FRESH BLOOD SAVES THE ALAMEDA, PART 2

Following the election of new members at the 2007 annual meeting, and the resignations of two old-guard members after subsequent months of acrimony, new president Scott Osman, new treasurer Julie Goldweitz, and fellow newcomers Kevin Kehoe, Glen Kennedy, Helene Laval, Joe Lelyveld, Meg Pinto and Joe Lelyveld instituted a major shift in priorities. Based on an engineer's report, the previous board had decided that the building's top priority was a $3 million overhaul of the entire plumbing system. The new board ditched the plan and decided to tackle plumbing repairs as they became necessary, while devoting money and attention to more pressing problems, such as falling masonry, leaky windows and a dilapidated roof.

Meanwhile, Pinto, who works at home, started producing a monthly newsletter to keep shareholders apprised. And she, Lelyveld, and Kennedy started sitting in on the weekly construction meetings convened by John Brion, president of Juno Construction in Hackensack, N.J.; architects Ted Eacker and Anne Hinsman; Midboro Management agents Earl Kirn and Ellen Marrone (at left); and the building's super, Jimmy Behrami.

At those meetings, the board members kept peppering the professionals with questions. What got done last week? How much was spent? What's next? They even fought off their vertigo and climbed out on the scaffolding to inspect the work with their own eyes.

"There was a lot of squabbling," Pinto says of those meetings. Regardless, she adds, "In the end we came away with a huge amount of respect for one another. All parties understood that the board had a very intense interest in this."

After one weekly gathering, the board members decided it was crucial to keep the construction company on target in terms of time and cost, and that the board needed to have extra eyes overseeing the work. To that end, Midboro was engaged to act as construction administrator, with Wolfe and fellow company principal Gary Ziprin, a CPA who provided detailed accounting reports, becoming heavily involved. The board also brought in Joel Magid, recently retired as a construction manager from the company that employs Kennedy.

Magid became known fondly as the board's "bulldog." He reviewed every expenditure, negotiated costs with the construction company and unearthed accounting errors. "Joel saved us months and untold thousands of dollars," says Kennedy. "He held everyone's feet to the fire the minute he came in."

Despite this oversight and diligence, the cost of the job continued to spiral. It wasn't until summer 2008 that the board finally got an exact grip on what needed to be done and how much it would cost. Most of the work was Local Law 11/98 requirements.

There were only a few discretionary projects. In a rare split decision, the board voted to spend an extra $300,000 to restore the decorative balconettes rimming the fourth floor, but to hold off on restoring the less visible ones on the 11th floor. The board decided not to spend money on a decorative cornice for the new parapet wall. It then chose to install a new "green" roof on top of the rebuilt regular roof, at an additional cost of $170,000. The final price tag for all the work was a staggering $3.3 million.

In order to get control over future assessments, the board took out a self-liquidating $2 million loan that it will pay off over the next 10 years. Some of the money will be used to tackle looming capital improvements, including a new boiler and new elevators. "The loan has two goals," says Osman. "To make the assessment process predictable and manageable, and to pay it out over time. The intent here is that at the end of 10 years, it's completely gone."

In mid-November, the scaffolding and netting that had covered the building for the past year and a half finally started coming down. The Alameda was once again a glowing grande dame. Best of all, the sky above Broadway and 84th Street had stopped falling.

Lessons for the Day

Just about everyone involved in this long, tortuous, acrimonious and costly project agrees it offers lessons for other co-op and condo boards. One is the value of communication; another is the high cost of apathy and neglect.

"My advice would be to take an interest in the place where you live," says board vice president Kennedy. "It is always very difficult to get people to serve on the board. Get on the board. Then rotate your professionals, bring in different pairs of eyes. And don't always assume someone else is going to take care of things for you."

"I ought to have done more due diligence when I bought my apartment," notes treasurer Goldweitz. "There's nothing wrong with asking the board, 'What are your plans? How do you plan to deal with it when things break and go wrong?'"

Adds Pinto: "It has been a really long road, but I would say that in the end it produced something very positive — a structurally sound building and a mindset that says we care about this building and we're looking to the future. This was an opportunity to bring the building not just up to speed, but to take it to a new level."

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