Co-op Shareholders Move on After FISP Project, Overlooking Benefits and Repairs

It enshrouded us for over a year. Cost us 10 months of assessments. Punched holes in our walls and put nicks in our windows. Wounded one curbside tree and killed another. Was the main topic of shareholder conversation and complaints. Then one day the Facade Inspection and Safety Program (FISP) work was done and, for most of us, instantly forgotten.

While the board in my Lower Manhattan co-op continues to negotiate with contractors over damages, the overages and the final bill, the rest of us have moved on as though the protracted and detested project never happened. No sooner had workers dragged the last bag of mortar out the front door than shareholders were dragging in plants to repot on the roof deck. They didn’t blink when the window cleaning sign-up sheet went around, even though removal of the FISP construction gunk encrusted on each pane raised the price from $35 to $55 per window. Some even briefly discussed renovating a common hallway. And one intrepid resident priced exterior siding in hopes of one day persuading the board to replace the bent and corroded metal-veneer wall that separates the main room from the garbage room, an ugly detail that attracts little attention from shareholders and none from FISP inspectors. 

Another detail both had overlooked was the large blocks of limestone that outline our ground floor windows. The dark, mismatched filler applied long ago to the fault-like cracks in the stone presented a cosmetic rather than a structural problem, one that neither shareholders nor the board had interest in correcting. However, in the latest round of FISP work, an aesthetically pleasing restoration in our landmarked building was unexpectedly mandated. Now, after additional weeks of power drilling and power sanding and two more months of assessments, the dark lines in the stone are gone — and are as insignificant to us as they were before.

Maybe it’s impossible to notice what’s not there. We can see and hear the FISP work, but can we appreciate the future leaks we avoided? Can we feel the absence of the dust, noise, inconvenience and expense of the sidewalk shed once it’s gone? The project cost us dearly for a long time, but we stopped feeling the pain the moment it was over. Without the scaffolding and the shed and the chipping and the blasting, everything now is as it should be in our collective mind’s eye.

We’re like the character Grace in Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “More Stately Mansions.” When Grace returns home from a long hospital stay, she fails to comment on the beautiful decorating job her neighbors have done in her formerly slovenly house. Grace is not unappreciative. She just doesn’t notice the change because in her mind, her home has always looked this way.

Until the status quo is upended, shareholder obliviousness is as high as our willingness to spend money is low. After all, we signed on to live with no services or amenities in a 93-year-old structure that still operates with many of its original parts. Large, messy and expensive projects are done only when mandated by the city or when the board recognizes their necessity. Once they’re completed, we take no notice of the resulting benefits, such as clean water from the new tank and increased ventilation from the new exhaust system, or the problems we avoided, such as damage from a faulty roof or injuries from a cracked sidewalk.

Unlike Grace, we don’t have neighbors who are offering to spruce up our building at their own expense. But like Grace, no matter how our co-op looks to others, we’re largely content.