SamPratt.com

Ramping up

File under All Press Is Good Press: Gothamist has a only-slightly-snarky item up about the upcoming second annual Ramp Fest at the Basilica Hudson in May.

The unfiltered details can be found here.

Logo

Spotted at Warren Street Antiques in Hudson's 300 block... (It’s probably a numeral 5, not an S, but close enough.)

Open for business

Steve Walsh’s new food cart, Ponto Brasil, debuted today in Hudson... He’s set up in the middle of the 500 block of Warren Street at the entrance to the northside alley. Today’s offerings are chicken and beef kebabs, feijoada (bean stew) and pao de queijo (cheese bread). Even if you’re not hungry, stop by and pick up a coconut water for later—one can never have enough coconut water...

More Intelligence

Per my stated hope that the relaunched Rural Intelligence “will continue to have as much Columbia County coverage as ever,” longtime correspondent/new editor Bess Hochstein replies:

We plan to maintain our coverage of Columbia County, as well as Litchfield and Dutchess. Marilyn and Dan are both continuing to contribute stories and ideas, and we have reached out to other writers to contribute, some who have written for RI in the past, and some who would be new to the publication... We’re always looking for good writers who share our enthusiasm about this region as a whole, and who bring that enthusiasm to the fore with flair, whether they're writing about the arts, agriculture and gardens, food, community events, or other topics. And with so much going on in Hudson these days—wow! So much to get excited about!

Real property: What Galvan actually owns

Q: How many properties does the Galvan Initiatives Foundation actually own in the City of Hudson?

A: Just one—the Hudson Library building.

Assessed at $528,300, the current Library building at 400 State Street was transferred for $0 to the Foundation as a donation from a for-profit limited liability corporation, Galvan Partners LLC, less than two weeks ago.

Assuming that GIF is eventually approved as a charitable organization by the IRS, that $528,300 will presumbably be written off the LLC’s taxes, with Library building staying off the local tax rolls since GIF is listing the address as its offices. (Where the Library will wind up remains an open question.)

RP-5217 form for Galvan transfer

I had posed the above question to GIF’s newly-minted director, Tom Swope, in a public online forum last week. Mr. Swope—who previously oversaw numerous applications by Galvan to the Historic Preservation Commission and also millions in property tax grievances brought before the Board of Assessment Review—either did not know the answer, or was too busy to reply, or perhaps did not wish to share this public information.

So I researched it myself at the Columbia County Real Property Department, performing both a computer search and a hand-review of transfer forms (RP-5217s) since December 2011, when the Foundation was incorporated at the State level by Eric Galloway and Henry Van Ameringen.

The for-profit Galvan LLC still owns 35 other buildings in town, according to these records, including one home purchased in late December. Unless the Foundation and LLC have neglected to file their real estate paperwork in a timely way, the number of holdings of the latter is, again, just one.

The question and answer was interesting, among other reasons, because Hudson Mayor Bill Hallenbeck had alluded to what he termed “facts in regards to the Galvin [sic] Foundation and properties which have been purchased renovated, and provided to a lot of important City entities.” The Mayor also stated that he “happen[s] to appreciate what the foundation has accomplished here in Hudson.”

However, the facts on file at the County Real Property Department do not actually support that allusion. The Foundation has acquired a grand total of one building, and has yet to accomplish much except issue a press release, make a controversial proposal, and attack the integrity of three aldermen. One can only assume the Mayor was confusing the for-profit Galvan Partners LLC’s activities, rather than the Foundation’s. Either way, many locally have expressed reservations about or even opposition to the supposed “accomplishments” of either entity.

Tomorrow I expect to have some other real estate news gleaned in the course of this research.

Intelligent move

Rural Intelligence, the online guide to the Berkshire-Taconic area created four years ago by Marilyn Bethany and Dan Shaw, shut down last Fall. But it has now been purchased by a South Berkshires resident, and will resume publication on May 3rd. One hopes it will continue to have as much Columbia County coverage as ever.

Modwood: O’Brien (Vol. 2)

As far as I can tell, this proposal for paired houses by Cambridge (Mass.) architect William O’Brien, Jr. has yet to be built, but it is intended for a pair of twins somewhere in Upstate New York. More images can be found here. Also be sure to check out his terrific A-frame house design for some other woods in the Rockies.

Daylight robbery

According to a solid source (who owns a police scanner), the Bank of Greene County branch on Fairview Avenue on Greenport (where I have an account, darn it) was the target of a robbery attempt this afternoon by one or more suspects on foot.

CBS shines a light on Lantern

In 2008, CBS News in New York City reported on the Lantern Group, a non-profit housing developer controlled by Eric Galloway. Lantern is listed as a partner in a proposed City of Hudson combined police, court and housing project, along with the new Galloway-back Galvan Initiatives Foundation. (Galvan's record of complaints and violations was reported upon in detail here earlier this week.)

The video of this CBS report has vanished into the internet ether, but a transcript can still be found (with enough Googling) online. It is reproduced below. (Acronym irony alert: The HPD referenced in the transcript is not the Hudson Police Department, whose Chief and union have opposed the combined facility plan, but rather NYC's Housing Preservation Department...)

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The Lantern Group Took Millions From NYC To Provide Affordable Housing For Less Fortunate, But Has Failed

Housing Preservation & Development Department Shuns Interview

Reporting: Don Dahler

NEW YORK (CBS) — Many of New York City's less fortunate have been forced to live in filth.

A CBS 2 HD exclusive investigation has found that a non-profit group that promises to provide housing to the City's most vulnerable was doing anything but that.

"The Lantern Group" took millions of dollars from the city to provide clean, safe and affordable housing for the mentally ill, recovering drug addicts and others in need.

Instead, they've living in deplorable conditions, and you're paying for it.

On East 118th Street, Maria Montalvo lives with HIV in an apartment that is filthy and in disrepair. The Lantern Group built Schafer Hall seven years ago, and recently took over its management, or, as Maria says, its mismanagement.

"On the fourth, fifth floor they found a man who was dead for four days," Montalvo said.

The Lantern Group was charging Maria over twice the federally-limited rent. Manhattan Legal Services sued.

"When you go inside and you see how they actually maintain these buildings you realize they're not there to necessarily help this vulnerable population, they're there to make a profit," said Ime Nsa Imeh of Manhattan Legal Services.

On West 94th Street, in a building named St. Louis Hall, managed for the past two years by The Lantern Group, 73-year-old Rolande Cutner, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, shares her tiny room with dozens of stuffed animals.

"Because I live alone so I want to make sure I'm not alone," Cutner said.

Unfortunately, she and other residents also share their rooms with rats, mice, roaches, bedbugs and, as this building inspection shows, dangerously toxic black mold.

Rolande says it wasn't always so -- just since The Lantern Group took over.

"They let the building really deteriorate," she said.

Attorney Michael Hiller, who is representing the tenants, said he is horrified by the conditions.

"From everything I've seen so far, The Lantern Group is a slumlord," Hiller said.

The Lantern Group's mysterious president, T. Eric Galloway, wouldn't talk to CBS 2 HD. But we did find his 6,000 square-foot mansion in Hudson, N.Y., one of many properties he's managed to buy on a $100,000 salary.

CBS 2 HD asked the city's Housing Preservation and Development Department for comment. The HPD is the agency that oversees this kind of subsidized housing. It's the same agency that just handed a $15 million, interest-free loan to The Lantern Group to develop the St. Louis into housing for the mentally ill.

The HPD declined CBS 2 HD's request for an interview, saying we were being unfair to The Lantern Group.

In an e-mail, an HPD spokesman said, "Clearly, a story that raises allegations about The Lantern Group requires an opportunity for them to respond."

Even when we explained to HPD that over the past seven months we repeatedly requested an interview with anyone from The Lantern Group and were turned down, the Housing Department still refused an interview.

So here's a suggestion for HPD commissioner Shaun Donovan. Come on camera to explain this. Or better yet, take a tour of The St. Louis with me, and we'll see who's being unfair to the people you should be looking out for. Not the ones you evidently are.

Quotable Godard

 

All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun.

— JEAN-LUC GODARD (b. 1930)

 

Caught

FOX News, CBS6 in Albany and Mid-Hudson News each reported early this morning that Jamont McClendon, one of two suspects wanted in connection with the break-in at City Hall two weekends ago, was arrested at a State Street apartment.

The building where McClendon was reportedly arrested is a 15-unit apartment complex at 229B State Street. County Assessment records indicate that 227-235 State Street is owned by Housing Resources. Lieutenant Paolino, who had predicted the HPD would “find them” within Hudson’s 2.17 mile area, has had half of his prediction proven correct.

According to Fox, “Police say [he] resisted arrested when officers showed up at the apartment.” The other suspect, Quintin Cross, remains at large.

McClendon, who has had many brushes with the law in the past few years, has remained active on Facebook since the time the Hudson Police Department sent out its Wanted Persons bulletin—posting new pictures and comments as “JaySun DaGreat.” At least one of those posts pointed to someone with whom he’d had a recent phone conversation. Cross (or someone using his account) has also been spotted online, but has taken his Facebook page down twice since disappearing shortly after his initial questioning by the HPD.

Demonstrably: I do not think it means what he thinks it means

 

Recently, unnamed persons at the new Galvan Initiatives Foundation—which is forging ahead without approval yet as a nonprofit by the IRS—took shots at David Marston, who was elected by a very large margin to represent Hudson’s 1st Ward on the Common Council. Galvan called recent statements by the new Alderman “innaccurate,” “misleading” and “demonstrably untrue.”

But a detailed look at New York City public records, below, appears to back up Marston’s position.

Image: TomSwope.com

The fledgling fund’s testy reply to Marston is oddly anonymous. It thus could be the work of one or both of its co-founders Eric Galloway and Henry Van Ameringen, or special advisor Rick Scalera, or director Tom Swope, or some hydra-headed, Shiva-armed combination thereof— which one prefers not to visualize... Anyway, it’s Swope who has gone out on a limb to defend Galvan’s tantrum on Carole Osterink’s Gossips of Rivertown blog, saying that “the violations [Marston] finds on the website are misleading.”

Galvan was reacting to a Register-Star article stating that Marston wanted to “bid out contracts” on a proposed hybrid police station, court and low-income (or maybe homeless) housing facility to be sited at the corner of 4th and State.

Alderman Marston

Marston, according to the Register, cited “a questionable history with other Lantern buildings” as driving his rationale. (The Lantern Organization, formerly the Lantern Group, is a nonprofit controlled by Galloway in NYC, which has proposed several projects in Hudson that never got off the ground, including an outsized homeless facility smack-dab in the center of Hudson’s business district.)

The paper further claimed that Marston alleged 11 Galloway buildings in New York City “average 26 department or building violations per building.” That’s what prompted unnamed Galvan reps to fulminate that this is “demonstrably untrue” and that Lantern has never “failed any inspections.” But Galvan’s overheated response is long on bluster and short on demonstrable hard evidence, citing a total of zero specific, outside sources. Instead, Galvan trumpets only their own sweeping assertion that they’ve researched “all public records.” (Really? All? Like Sarah Palin answered the question about which newspapers she reads—“All of 'em”?) The faceless Foundation then triumphantly declares that it has has conclusively ratified their own argument. (Take that!)

But Galvan did not stop there. The Foundation then launched into a broad attack on Marston’s credibility, describing his position as “inaccurate and misleading,” insinuating that he and two other elected Aldermen must have some other nefarious secret “agenda,” such as being insufficiently sympathetic to the disadvantaged, a quality Swope himself has not been known to evince in the past. (More on that some other time.)

Now, Marston is known to his constituents as a bright, diligent and responsible neighbor; that’s why he was elected so handily. So it is hard for most to imagine, as Galvan would have us believe, that he’d make up such an assertion from whole cloth. (Of course, there is also the separate matter of whether he was accurately quoted by the Register.)

So how to resolve this stark discrepancy? At Gossips, Marston suggested a simple way this could be done:

I encourage anyone to go to the NYC Dept of Buildings online [...] and explore the Lantern violations themselves. GalVan can marshall lazy deceptions about my ‘prejudices’ against the people supportive housing helps, or they can listen to those very people, and speak to the hundreds of complaints they have lodged against Lantern through the NYC DOB.

Not a bad idea: Rely on an independent, outside source to settle the matter.

The evidence would seem to be squarely on Marston’s side. To the best of this site’s knowledge, each of the following 11 buildings which appear in the New York City Department of Buildings public information system is either owned by and/or managed by the Lantern Organization or associated groups. Spot checks trace these buildings’ addresses back to Lantern, and in any case all of their pictures appear on Lantern’s website.

If you average the number of complaints on file per building, it computes to 26.18—which rounds down to 26, just as Marston reportedly said. If you average the violations, you get 26.91—which rounds up to 27. Below is a building-by-building report: 

• 1384 Fulton Avenue a/k/a Amber Hall, in the Bronx (BIN# 2115578): 21 complaints and 13 violations are on record, 8 of them currently “open” or “active.”

Just this morning (April 3rd), a complaint was lodged that “all the doors to the stairwells are locked, only security has the keys. If you go in the stairs you cannot go out. No secondary means of egress in case of emergency.” In the meantime, another complaint lodged says that one of the building’s elevators has been out of order for a week. These complaints have been assigned to the Building Department’s Emergency Response Team and Elevator Division. (Another complaint about one of the building’s elevators was lodged on January 5th, and is still active.) Past problems include other items like a $500 fine related to the building’s boiler

• 111 East 118th Street a/k/a Schafer Hall in Manhattan (BIN # 1087381): 6 complaints and 30 violations are on record, 2 of them currently “open” or “active.”

Lantern lists this as a building they manage on their website. For example, this building has an active boiler violation dating back to late 2009, and another from 2011 for failing to file a boiler inspection report. (Boilers, elevators and missing reports are a recurring theme of these records.) In 2010, a violation notice was served after a caller reported that both elevators “in a six story b[ui]ld[i]ng are out of service” with disabled tenants.”

• 333 Kosciusko Street a/k/a Clover Hall, an “immediate care facility” in Brooklyn (BIN# 3332251): 13 complaints and 13 violations are on record, none currently “open” or “active.”

In December of 2010, a complaint similar to the one above at Schafer Hall alleged that the building’s elevator was “not working properly” and that there were “disabled people (HIV)” who “need this elevator.” A violation was served in June of 2011 after an inspection in May.

• 440 West 163rd Street a/k/a Audubon Hall in Manhattan (BIN# 1087429): 15 complaints and 7 violations are on record, none currently “open” or “active.”

Like several buildings above, this one has multiple complaints on file about an elevator being out of service. However, by the time an inspector came out—typically several months later—the elevator apparently was back in service. Complainants noted that there were disabled people in the building (“everyone has AID[S] and many are in wheelchairs.”)

• 194 Brown Place a/k/a Leeward Hall in the Bronx (BIN# 2114428): 22 complaints and 16 violations are on record, 1 currently “open” or “active.”

As with other Lantern-managed properties, a lot of the complaints and violations on record have to do with uninspected boilers or problems with the the elevators. For example, a $500 penalty was levied in 2005 related to the boiler. (Once fines are paid, the Buildings Department lists such violations as “dismissed,” which to most readers sounds like there was no merit to the complaint, when it actually means that it was resolved by a fine.) Other complaints can stay active for long periods of time, without a resolution. For example, in May of 2011 a caller alleged that “there is an unlicensed super altering the boiler.” The Buildings Department sent out an inspector twice on August 2011, but s/he was “unable to gain access” to the building. There is no indication that the inspector went back on a later date, or that the caller’s complaint was ever resolved.

• 1856 Washington Avenue at 176th Street a/k/a Silverleaf Hall in the Bronx (BIN# 2112853): 9 complaints and 24 violations are on record, 4 currently “open” or “active.”

As is so often the case, this building has four open tickets for elevator problems dating from March 2011 and Febraury 2012.

• 2612 Broadway a/k/a Huntersmoon Hall in Manhattan (BIN# 1056409): 25 complaints and 47 violations are on record, 2 currently “open” or “active.”

Surprise: The active items (going all the way back to August of last year) are for an elevator problem. A notice that a $2,500 fine would be levied for “failure to maintain [the] building in [a] code-compliant manner” was served on the management on September 26th, 2011, apparently due to failure to service a fire extinguisher and “remove water from [a] pit.” A hearing date is schedule for Thursday the 5th, with the City still awaiting proof of correction and payment of the fine.

• 863 Melrose Avenue a/k/a Jasper Hall in the Bronx (BIN# 2116638): 11 complaints and 37 violations are on record, 2 currently “open” or “active.”

A stop work order was served on the building in 2008 because no overhead protection had been put over the “entry walkway” to prevent residents from being injured by construction. As an example of how landlords technically can comply by responding to City officials, while leaving tenants at risk, the complaint was received on April 26th, but only resolved (without a fine) on June 2nd.

• 730 Beck Street/745 Fox Street a/k/a Cedars/Fox Hall in the Bronx (BIN# 2005517): 8 complaints and 6 violations are on record, 2 currently “open” or “active.”

There is an active violation listed for, you guessed it, a problem with the elevator reported in February of this year

• 319 West 94th Street a/k/a St. Louis Hall in Manhattan (BIN# 1034178): 146 complaints and 93 violations are on record, 22 currently “open” or “active.”

This appears to be by far the Lantern-managed building with the most extensive record of problems. Renovations appear to be in progress. The most recent active violation on record dates from just a month ago (March 6th). According to the City’s records, work is “taking place outside [the] scope of plans,” with construction “contrary/beyond approved plans/permits.” In January of this year, a neighbor complained of construction debris “falling all over,” but the Buildings Department sided with management. In late November of last year, another still-active problem was cited about exposed “high beam bulbs” on the construction site bothering neighbors.

• 260 West 99th Street a/k/a Bilander Hall in Manhattan (BIN# 1056413): 12 complaints and 10 violations are on record, 2 currently “open” or “active.”

A wheelchair lift elevator is the subject here of an ongoing investigation, begun last month, for possible defective or exposed electrical writing. A “professional certification compliance audit” is also underway. In January 2010, the City investigated the building for construction “taking place at the location, throughout the building” with “no permits posted.” An inspector cited a “failure to maintain and clear and [sic] unobstructed corridor and passageway,” with a violation issued.

 

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ENDNOTE: In fairness, it should be said that not all of the complaints on file are borne out by the Building Department’s investigators, and some of them may date back to previous owners or managers. (That’s why the above narrative of specific problems focus only on relatively recent ones.) In New York City, more perhaps than most places, you are going to get some unusual tenants who make a career of phoning in complaints to the building department. For example, a caller claimed that there were illegal offices on the 1st floor and cellar, but an investigation found that the certificate of occupancy allowed for them.

By the same token, NYC is notorious for, shall we say, the cozy relationships which often exist among bureaucrats, inspectors, superintendants and building management. In many cases, the long lag times between when complaints get filed and an inspector shows up gives management a lot of opportunity to clear things up before things ever get to a serious enforcement action, though the timeframe is probably a lot longer than tenants would like.

All that said, it appears from the record that many complaints and violations required some action by the City, and some resulted in fines or other corrective action.