Staten Island Seniors, Part 2: Condo Controversy Coming to Court

One side considers the gatherings ordinary socializing, as New York neighbors have done perennially on stoops and steps. The other considers it unsightly, a security risk and harassing to women. A seemingly simple matter has reached such an impasse that, as the condo's managing agent says matter-of-factly, ""We're going into court with this. That's the only way we're going to resolve it."

The Elmwood Park II bylaws state: "No one shall play or loiter in the public halls, elevator, vestibules, lobby or stairway of the front entry of the building." The question for the court is whether five persons gathering in a building's lobby conversing constitutes loitering.

"The definition of loitering is people congregating in a place for no particular reason," says Cheryl Ruiz of Wentworth Property Management, the company's regional director and the complex's managing agent.

Adinolfi, the attorney for Thomas Raia, Leroy Tepper, Korean War veterans Ron Silver and Thomas Milazzo and World War II veteran Charles Montemaranno, counters that holding a conversation is a valid reason to congregate.

"Loitering is such a vague term that historically it's been used by governments to oppress people," he says. "My clients' conduct is not loitering as loitering has been defined by the common usage or New York law. They've been using the property reasonably and we're asking that the courts declare our rights, including the right not to be fined."

The fines were not imposed on the men — one iteration or other of which has been gathering in the lobby at 5 Windham Loop (at left, in 2002; click on image to enlarge), on and off, for years — until after a disagreement with board member Joann Goldstein, 55, who used to chat with them occasionally and, according to a board member with direct knowledge of the situation, who requested anonymity, says the men's presence makes some female residents uncomfortable. (See Part 1.) Conversely, as one commentor posted at a February Staten Island Advance story, "When visiting friends and relatives at this Windham Loop location for several years now, I have always left with a good feeling, so seldom felt in this often fearful society. Why? Because of the so called 'troublemakers,' gentlemen who always have inquired [as] to my health, well-being [and] safety after dark and cordially opened a door bidding me a good evening."

The quintet, upon receiving the fines, asked the board for an alternate gathering spot. "We originally gave them a certain room in the basement," says Ruiz. "But it was too cold." Indeed, wrote columnist Andrea Peyser in the Post, "[W]hen I visited, the room was freezing, the toilet stuffed."

The men, says Ruiz, then requested they be allowed to use a first-floor studio apartment where the board holds its monthly meetings. On March 25, the board sent Tepper, 81, the men's spokesperson, a memo allowing the men to use that space for two hours each evening. (Click on image at right to enlarge).

The board took away access to the room, however, upon being served with the lawsuit. "They signed an agreement with the board," says Ruiz, "and the agreement was reviewed with the [board's] attorney, that we would give them the room from 7 to 9 [p.m. nightly] if they dropped everything. They agreed to it. Well, they're back at it, so we took the room away."

"As far as signing anything, we signed nothing," Tepper responds.

That is technically true, as no pen hit paper with a signature. Yet Ruiz supplies a March 26 e-mail in which Tepper agrees, "We discussed your compromise [and] decided we can live with it." (Click on image at left to enlarge.)

Ruiz's March 25 memo, however, says nothing about honoring the board's agreement only "if they dropped everything." (See the memo, above right.) The memo also offered "to place two benches outside the building in May provided you agree not to have your meetings in the loop" — the circular driveway and sidewalk outside the building.

Because the benches are located in that loop area, the memo appeared to single out the five men from using them. Following an expanded version of this article published in the December 2009 print issue of Habitat, Ruiz clarified that the board "never said they could not sit and talk on the benches." The memo meant, she said, that the men could not bring lawn chairs to the loop area.

"They had been promising residents benches in front of the building for years but never came through," Tepper claims, noting that a number of elderly residents use the city's  Access-a-Ride door-to-door paratransit service offering transportation to the disabled. "We didn't ask for them," Tepper says of the benches, "but I thought it was nice. But as a condition of using the room, we [five] can't congregate outside and use the benches," a misunderstanding reflecting the vaguely worded March 25 memo.

The benches, says Ruiz, "will be brought in probably in the middle of September." A bench remains in the lobby itself for the disabled and others awaiting a vehicle.

At the margins of the issue, the men have claimed age discrimination and other unfair treatment by the board, including questionable handling of board-meeting minutes, and intimidation by Goldstein's husband, a former New York City police officer (discussed in the previous article). Ruiz says, "The board has made every effort" to respond to the men's concerns. Board president John Buday, a Staten Island-based architect, did not respond to phone messages.

Updated Aug. 14 with the two paragraphs beginning with "That is technically true," and the March 26 e-mail at above left.

Updated Jan. 8, 2010, with the paragraph beginning " Because the benches are located in that loop area...," and with the final phrase in the paragraph that follows it.

Photo courtesy Leroy Tepper