When a Café Opens Next Door to Your Co-op or Condo Apartment

Sept. 22, 2015 — Co-op and condo owners in New York often have to put up with quite a lot. The city's hustle and bustle means lots of construction, huge crowds, and relentless noise. Buying into a cooperative or condo is a huge investment, and quite naturally, those who do will want to enjoy a bit of peace and quiet in their new homes. But what happens when, say, a café opens up next door and a cacophony of voices begins to disrupt your quality of life? That's the question Ronda Kaysen tackles in this week's Ask Real Estate column in The New York Times. An apartment owner in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, writes: "This summer a cafe opened on an adjacent street and put tables out on a newly built deck that directly abuts my yard. The cafe built a six-foot fence atop my five-foot fence, making an 11-foot barricade to sunlight. This I could live with. What I can’t live with is the noise. Saturdays and Sundays are ruined by loud conversations and crying babies. I can also hear the noise inside my apartment." What's a person to do? Kaysen offers a multi-tiered solution. First, try talking to the café's owner — nicely. If that goes nowhere, go the community board. You can also try the Department of Buildings to see if the café has the proper permits, whether it filed plans describing the use of the space, whether it violates any rules about fire exits and emergency lighting, or if the space is even zoned for commercial use. And if that goes nowhere? Hit them where it hurts: "If the cafe has a liquor license, call the State Liquor Authority to complain. If a restaurateur is going to listen to anyone, he or she will listen to the agency that doles out liquor licenses."