When it was announced in late 2006, it was one of those deals that knocked the wind out of you: The Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village complex – that beacon of middle-class Manhattan life – was being sold to Tishman Speyer for $5.4 billion. It remains the biggest real-estate transaction in New York City history.
Its residents were worried (68 percent of the 11,232 apartments in Stuy Town are rent regulated) and real-estate watchers wondered what would become of that massive 80-acre plot of land on the far East Side. Would some of the buildings be torn down and new ones go up? Would the place go condo? Would rent-stabilized residents be kicked out?
The short answer? None of the above. For many longtime Stuy Town residents, not much is different since the purchase. But that’s not to say that there haven’t been changes.
“We’re focused on making it better,” says George Hartzmann, managing director at Tishman Speyer. “That means focusing on the physical amenities, community activities, upgrading [apartments] and a lot of landscaping.”
To attract new residents, the complex is adding 200,000 plants, 10,000 trees and has put in a fancy new gym. Pets, which were once a huge no-no, are now everywhere. And the complex is offering more free movie nights, cocktail mixers, sports leagues and outdoor events.
“They had this great Halloween thing that I took my niece and nephew to where they had this cornstalk maze,” says Erika Ward, who moved into Peter Cooper Village with her boyfriend more than two years ago. “And they have all different activities like wine tastings. They have ski trips, which we haven’t gone on yet, but we’ll check out next year. And they have a Hamptons shuttle.”
A Hamptons shuttle? In Stuy Town?
Well, that’s part of the idea. Tishman Speyer is clearly hoping to give the complex a more luxe reputation.
Yet, the company denies that it’s going condo. “It would be disingenuous to say it never came up,” says Hartzmann, “but we bought it under the assumption that it would be a rental property.”
Tishman Speyer has instead been focusing on sprucing up the apartments – and raising the rents.
“When I moved here, my one-bedroom apartment was $52.50,” says Madeleine Sussman, who came to Stuy Town in 1949.
Sussman turned to her husband, Harold, who had moved to the complex a year earlier.
“What did you pay?”
“Fifty-eight dollars.”
“Of course, that was a lot in those days,” Madeleine adds.
Today, a one-bedroom in Stuyvesant Town starts at $2,950; two-bedrooms at $3,675; and three-bedrooms at $5,400. Peter Cooper Village (which has always had bigger and more expensive apartments) start at $3,250 for a one-bedroom, and $4,225 for a two-bedroom.
And those are the cheap units!
There are a percentage of market-rate apartments that are even pricier. Those were the ones given a modern makeover by the architecture and design firm Cetra/Ruddy, and are priced roughly 6 percent higher than the “classic” market-rate apartments that were renovated before this year.
All the updated units come outfitted with renovated bathrooms, granite counters and new appliances in the kitchen (some apartments even have wine coolers), and the “modern” units come with a choice of black-stained or wood floors.
And if the price sounds a bit high, Stuy Town has encouraged potential residents to take roommates.
Jill Durso, for instance, is splitting a one-bedroom with friend Christina Vargas.
“We converted it to a two-bedroom,” says Durso. “They arranged to have a nice little wall put up, and we still have enough of a living room for our modest get-togethers.”
Luckily, the one-bedrooms in Stuy Town are big. A typical one-bedroom measures around 755 square feet; a one-bedroom in Peter Cooper is around 947 square feet. (Two-bedrooms in Stuy Town average 943 square feet; at Peter Cooper they measure about 1,223 square feet.)
“I go to friends’ apartments in the East Village, and they’re paying more for the same amount of space,” notes Durso.
Of course, to get these new higher-paying tenants into the spiffed-up apartments, it means lower-paying residents need to move out. And Tishman Speyer has been very aggressive about finding reasons to get rent-regulated residents out of the complex.
Since December 2006, nearly 800 tenants were denied lease renewals on the grounds that they weren’t full-time residents or were illegally subletting their apartment. More than 40 percent of those claims were dropped, while more than 200 are still pending.
Many established residents are also unhappy about the changes they’re seeing in the complex’s population and income level.
“It’s a very family-oriented community,” says Soni Fink, who has lived in Peter Cooper Village since the 1960s. “One of the most troubling things is that you have a lot of college students or graduate students, and they’re here for a year or less and they move out. They don’t give a darn about the property. They have no interest in their neighbors.”
But it seems an even bigger worry is about the rising rents – even for newer tenants.
“They seem to look for every way to raise the rent,” says Al Doyle, president of the Tenants Association. “At lease-renewal time, our market-rate friends and neighbors have seen unreal rent increases. More and more people are moving out.”
“Market-rate tenants have been confronted with horrific rent increases for rent renewals,” says Fink. “Since they have only 30 days to decide whether or not to renew a lease – hardly time enough to hunt a new apartment – this is a major headache for them.”
That being said, one still gets the feeling talking to residents that the criticisms of Stuy Town are made out of love; longtime tenants are absolutely fanatical about the place – and not all of them object to newcomers.
“It’s nice to see the young people,” says Madeleine Sussman. “There was a population shift; most of the people who lived here together grew old together. And now it’s still a comfortable place.”
And new tenants seem to agree.
“I always said, it’s the greatest suburb in New York,” says Allison Kallish, who moved to a one-bedroom in Stuy Town two years ago. “I saw this parade of Little Leaguers, with bagpipes playing, walking through the [Stuyvesant] Oval back in April. How many suburbs do you see that in?”