The heart and soul of the City of New York has always been made up of equal parts of cultural and economic diversity, and a resulting original creative intensity.
However, due to the vagaries of the real estate market, we as a city suddenly find ourselves at the last moment during which we can choose whether our city will retain its cultural and economic diversity and its creative intensity, or devolve into a faceless and soul-less Disneyland. If we look closely at our streets we can see that our colonization by the strip mall culture of suburbia is nearly complete.
When we, of all cities, choose to allow unbridled expansion of the real estate market coupled with property tax policies which literally force landlords to price creative professionals out of the legal rental market, we are telling those creative professionals there is no place for them here. Indeed, a mass exodus of the creative class is underway.
When there are no alternatives for those who decide to remain and persevere, we create a hole in the market which must be, and therefore will be, filled illegally.
This is the website of the 1717 Troutman Tenants Association, representing tenants who were removed from their premises by NYC agencies on Thursday 10/18/07. The NYC DOB has stated that tenants were removed due to health and safety issues posing an imminent threat to life. But, as can be seen below, this enforcement action is not about the health and safety of the citizens of NYC. In fact, it is about competition for affordable rental space between manufacturing and other industrial concerns wanting to remain in an urban center, and people who need an affordable place to live and work which is denied them in the legal rental market.
When we treat our creative professionals with the sort of contempt exhibited since Thursday 10/18/07 at 1717 Troutman Street, 11385, we are stabbing our own city, possibly the greatest in the history of our planet, in its heart.
Where does it stop? Welcome to the real estate black market:
- on Thursday 10/18/07 at around 9:00 AM (exact time?), enforcement action was begun at 1717 Troutman Street in Ridgewood (Queens) NY by NYC DOB in cooperation with various other city agencies without any notice against tenants on the second and third floors, indiscriminate of the legitimacy of their use of the spaces they rented there, severely disrupting both their business and personal lives.
- initially the NYC DOB went door to door knocking and told tenants to leave immediately due to Health and Safety violations representing an immediate danger to their lives.
- NYC DOB, a City agency which has been given the authority to immediately order other city agencies to cooperate in removal of tenants for the express purpose of preserving them from harm, has known about conditions at this address since at least the Fall of 2005.
- manufacturing and other industrial tenants in the building have been allowed to continue their operations uninterrupted despite conditions in the building supposedly representing an immediate peril to any persons in the building.
- If there is such peril, it is not limited to the creative professionals who pursue their careers (most of which constitute a legitimate use under an M1 lease) and lives on the second and third floors at this address.
- Further, if there is peril it is likely to emanate from the manufacturing tenants like Nulux Inc. on the first floor, which engages in heavy manufacturing activity using harmful and flammable chemicals, and uses numerous heavy sheet metal presses without isolating them from the building structure, often shaking the entire building, or from warehousing tenants in the North end of the building, or other industrial tenants in other parts of the building. Over the last 2 years Nulux have been cajoled (and subsidized according to the building manager) into isolating some of these heavy metal presses but their constant expansion has made these solutions only temporary.
- An M1 zone specifies light manufacturing. There is no investigation in progress or pending of the legitimacy of Nulux, Inc. and other industrial tenant's use of space in the building under an M1 lease for heavy manufacturing purposes directly across the street from residential Queens.
- Having removed most of the tenants from the second and third floors of the building earlier in the day, in the early afternoon city agents ordered the on site maintenance person to open every door to remove any remaining tenants and confirm each space as empty.
- Having confirmed the building as empty, and in the process that the keys to every unit were available as necessary, city agencies secured the building.
- Tenants were told to check in and out with city agents on each floor for access to their premises, and that if they did not do so, despite the fact that building keys had been determined to be freely available, that after knocking FDNY personnel would break their door down and that they would be removed. Tenants were not told until what time access would be allowed.
- At 9:00PM FDNY employees began opening studios. In a few cases they knocked, in other cases they did not. In some cases their knocks were heard, in others not.
- In every case in which they encountered a locked door for more than a few seconds, FDNY broke every door in with axes and sledgehammers. There seemed to be a general rodeo-like atmosphere of enjoyment of this process on the part of FDNY employees.
- Since most tenants had completed their business and left the building by then, properly notifying NYC DOB of their departure, most tenants had their doors knocked down. Of the tenants who were still in their units frantically trying to gather their things to be able to continue their business and/or personal lives without access to their belongings, offices, equipment, etc. for an unknown period in the future, many had an extremely traumatic experience redolent of life under a totalitarian regime: that of having their door unexpectedly broken down by men with axes and sledgehammers while they were inside.
- FDNY, Animal Control, and other city agents entered units they had broken into which were empty on at least several occasions.
- Apparently most units, if not every unit that had been broken into were left open all night.
- While the front of 1717 Troutman was secured, it is quite possible to climb fire ladders from Flushing Avenue to gain access (Were halls secured? Were halls patrolled?).
- At some point the city began to install locks on the units they had broken into, keeping the keys.
- Since, tenants have been allowed 4 hours per day in their units, and have been given until Friday 10/26/07, to remove their property from their premises. (update: as of Tuesday 10/22/07 the city has extended packing/moving hours to 10.5 weekdays, 7 hours Sat/Sun, and their final deadline to Sunday 10/28/07)
- Until 10/22 city agencies have been unresponsive to requests for extensions to the unreasonable daily and final deadlines being imposed. As of Tuesday 10/22/07, various city officials had several times informed tenants that hours for packing and moving had been both expanded and extended. Unfortunately, until 10/22/07 they had not informed their employees, who continued to enforce the same hours (10/29/07 update-either through ineptitude, for motivation purposes, or both, the city seems to be pursuing a policy of not putting schedule changes in play until the day they become effective, or capriciously changing it's mind after making announcements, making it impossible for tenants to plan, in some cases leaving people to make the terrible choice between retaining their jobs or their property... for example, while the expanded schedule adding 33 hours with hours each day from Monday 10/29 - Saturday 11/3 detailed in: this post was also confirmed by DOB employees, sometime in the last 24 hours a far slimmer schedule was posted on the DOB website totaling 13 hours over 3 days.).
- City agencies have been unresponsive to requests for a statement or clarification of city policy re: how it will handle tenant property after the final deadline they have stated (as of 10/22/07 that deadline remained Friday 10/26/07).
- Second and Third floor tenants are not allowed to use the freight elevators in the building for moving purposes. Given that many tenants on the second and third floor (sculptors, recording studios, etc.) depended on these elevators to move large and heavy equipment and work into their studios, this is an extreme hardship. It remains to be seen how many injuries and how much damage to property will result
- As of 10/22/07, most of the time city agency vehicles have obstructed all legal vehicle access to curbside areas adjoining the building and parking lot access making loading extremely difficult, unsafe, and time consuming.
