condo boards behaving badly / quick to sue, for whom?
Can’t let this weird story pass, since it fits the recent them of “… acting badly” (neighbors on Jan 30, real estate agents on Feb 8, coop boards on Feb 9). Plus, it is kind of weird. THX to Curbed.com for pointing out the NY Sun’s ‘scoop’ yesterday.
Condo boards don’t get much bad press
You don’t hear many people complaining about what condo boards do, as opposed to what coop boards do. Condo boards just run the building (along with a professional management company, of course) and rarely (has it ever happened??) even seriously considers whether to exercise its right of first refusal to block a prospective condo purchaser.
Indeed, in condominiums with many non—resident unit owners it can be hard to get the unit owners excited enough about anything to even have a contested election for the board of managers.
But sometimes the condo board can get tripped up in the day-to-day management stuff, spending money badly or to placate individual unit owners.
the mysterious case of the smell in the bakery
The NY Sun ran a story yesterday about a lawsuit by an uptown condominium, The Waterford at 300 E 93 St, over nasty smells from the commercial tenant that pervaded the lobby, stairways and went up to the 46th floor.
That seems pretty reasonable, so far as it goes. But the Sun ran with a few other details, calling into question why the condo board spent more than $5 to bring a lawsuit and raising the question of whether they responded to one particularly incensed unit owner at the expense of all the unit owners. The Sun said:
1. the board’s “campaign is being spearheaded by a couple who live on the third floor”
2. the smell of baking bread “suddenly began smelling almost two weeks ago” [note: that is “almost two weeks ago” and they are suing already].
3. the “restaurant” (a Subway sandwich shop) has already installed a ventilation system in response to the complaint from the condo, which “was finished being installed Saturday” [note that the lawsuit was filed on Friday, the days before the installation was complete].
4. the ventilation worked pretty well, if a condo lobby attendant can be believed: “A weekend desk attendant at the Waterford, Ruben Toro, said the smell had wafted into the lobby since the Subway restaurant opened, but that the odor disappeared when Mr. Shin installed the ventilation”
the mysterious case of the quick-on-the-trigger condo board
To recap: it looks as though the Subway moved in and started baking bread. The odors from the bread-baking got into the condo to the extent the manager could detect it from the 46th floor and it “bothered” at least (only?) one set of residents, in a third floor apartment. When the condo board complained, the Subway owner had additional ventilation installed. The ventilation system worked. Oh, and the condominium board spent unit owner money to sue the Subway shop.
All within two weeks.
Unless there is more here than two newspapers have yet been able to discover, this looks like a waste of money. (Whether it is a “colossal” waste or “just” a waste depends on what their lawyer charges, I suppose.)
Is this a case of a condo board jumping the gun to protect all unit owners and residents, or is this a case of one third-floor resident getting the board to jump on command.
Weird press note: the NY Post ran a similar article today (no credit to yesterday’s ‘scoop’ in the Sun), without some of the pertinent details the Sun had. But the Post offered two parts of the claim by the condo that the Sun did not have:
It [the condo board’s suit] called the slow response to the problem "unreasonable" because "the nuisance condition can be resolved by defendants not cooking, baking or heating food" in the restaurant.
The Post’s quote from the lawsuit suggests it may have been filed based on the complaints by only one unit owner of smells in their unit:
odors have also made their way "into at least one of [the] residential units of the condominium, causing unit owners to be inundated with strong and nauseating food odors."
© Sandy Mattingly 2007
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