Dear Mr. Toledano,
Prior to and since your purchase of the Tabak real estate portfolio in Fall 2015, tenants have experienced an alarming amount of alleged harassment. You have articulated your goal to many of us: you wish to remove rent-regulated residents from their homes. Given your intention to remove units from rent-regulation, the publicity surrounding 444 East 13th Street, and other legal matters, tenants of 17 buildings in your portfolio have formed a coalition.
Since June 2015, this coalition has recorded numerous instances of such alleged harassment perpetrated by you, Isaac Toledano, and agents of Brookhill Properties. You and your property managers have allegedly engaged in activities such as:
1. Serving tenants with frivolous notices to vacate and holdover lawsuits;
2. Threatening to shut off basic services such as heat and hot water;
3. Refusing to renew rent-stabilized leases based on meritless allegations;
4. Threatening that impending construction will be an extreme nuisance and will render apartments uninhabitable in your buildings;
5. Following tenants in and around their buildings, after hours, on the street, and close to where they live;
6. Calling tenants to discuss buyout offers, even after tenants have firmly expressed that they are not interested;
7. Pressuring tenants to quickly accept buyout offers.
We would like our interactions with you to reflect the civility and respect that we believe we deserve. We further ask that you examine your methods of operation, and comply with all laws, including the Tenant Protection Act of 2008, and the newly enacted buyout protection. We would ask that you treat your role as a landlord with the gravity it deserves, and that you respect both the letter and the spirit of the law.
Sincerely,
The Toledano Tenants Coalition
As we go into our 10th year of business, we would like to thank all of our loyal customers for their dedicated patronage. We are unendingly grateful to all of our wonderful neighbors, who together have helped to weave the complex and rewarding fabric of this exceptional community.
After being welcomed so many years ago, we have always attempted to return the favor the only way we know how: with a smile, a burger, and a place you can hopefully call your home away from home.
Even when tragedy struck in the form of Hurricane Sandy leaving us as well as our neighbors struggling, it was your continued love and support that allowed us to grow and move forward.
Most of all, though, we just feel really damn lucky to be part of your lives.
All of us at Royale are looking forward to serving our beloved community for the next 10 years and we hope that you will join us.
Happy 2016,
Royale
By nearly any measure, Mr. Purple — a dedicated ascetic who lived in an abandoned tenement, got water from a hydrant, read by candlelight and kept warm with a wood-burning stove — is an odd symbol for a 24-story hotel with “spalike bathrooms” and a terrace swimming pool.
“The gentrification, the consumerism, it’s the opposite of everything he stood for,” said the photographer Harvey Wang, who began documenting Mr. Purple, whose birth name was David Wilkie, in 1977. “It’s just appalling.”
“Mr. Purple” is not an honorable tribute. Believe me, I would love for David’s legacy to be memorialized, and I’m happy that he achieved notoriety enough to be considered for exploitation by a midtown corporate property development committee. However, a fancy hotel bar is not the right vehicle. At best, it’s tone deaf.
Asked what specifically Purple did to them or had them do, [Jenean] said, “Oh, everything — that’s what we were about — our purpose. He trained us, with pornography magazines, films, comics. I read ‘The Kinsey Report’ when I was age 10.”
Hopefully, the two narratives can somehow coexist and inform: on the one hand, the story of a family that finally healed from domestic sexual abuse, and, on the other, a man who built a new life for himself — and a glorious garden — on the Lower East Side and left a lasting legacy of environmental consciousness.
My bars follow all the rules. Close our doors on time. Always monitor our noise levels. Serve food all hours. Have responsible security staff and managers/owners on site every day. Always do what we say we are going to do at CB3 SLA meetings.
We have no tvs, we never participate in bar crawls or Santacon, don’t offer boozy brunches and The Wayland keeps live music alive in a neighborhood that has lost most of it’s music venues, 4 nights a week as a labor of love. We have strong relationships with our neighbors at 700 E. Ninth St. and we have gardens on both sides of our bar with no direct neighbors across either street.
So I ask myself, who could I be offending with my bluegrass and dixieland live music and mostly rock 'n' roll soundtrack for the rest of the evenings?
I was going to do a Q-and-A for 157 Avenue C anyway, why not start a monthly meeting where our neighbors can not only talk to me but also maybe down the road we can get some other business owners involved as well?
This Tuesday Jan. 5 from 5 to 7 p.m., I’m hosting a meeting at The Wayland for anyone who has questions or concerns about anything we are doing, including The Wayland, Good Night Sonny and 157 Avenue C. Refreshments will be served.
Hopefully we can have some good discussions about living together and maybe some of your more adamant commenters will show up and meet us face to face.
The IDNYC program launched in 2015 providing New York City residents with the opportunity to get a free identification card. IDNYC provides access to City services and cultural institutions, numerous discounts, and gives the peace of mind that comes from having recognized identification.
Ridership increased 24 percent in 2015 – including seven days in which ridership exceeded 50,000 trips, twice during the Papal visit in September.
Citi Bike has far and away the highest ridership volume of any bike share system in the nation, and is on par with the largest bike share systems in the Western hemisphere. There have been nearly 9 million trips taken on Mexico City’s similarly sized EcoBici bike share in 2015, and London’s larger Santander Cycle Hire was on pace for 9,943,074 trips in 2015.
