Leading the Way: Board President Robert Weiner, 360 E. 72nd St.

You’ve been on your board a long time. Is there one single thing that stands out as your proudest achievement?

Yes. In 2006, we began a re-bricking project that at the time was extremely expensive. It’d be a lot more expensive today. We did the entire building and switched from white brick to red brick. It was done over a three-year period at a cost of somewhere between $8 million and $10 million. We did not have an assessment or a maintenance increase. We were able to finance it in a way that spared our shareholders from having to pay a lot more than they had been paying. And once we rebricked the building, we were able to deal with other issues. We also were able to create amenity spaces, which we had not been able to do before.

What compelled you to undertake the reskinning project?

The brick work required under Local Law 11 (now called the Facade Inspection and Safety Program, or FISP) was just onerous. There were millions of dollars worth of repairs every cycle. We could never get warranties on any of the white- brick work, and often we were replacing bricks we had replaced in the previous five-year cycle. So we did a year-long study comparing warranty and cost over the long run with the cost of the reskinning project. Reskinning was the way to go.

Over the years, was there any one thing that jumped out at you as a big shock?

Well, COVID-19 was not an anticipated event, and it required a lot of thought as to how we would protect our shareholders and at the same time deal with ongoing issues that co-ops always face in terms of construction and deliveries. Having to manage that while we were trying to protect everyone — that came clearly as a surprise.

Looking ahead, what do you see looming as the biggest challenge for you and other co-op and condo boards in the city?

I think it somewhat depends on the size and complexity of each building, but by and large I would say it’s going to be the Climate Mobilization Act and FISP. Complying with existing and probably future requirements that will be imposed on co-ops will be the biggest challenge moving forward. And to make it even more complicated than that, one of the reasons we became self-managed is because the needs of individual buildings will change over time. We were fortunate to be able to move a lot of things in-house because of our size and the fact that we could pay for it and focus on things.

I think the regulatory climate is going to be the most important thing that will hit co-ops in the future. I’m hearing that there’s potential legislation about retrofitting gas stoves and making them electric. So there are a lot of issues that have already hit us or are likely to hit us over the next few years. A lot of them are environmentally related. We’re very much in favor of reducing our building’s carbon emissions, but it has to be done in a way that makes sense.

Robert Weiner

Board president (25 years total)

360 E. 72nd St.,

Upper East Side, Manhattan

Years of board service: 37 

Type: Co-op

Units: 430

Buildings: 1

Year built:  1963

Operating budget: Not available

Current assessment: Yes

Maintenance increase: 5% in 2021

Property management: Self-managed

Attorney: Ganfer & Shore and Meister Seelig & Fein 

Accountant: Newman, Newman & Kaufman