for generations of Manhattan’s middle class: teachers and nurses, firefighters and police officers, office clerks and construction workers....

***

Behind the scenes, the sale has already drawn interest from dozens of prospective buyers, including New York’s top real estate families, pension funds, international investment banks and investors from Dubai, according to real estate executives, even though the marketing book will not be released to bidders until next week.

The deal is likely to lead to profound changes for many of the 25,000 residents of the two complexes, where two-thirds of the apartments have regulated rents at roughly half the market rate. Any new owner paying the equivalent of $450,000 per apartment is going to be eager to create a money-making luxury enclave, real estate executives say.

The sale would only add to the seismic cultural shifts already under way in New York City and especially in Manhattan, where soaring housing costs have made the borough increasingly inhospitable to working-class and middle-class residents. It would be another challenge to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s effort to stabilize and expand the number of affordable apartments in the city....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/30/nyregion/30stuyvesant.html?adxnnl=1&ref=todayspaper&adxnnlx=1156946517-xGRlKrR8ZfImauC7JM13kg

[IndianaGreen]

1. This is an awful event for the city!

The article outlines a tragedy as New York becomes more and more an enclave for the rich and a difficult place for working people to live. The 110 buildings discussed in the article were built with taxpayer help and have been one of the most stable and pleasant areas in New York to which working people had access for quality housing. Now this is being withdrawn and it will effect the entire city, and particularly Manhattan, I'm sure.

According to the article: "The city acquired some of the land for the project through eminent domain and gave MetLife all the streets in the 18-block area. The city also froze property taxes for 25 years at the value of the land before redevelopment...." Once again it is shown how public/private "partnerships" turn to private profit at public expense.

This is an awful event for the city.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. You're right --

We knew a family who lived there, and it was such a nice place to live that they stayed long after they could have afforded to move into much fancier digs. And I know some kids now, with their first jobs out of college, who share a place there.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. sorry -- mispost

[Smarmie Doofus]

4. This is an odd and curious statement:

>>>>>It would be another challenge to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s effort to stabilize and expand the number of affordable apartments in the city....>>>>>>

And it's not fleshed out in the body of the article.

Just what has this "effort" consisted of? The only initiative that I know of is the small-scale effort to house new ,'bottom of the pay-scale' teachers. These folks are usually out-of-towners( shhh...: they'd be called 'scabs' in previous, let's say, "politically more sophisticated" generations ). Bloomberg's 'effort' has been to house them subsidized dormitories.

Yippee.

And after five yrs. of Bloomberg ( not to mention 13 years of GOP) rule, shouldn't we be seeing a resurgence
of middle-class housing in the city... as opposed to it's further diminution?