“Body Block”, Near Feral Children, Drug Houses, etc.

Posted on September 12, 2010 by BeatingUpwind

In all honesty when we put the bid in on our place on 123rd Street we didn’t really know what we were getting into. When we bid on other places we would walk the blocks after dark on summer nights and could get a clear sense for what the block was really like. There would be people out on the street and we were able to differentiate “good” blocks from “not so good” blocks. In one case we walked away from a building we were considering after Dan walked past two women who nearly got into a fist fight (actually fists would have been fine – he was worried one of them would pull a knife or a gun).

We bid on the place we bought in mid-November. By that time it was cold and people were staying indoors, so we didn’t get the same sense of what the block was really like. That worried me a bit. We could tell the apartment building next door was a bit run down, and the apartment building across the street was only slightly better. We could tell parts of the block weren’t so great, but we didn’t know whether we should be worried or not.

As it turns out the people who live in the run down apartment building next door are really nice. Our worst problem seems to be the people who buy their “40s” at the corner bodega – they’re not threatening so much as messy. Our biggest concern is getting $100 ECB tickets for their trash.

That’s the block today – it has it’s rough edges, but we feel safe and people are nice to us. However, we’ve come to realize the block (and even our own building) had a very different past which still lingers a bit in the air…

The first warning bell was when we were told that many years ago the building two doors down had been taken over by a drug dealer who killed the landlord and two other people, chopped the bodies up, put them in the cellar, and kept covering them with lime to keep the smell down. It seemed like a pretty unusual story and we thought it was just “local color” – every neighborhood has something bad that’s happened.

Then we also started hearing references to the fact that a number of other people had died on the block over the years, but we figured that was probably true of most streets in Harlem… There was a time when Harlem wasn’t such a great place…

But then my friend and I went on the MMPCIA’s house tour… We stopped at Minton’s Playhouse and were served lemonade. As we were sipping our lemonade we started talking to the guy behind the bar who lived in the neighborhood. I said I bought a townhouse shell. He asked where, I told him, and he said “Oh, body block”. I naively asked what he meant and he explained that our block (123 between Lenox and ACP) had the nickname “body block” because so many people had died on the block over the years. Turns out our block wasn’t just average in terms of violence, but one of the roughest blocks anywhere in Harlem…

And it continues… Dan was showing the building to my nephew and his girlfriend one day when a guy stopped and started talking to them (a common occurrence on our block – one of the things I really like about it). He said he had “sorta lived” in the building in the late 90s. Then he mentioned that the building was raided in 1997 and the police had found a nearly feral child living in a closet. I believe he said the child was 6 or 7 years old when she was found. In other words, our building was a drug building. The people who say they “lived” there were largely drug addicts, and some unfortunate kid was born into that, and neglected so badly that she spent years living in the closet of a drug flophouse with little to no meaningful social interaction with other people. Truly sad…

I’m sure some of that history is the stuff of legends and a bit embellished, but the general gist is that our block, and even our building, have a rather sordid past.

But things are changing. The biggest change has to be the new condo down the block – Windows On 123 – it’s really changed the nature of the street. With asking prices up to $1.465M for a floor through, 3 bedroom, 3 bath unit, the block is quickly losing it’s bad reputation.

There’s a lot we love about the block…

We don’t really like 124th street – you get the ugly backs of all the big buildings on 125, so 123rd is as close as you can realistically get to the subway stops at 125 – and we’re right between two of them – a 4 minute walk to the 2/3 and a 6 minute walk to the A/B/C/D. With one stop to 59th Street you can’t get better subway accessibility without paying downtown prices.

We also love that we’re between all the new development over on Frederick Douglass Boulevard and the established, stable core of Mount Morris Park. Being near them means we’re near a number of great restaurants, bars and grocery stores.

We also like the friendliness of the block. People talk to each other and in my mind people watching what’s going on and knowing each other makes the block a lot safer.

As odd as it may sound, we also like the music on the block. When we looked at some blocks in Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill salsa and merengue were blaring from the windows. We never listen to salsa and merengue and thought it would get pretty irritating pretty quickly. On our block there are guys hanging out on the stoops, some with carts of CDs, playing R&B, soul and the gentler side of hip-hop – that’s all music we listen to ourselves and makes the block sound like home to us. It also means we’re less likely to be irritated by our neighbors’ loud music.

But most importantly our new neighborhood reminds me of what New York used to be like when I first moved here 20 years ago. Back then New York was this wonderful mix of extremes. Today most of Manhattan seems to safe, “pedestrian” and rather bland. I like the edginess of Harlem. The chaotic, uncertain energy makes you feel alive – it’s why I fell in love with New York and chose to make it my home…

If our sale really was a bit of a low water mark, then I think the sordid history of our block may have factored into the low price in some way. Personally, I really like the idea of buying into a place that has seen hard times but is turning around. There’s a little risk to it, but you can see much bigger gains in situations like that than you can in neighborhoods that are well established.

How We’re Configuring Our Townhouse

Posted on September 10, 2010 by BeatingUpwind

I thought I’d share how we finally decided to (re)configure our townhouse… It’s a 5 story brownstone. We’ll have a 4 story owner’s quadraplex over a duplex rental unit (that has “accessory” space in the cellar)…

Starting at the top… There will be a roof deck on the rear of the building. We only learned after buying the building that we had views of the midtown skyline (off in the distance). Mind you, climbing up all those stairs to get there won’t be a lot of fun, which means we’ll need some sorta buzzer system for the front door. We’ll eventually mount a retractable awning on the bulkhead for shade. We opted for bulkhead windows instead of a skylight because they let in more light in the winter and less in the summer.

There is some dispute on the proper width of the bulkhead. The architect has a 3 foot passage to the side of it, the plan examiner says it’s a “side yard” and should have an 8 foot passage OR be the entire width of the building with a ladder over it. The architect noted that if he encloses the walkway it becomes interior space and 3 feet is appropriate. We’re still trying to figure out which solution we want to go with.

The next floor down, the 4th floor of our unit (8-9′ ceilings), will be art studio space for Dan. He’ll have a clean studio / office in the front of the building, and a dirty studio in the rear of the building. The small utility room in the middle will be his wet area. The floors in all his studio space will be commercial grade vinyl flooring (inexpensive and practical). There will be clerestory windows letting lighting from the stairwell into the front room (which is on the North side of the building). We’ve configured it in a way where the next owner could turn the utility room into a bathroom and then have two additional bedrooms / playrooms, etc.

The 3rd floor of our unit (9′ ceilings) will have the master bedroom in the rear and a spare room in the front. The spare room will most likely be a den / exercise room – have a treadmill, a couch and a TV. Like the clean studio above it, the den will have clerestory windows letting in light from the stairwell. We wanted the bedrooms in the back since the back of the building should be quieter.

The 2nd floor of our unit (one floor up from parlor, 10′ ceilings) will have the spare bedroom in the back and a home office in the front. Having the office in the front achieves two goals… First, the office isn’t noise sensitive, so it’s on the noisy side of the building. And second, it’s used during the day, so air conditioning bills will be lower since there’s far less heat gain on the North side of the building. (We’re using a mini split ductless system where each room is a separate zone). On this floor, attached to the bathroom is the laundry room. Having been in apartments for the past 20 years, we can’t wait to have a washer/dryer in our unit! Oddly it’s one of the things we are most looking forward to.

Our original plans had the 2nd and 3rd floor swapped, then we realized that we’ll be going up and down stairs to the office a lot more than we would be going up and down to the master bedroom, so we put the master bedroom up higher and the office down lower. Swapping the floors also lets us have a laundry chute from the master bedroom closet directly into the laundry room. We’re going to love that feature!

The parlor floor (10.5′ ceilings) will have the living room, dining room and kitchen. This is where we had to get a special reconsideration to have an open floor plan since code would otherwise require having 1 hour fire rated walls around the staircase and from the staircase to the front door. I know some people hate having front doors open into kitchens, but we saw so many narrow unusable living rooms that we decided to put the living room in the rear where it could be more spacious. But it does mean that the kitchen design needs to be pretty flawless since it will be people’s first impression of the house. One thing we have noticed is that the living/dining/kitchen space is nearly identical to our old apartment. This is a 15′ wide townhouse – we may have 6 bedrooms, but some things are more on the modest side.

There will be a narrow 4′ wide deck with a pergola off the living room. We kept it narrow so the tenant’s window would still get plenty of sunlight, and we added the pergola (which we’ll have vines growing on) to give us some shade in the summer. Here’s a diagram showing how it will look…

Rear deck with pergola on Harlem Townhouse

From the beginning of our process we knew that we didn’t have the biggest townhouse and as a result our design choices were a bit limited. There just wasn’t the space (or budget) to be all that extravagant. Where we were a bit extravagant was with the staircase. It will have a 3′ x 6.5′ lightwell running down the middle of it that will help get light deeper into the core of the building. We’re also going with open risers to help let light bounce around. From the beginning I knew the stairs would be the dominant design element in the building. To that end our architect really stepped up and has given us an incredible staircase design. You can see a bit of it in this diagram…

Stair layout in a Harlem townhouse

Basically there will be swoopy translucent plastic (or fiberglass) panels that will be attached to simple metal framing. Because it’s reducing metal work it should be a fairly economical solution. It’s also changeable. I had thought the staircase would permanently define the space, but because the panels can be redesigned and executed in different materials, there’s nothing permanent about it. Not shown in the diagram is the architect’s solution for the “railing” along the hallway. We’ll be taking the existing floor joists cutting them down into thin strips and creating a “screen” (wall) with vertical strips of old floor joists. That will be our version of “original details” and should look pretty incredible if we get the right balance of colors and textures in the space.

Continuing down the building… The rental unit will have smaller rooms that are still a decen size (i.e. the bedroom will be 175 sq. ft. and the living/dining room 260 sq. ft.). We’ll be putting in a decent Ikea kitchen (not bare bones, but still Ikea). One of the things we’re debating currently is the appropriate level of security for the rental unit. Our options are metal gates/bars on the doors/windows -or- laminated security glass with a security break sensors in lieu of gates/bars. Gates and bars will feel more secure, but it may seem like you’re in a prison.

The rental will be a bit of a duplex. I say “bit of” because it incorporates cellar space which can’t legally be a bedroom. It can be a media room, a workspace for an artist or craftsman, or a home office. Because that’s the south-facing wall, there should be plenty of light down there so it won’t feel too much like being in a cellar. What this means is is that it’ll be far more than a 1 bedroom, but not really a two bedroom. The tenant will also have their own laundry room in the cellar.

The cellar will also have the mechanical room and storage space for us. There’s this incredible arched brick ceiling in the “vault” under the “front yard” which we’ll be repairing/restoring. This townhouse is rather unusual in that it has a separate entrance for the cellar under the stoop, so we don’t have to go through the tenant’s space to get to the cellar.

In terms of utilities we’ll only be providing heat for the tenant. We’re separating all the other utilities – gas, electric, even water. Given how the boiler will work if we were to put in separate heating for the tenant the heating system wouldn’t run at optimal efficiency. So it won’t cost that much more to give the tenant heat. We don’t want to have the typical over heated New York apartment. Instead, we’ll keep it at a temperature where we’re comfortable in a light sweater but not so cool that our hands get cold. That will be lower than the minimum heat required by NYC, so the A/C units in the rental unit will be “mini PTAC” thru-wall units which can also provide supplemental heat as needed to keep the tenant comfortable. That means we’ll need to have the tenant sign something saying they understand they aren’t getting full heat for their unit.

I know Julia Angwin had mentioned on her blog at the Wall Street Journal that she had a tough time trying to figure out if she still wanted telephone jacks. Our strategy for voice and data is fairly aggressive, but also a bit conservative. Half of the closet in our home office will be a mini “server room” complete with rack mounted servers, cool air intake and warm air exhaust. (Dan and I do web projects for a living – we need all that sorta stuff). All voice, data and security will “home run” to that closet. We’re assuming we’ll continue to have a Vonage VoIP system, so we see won’t have a dedicated phone line coming into the building. Other than in the server closet there will be only two voice jacks – one in the office for the fax machine and one in the living room for a phone. We’ll also have Ethernet jacks throughout the house even though wireless will be our main form of connectivity. Primarily we’re putting Ethernet jacks next to cable TV jacks because we believe video and entertainment over the Internet will be common in the near future and the video/entertainment boxes may not support wireless. The Ethernet jacks will also be used for wireless routers – we assume we’ll need several to properly cover the entire house.

There’s a lot more detail I could go into, but that covers the basics… It’ll be fun to see it all come together…

Eggersmann Gives Lower Price Option For Kitchen

Posted on September 5, 2010 by BeatingUpwind

A while back we discovered Eggersmann at the A&D building and really liked them. In fact we liked them better than Poliform which is saying a lot – our last kitchen was by Poliform and Poliform’s sense of design resonates with us, but Eggersman is even better (in our opinion). When we first talked to them, Eggersmann was nice enough to mock up a kitchen for our space and quote us a price, but the price didn’t really work with our budget.

Well, months passed and then someone at Eggersmann found my previous blog post mentioning them. They contacted us and asked if we had made a choice yet. Thanks to problems with DOB, we hadn’t. They noticed that I had mentioned that their last price was too high, and offered to design a lower cost kitchen. Our kitchen design and layout had changed somewhat since their last proposal. The biggest change was moving the coat closet further into the building – across from the stairs rather than across from the kitchen. The other change was getting rid of the upper cabinets and taking the cabinets at each end to the ceiling (which is 10.5′ tall). The net result was a 1/3rd savings in cost. We need to see where the other numbers come in, but we’re thinking we just might be able to afford an Eggersmann kitchen, which is quite exciting…

Dan and I had gone through several rounds of kitchen designs but hadn’t been 100% happy with anything we came up with. Many of the designs reminded us of our last kitchen and we really wanted this one to be different. Finally I proposed a layout one day and Dan liked it. That’s the layout Eggersmann laid out (and improved slightly). Here are some 3D renderings Eggersmann did for us…

3D Rendering of Harlem brownstone kitchen

Instead of having coat closets across from the kitchen, we’re going to have a bench where people can sit and talk. This will essentially be the view from the bench. The door to the right is the front door. The upper panels in that door will be glass. The column to the left will house a Sub Zero 736 TCI fridge. At over $6,000 it’s our one huge extravagance in the kitchen, but we loved the 700 TCI we had in our last kitchen… The shelves in the center island will be used for wine and cookbooks. Dog leashes and the like will go in the cabinets below.

3D Rendering of Harlem brownstone kitchen

This shows a few of the details more clearly. We’re envisioning Corian (white) counter tops, a stainless back splash. The range is a compromise. We’re going with a 30″ Electrolux when Dan would really love a 36″ Wolf, but it costs nearly $4,000 more. The range hood was one of our challenges. The shape of it will probably be a bit different than what you see, but luckily we can exhaust directly out the wall, so no chimney is needed. We’re also thinking of put lighting on the top of the shelf as well as the bottom so the wall isn’t so dark.

3D Rendering of Harlem brownstone kitchen

Seen from a different perspective… The wall to the right will be exposed brick, and the front doors will have glass in the top panels. The window looks huge as it is, but looking at it now I realize it wasn’t drawn big enough. It’s 4 feet wide, 7 1/2 feet tall, so it will be another foot higher (at least). It won’t be one huge piece of glass. Instead it will look a bit like a french door (two vertical casement windows).

3D Rendering of Harlem brownstone kitchen

This last one shows how we’re hiding the microwave in a nook with additional cabinets. Up by the ceiling, above the cabinets, will be the A/C. We’re going with a “mini-spit ductless” system and that location gives us a nice place to hide the unit. (Not going with concealed units is another budgetary concession). The large wall will be exposed brick, so while the cabinets will be white / off-white, there will be plenty of color and warmth in the kitchen.

The other thing I’ve realized looking at these renderings is that the radiator we were going to put under the window will conflict with opening the cabinets. Dan and I are debating where the radiator should go.

So we’re crossing our fingers hoping we can get the Eggersmann kitchen. It’ll be really wonderful. Their sense of design is really special and their fit and finish is incredible.

Finally Received Plan Approval From NYC DOB…

Posted on September 5, 2010 by BeatingUpwind

This past Monday we FINALLY got approval for our renovations from the NYC Department of Buildings. It was almost exactly a 5 month process – one month to get the first plan review and then a plan review every 2 to 4 weeks after that for 4 months. We got approved on the 5th plan review. This time we were tired of getting rejected and decided to go to the plan review this time to see what was happening. It was good we did because the plan examiner literally said “I’m only approving the plans because the owners are here”. Apparently the plan examiner and our expediter had gotten to the point where they really just didn’t like each other very much. Luckily for us his objections were minor this time and he was willing to overlook them. For example, our architect had spelled out all the R values in the wall, but didn’t show the calculation converting from R values to U values that were input into the energy calculations. And we hadn’t submitted a “street tree worksheet” to document the fact that we have a tree outside our building – that he put off ’till we pull permits.

Anyway, it’s over and we’re now on to getting a final bid from our contractor, and getting everything ready to apply for the mortgage. Hopefully, after all this, we’ll be able to afford the renovation we want to do. Knocking wood…

I know I’ve neglected the blog lately, but the last 3 months have felt like purgatory. We were just sitting and waiting. Honestly, I didn’t want to focus on it too much because it would have just been frustrating. It’s a good thing we weren’t buying the building with a rehab loan. If we had closing would have had to wait until all of this was done. As it is the house isn’t costing us that much to maintain right now – just taxes and paying a guy to keep it clean so we don’t get violations.

The benefit of the wait was that our architect had time to do more detail drawings which will help clarify things with the contractor. And the biggest change was that we decided to swap the floor plans for two floors. We’re going to have the home office one flight up from parlor and the master bedroom two flights up from parlor (instead of the other way around). It should result in less stair climbing and we get a laundry shoot in the master bedroom, which will be nice. When we get the electronic versions of the approved plans I’ll post them here.

In the future one or both of us with go with our expediter when he needs to get changes approved at DOB. Lesson learned. 😉

NYC DOB Rejects Our Plans For No Good Reason

Posted on June 7, 2010 by BeatingUpwind

Well, today was plan review day and we got rejected, AGAIN. The reasons this time were just bizarre…

The first thing that was rejected was the energy review. Our architect did this complex analysis using a web-based program provided by the federal government where you enter all the characteristics of the building including wall types, window types, light fixtures, etc. and it confirms compliance with the 2010 standards that are in effect for New York State. But the plan examiner rejected it because NYC is still on 2007 energy standards and the 2010 standards aren’t being phased in until later this year. They literally told us to come back in 24 days, on July 1, since they’ll accept our architect’s energy analysis on that date. So we got rejected for showing compliance with a more demanding standard that they’re going to use in less than a month. Go figure.

Second major item was the sprinkler system (again). This time the plan examiner wanted documentation that there was sufficient pressure in the water main to support the sprinklers being on the domestic water supply despite the fact that the code specifically states that sprinkler systems with 30 or fewer heads can feed off the domestic water supply. He also wanted all the pipe sizes and sprinkler heads specified, but that’s typically done when the sprinkler system is certified – it doesn’t need to be done at this point and requiring it now is just being difficult.

The biggest issue that he raised is that he’s insisting we do a pressure test on the water main to do the calculations to determine the sizes of pipes that are required for the sprinkler system. It takes 4 to 6 weeks to get DEP to do a flow test, so that means we can’t go in for a plan review until that’s done. Again, the flow test is typically done after DOB approves the overall plan – he’s just being obstructionist IMHO.

At one point the plan examiner insisted that we needed 2 hour fire rated walls around the stairwell, not 1 hour walls. Our expediter stuck to his guns and then it took the plan examiner 10 minutes of searching the code to realize we were right and he was wrong. Why do they have people doing plan exams who don’t know the code? If the code is just horribly complicated then why not have plan examiners specialize in certain building types? If we had someone who really knew the code issues for townhouses then maybe they’d know the code well enough to do their job properly.

Then the plan examiner was telling our expediter that he saw errors in the “I-Cards” for the building. I-Cards were the predecessor to Certificates of Occupancy, which came out in 1938. So in other words, he was holding us responsible for errors previous building owners made dating back to 1938 or before. I mean please… The whole point of our rehabbing the building is to bring it up to code and get a C of O. How can inaccuracies on the old I-Cards matter when the point of the exercise is to make them obsolete by getting a C of O?

Next time Dan and I will go to the plan review to prove the point that we’re not some nefarious slumlord trying to build a crappy substandard building. We’re just regular guys. Plus, with the enormous workload that DOB is under right now I just don’t understand how it’s productive for them to keep having us come back over and over again for stupid little things.

Now imagine if we were trying to purchase the place with a rehab loan and needed to get approved plans to close the loan. Obstructions like this can really hamper redevelopment of blighted buildings – for no good reason because they can tank deals. And it’s the reason why it can take FOREVER to close when the buyer needs financing to purchase. I’m sure more than a few deals have gone bad because DOB took too long and the contracts expired.