(Warzer Jaff)
An Upper West Side fixer-upper that “Today” show co-host Ann Curry bought for $2.9 million and spent the last eight years renovating has become a haven for hobos — including a bum who has lived there on and off for over a year, The Post has learned.
The globetrotting TV journalist and her husband, Brian Ross, purchased the four-story townhouse on West 71st Street in 2003 and embarked on a massive renovation that included tacking on an unauthorized 18-foot-high penthouse.
But they apparently stopped all major construction five years ago amid a spate of Buildings Department violations. They are also fighting a lawsuit filed by neighbors angry over the noise and debris.
The homeless man was discovered yesterday by one of the plaintiffs — and eight cops were sent to remove him from the property at around 9 a.m.
The Post caught up with the hobo at a nearby McDonald’s, and he claimed to have no clue about the absentee homeowner.
“Ann Curry means crap to me!” barked the vagrant, who refused to give his name or age. “The reason I lived there was because they chased me out of Central Park.”
The man said he would be happy to reach a compromise that would allow him to keep shacking up there.
“I’ll go back if someone says, ‘Here’s the key. Maintain the building,’ ” he said.
He said that he first let himself into the pad last year, after contractors failed to lock up, and that he spent the majority of last winter seeking warmth in the 3,700-square-foot home.
“I’ve been living there for about a year now,” he said. “I’m not a drug addict; I just don’t have a place to sleep.”
An NYPD spokesman said the drifter wasn’t arrested because he was caught sleeping in the vestibule and not completely inside the building. He was taken to a homeless shelter.
He is the second homeless man to be found living in the brownstone in a year, with the previous one also hauled out by cops, a neighbor said.
Curry, who lives in a doorman coop near Gramercy Park, “is currently traveling to Africa to cover the humanitarian crisis and could not be reached for comment,” an NBC spokeswoman said.
“Last stop before our news team reaches the chaos of famine,” she tweeted yesterday. “No one wants to turnaround.”
Ross did not return calls.
The squatter situation is just the latest problem to infuriate neighbors, four of whom sued Curry in 2007 for $900,000, claiming that dangerous and illegal work on her brownstone was creating a safety hazard for people living next door.
Neighbor John Lee claimed that workmen sliced open his chimney, filling his home with dust and debris. Then bricks from Curry’s house smashed his greenhouse.
The noise was so bad that Roseanne O’Brien, who lived in the neighborhood for 25 years, moved out of her apartment, according to the suit. Another neighbor who worked at home started renting office space to get away from the noise.
Neighbors said they are worried that bums living in the house with no heat will accidentally set fire to the home.
“The building is abandoned, for all practical purposes,” said John Lee, the only neighbor who has refused to settle with Curry. “It’s become an eyesore and a problem. About a year ago, I noticed someone living there with no power and no light.
“People end up sitting on that stoop and making noise and drinking. Three times, people have broken in. It’s just a very unpleasant experience.”
Additional reporting by Erin Calabrese and Rebecca Harshbarger