Pushing Back against a New Owner

Abstract

This chapter talks about the huge advertising banners down the sides of the plain redbrick buildings on First Avenue and Avenue C that loudly proclaimed “Luxury Rentals” within weeks of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village's closing. It notes that the improvements made by Tishman Speyer to the two complexes depicted a different vision of the type of residents who they hoped would be populating Stuy Town. It also describes the concert series that was opened to the public, which provided an opportunity to showcase Stuy Town's new flowers, its “luxury” buildings, and its lifestyle offerings. The chapter explores Daniel Garodnick's continuing concern after Tishman Speyer won the auction, about the lack of an affordable-housing plan. It discusses how Tishman Speyer was allowed to make a claim based on its own “information and belief” that tenants were not legally living in their units.