The Commericial Observer has a piece this week titled "Robert Perl: The East Village’s Counterculture Landlord." A few passages.
Mr. Perl, the president of East Village specialist Tower Brokerage, is a rarity among local landlords for his long tenure and his wistfulness about the gentrified area’s squalid punk rock past.
And!
Mr. Perl’s advocacy on behalf of Life Café owner Kathy Kirkpatrick during the rent dispute, and his affinity for the East Village’s increasingly blunted edge, suggests that he is a benevolent landlord in a neighborhood with an ingrained suspicion of, or antipathy toward, real estate professionals. “The cynicism they have today is very different from the ‘Die Yuppie Scum’ days” Mr. Perl said. “You were more likely to be lynched as a capitalist pig in the ‘80s than today. Money is something people look up to now, as opposed to deride.”
Read the article here.
[EVG file photo]
“The building stock is a bulwark against a lot of expansion." It has drawn students and young singles, who have in turn created the local commerce in their image. But Landlords have begun to redesign tenement interior spaces for upscale families. It's the most alarming development I've seen, as alarming as the Schwimmer and Ekonomopoulos mansions, and it's a trend tied to them. If it continues the EV will look more like Greenwich Village and less like an NYU campus. And when it's done, the entire neighborhood will be landmarked, which will raise rents not only here but in the outer boroughs, driving displacement everywhere...
ReplyDeleteBob is a good guy and landlord. I am glad to see a spotlight on one for doing good, even though it is far less interesting for readers...
ReplyDeleteThat's right my friend-the end goal is to turn the East Village and LES into an area for the mega-rich. They are pushing for Park Avenue. The neighborhood pigs have been working hard eating their own s**t and waiting. Time isn't an issue for them. The local gentrifiers are passive. Why bother when others are willing to do the work for you. Why bother when you can have your prick sucked and watch everything happen from the windows of your own bedroom.
ReplyDeleteIt's the long time local East Villager's and Lower East Sider's and their business and community board cronies that are banking on our demise, and fronting themselves as counter-culture preservationists and heroes of the arts. Not my heroes. In my opinion they are the worst breed. The plan is to upscale the bars and restaurants as well as the apartments.
Local landlords, real estate developers, restauranteurs, hoteliers and lounge/ bar owners co-opt artists, arts organizations and other non-profits in order to silence them. The HOWL Festival is sponsored by some of the most despicable real estate developers/brokers around. TSP movie night founded by the co-owners (including Bob) of The Blind Barber is just an extension of The HOWL Festival. It's yet another event that co-opts artists/performers with it's pre-movie entertainment. This past year the event was sponsored by The HOWL Festival as well other businesses that are in pursuit of gentrifying/upscaling the EV/LES. Each year their sponsors expand and the whole thing becomes more frightening. They are all in cahoots. I often ask myself-why are they like this? The only true answer I can come up with is.....Because That's Just The Kind Of Human Beings That They Are.
Kathy said "Since 2008 I struggled to make the renaissance happen but the two landlords obstructed my every move." I'm assuming she was referring to both Perl and Noy. Life Cafe was in dire need of plumbing repairs for years. Why didn't he take care of them? The scaffolding on Perl's buildings didn't help Life Cafe either. She was pushed out.
Our pain is their orgasms.
How is he a good guy? He just purchased Nice Guy Eddie's and turned it into a Yuppie cocktail lounge catering to the tourists in the hotels south of Houston. So he is directly responsible for the destruction of the iconic Kiss Mural in exchange for a bland industrial look favored by the hipster crowd moving into all the buildings he owns. He is also cleaning out all rent-stabilized tenants from the buildings he acquires like all the rest of them. Frankly he is worse than Shaoul because he smiles in the EV's face and then takes the cash in small bills in a suitcase all the way to the bank.
ReplyDeleteHmmm - Doesn't Jared Kushner own the Observer? HOWL 2013 sponsored by Tower Brokerage, Icon Realty, The New York Observer and Mr. & Ms. Ivanka Trump.
ReplyDeleteSo you are saying these companies shoud not write $10-50K checks to help fund an arts festival?
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