Problem Solved! For Co-ops and Condos

The Bane of Condo Maintenance — Competing Board Interests

April 19, 2023 Habitat Magazine Season 1 Episode 20
Problem Solved! For Co-ops and Condos
The Bane of Condo Maintenance — Competing Board Interests
Show Notes Transcript

When a condo is governed by a board with competing interests, getting things fixed can be slow going. At one such Manhattan condo ongoing water infiltration from a public plaza was compromising structural integrity of a below grade parking garage. Figuring out what needed to be fixed and getting the approval from owners with different interests and involvement, well, that’s not an easy task. Kevin Bone, principal at Bone/Levine Architects, tells the story of what needed to be done and how, ultimately, all agreed to do it.  Kevin Bone is interviewed by Carol Ott of Habitat Magazine.


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Carol Ott: Welcome to Problem Solved, a conversation about problems that have been solved in New York's co-op and condo buildings. I'm Carol Ott, publisher and editor in chief of Habitat Magazine. My guest today is architect Kevin Bone, a partner in Bone Levine Architects, a New York city full-service architectural firm. 

When a condo is governed by a board with competing interests, getting things fixed can be slow going. At one such Manhattan condo, the fix was complicated by competing interests on the board. Kevin is here to tell us what the problem was and how the stakeholders worked it out. Welcome, Kevin.

Kevin Bone: Thank you very much, Carol. It's my pleasure to be here.

Carol Ott: So, set the scene for us. Why were you called in and what did you find?

Kevin Bone: So our story begins in the spring of 2017. I was called by a senior building manager who relies on me often for opinions when things are difficult. He had been given an opinion regarding a situation at an upper west side condominium building that was regarded as rather dire, by the professionals that were then involved, assisting in the building. I stepped in and had a look at the situation, which according to the understanding of the buildings and the professionals that had initially seen it, was related primarily to the electrical service room, which was a sub-grade space below a pedestrian plaza.

Kevin Bone: This electrical service room had extensive water infiltration, and as a result, the electrical equipment and its cabinets had severely corroded, there was water in the floor, workmen were reluctant to work in there, being in an electrical environment with water. And the building manager who had called us in wanted our opinion. We had a careful look at it. We did some probing with a contractor, and it was our conclusion that the problems went beyond simply corrosion to the electrical service, but also were structural and related to the primary waterproofing of the plaza deck above.

Carol Ott: Let me just stop you. When you talk about a plaza deck and the electric room, just paint a picture for me of what that looks like. Is the electric room where all the unit-holders’ electric meters were?

Kevin Bone: The primary electric service room is where the point of entry is for Con Edison, bringing in the power for the whole building, so this is really mission control for electrical distribution. There are some primary meters in there, it's not the only meter room. It's actually a rather small space in this particular building, but it is what they call the switches. The primary switches that bring the electricity into the building and distribute it to the various feeds, to the various services.

Carol Ott: And you mentioned a plaza. What is that?

Kevin Bone: Well, the building is a 19-story building, and it was built in the 1990s under zoning that allowed for additional height when buildings were set back to create a public space. So the plaza that I'm referring to is really a modest public space with some outdoor benches and some planters and some pavers and whatnot. It's a privately held public space, but by making it accessible to the public, the developers of the building were able to build additional square footage and go to a higher level.

Carol Ott: And did the building have a garage?

Kevin Bone: Yes. So that brings us to the next part of this story. At our urging, we felt that the problem was not limited to the electric room only, and that this ongoing water infiltration from this public plaza was compromising structural integrity of a below grade parking garage. And we encouraged ownership to do a proper investigation of this and moved down a path towards the maintenance of this all.

Carol Ott: Let me just take a step back. On the board, I understand there were different parties, different stakeholders, with different interests. 

Kevin Bone: Let's talk about that for a moment. There is some shared responsibility in the governance of the building, but this one was particularly complicated. There was the entity of the parking garage, which is an owner in the condominium. There's two levels of below grade parking. There is an institutional stakeholder that owned many of the residential and commercial condominium spaces. There were some individual residential owners and there was a religious institution that had some shared infrastructure.

Kevin Bone: Although they had a discreet building, they did share some common space on the plaza and whatnot. So we really have three primary stakeholders and then a secondary stakeholder. And these parties had to come together and face the evaluation that the building faced significant maintenance issues and needed to plan for realizing these maintenance issues.

Carol Ott: Let me just ask, the garage owner sounds like, in terms of business, would his business be shut down?

Kevin Bone: That's correct, Carol. So this is of course a major part of this discussion is that the garage owner. First of all, there's a process where if someone's individual interest are perhaps compromised by these common building maintenance agendas, they will question the opinions. That was the case here. Sometimes the questioning of the opinions is simply a red herring, an effort to divert attention. And by time they did in fact engage a structural engineer, the structural engineer reinforced the prevailing opinions that something needed to be done.

Kevin Bone: So that moved us into a phase of negotiations, which inevitably involve attorneys. So even though the common interest in all of these entities was proper care of the buildings, they found themselves in something of an adversarial relationship. They were trying to each compete for what was best for them. And in the meantime, the calendar is clicking forward.

Kevin Bone: And in this particular case, we moved into a situation where the building was requiring work to its facades. The facades had begun to develop some unsafe conditions. So the FISP requirements on the building dictated that sidewalk bridging be put up on this public plaza. Life is getting more complicated here. Meanwhile, this is the spring of 2020, and of course, life got more complicated for all of us at that point. Nonetheless, management, the condominium, the institutional primary condominium owner, all ultimately worked out an agreement with the parking garage owner to allow this project to move forward.

Carol Ott: From the time you were called in, to the time that some agreements were reached to allow the project to move forward, how much time are we talking about?

Kevin Bone: Well, here's the important part of this timeline, Carol. As I said, we began in April of 2017, there was still some foot dragging going on in the spring of 2021. Even though documents had been prepared. Everyone felt that at the very least we should get the construction documents prepared. But as we know in the condominium and co-op business, the world changed in June of 2021, when the Champlain Towers in South Florida collapsed. And suddenly, the issue of neglected maintenance was front and center on everyone's board. My phone lit up that week with everyone who I'd ever talked to about doing maintenance on their building saying, "Are we in any sort of serious problem, or any serious risk situation with regards to our building?" People started to pay more attention. That lit a fire under everyone, it was clear that the building department would have to get involved if these people didn't take action. And by July of 2021, plans were being made to vacate the garage.

Carol Ott: So that was a huge motivator, I take it.

Kevin Bone: A huge motivator. Well said.

Carol Ott: And what would you say the takeaway here would be? What is the lesson that other boards can draw from this?

Kevin Bone: All right. Without question, Carol, I can say that deferred maintenance is more costly than maintenance that's done in a timely way. And that's for two factors. One, a building that requires maintenance tends to be in a situation of accelerating deterioration. If the walls are opened up, or the plaza is leaking, all of that tends to get worse more quickly. So what starts as a very little problem becomes a very big problem quickly. It is a perfect example of a stitch in time saves nine. That is the first takeaway, is that deferred maintenance is almost without exception, more costly than maintenance that's done in a timely way.

Kevin Bone: The other takeaway is that all parties benefit enormously by quickly getting to the table and agreeing on common goals, because the deferred maintenance not only gets more complicated, but the professional fees get more complicated. Every entity at that table, every stakeholder was spending money on attorneys. And all of that expenditure on the attorneys didn't actually help to get to the common goal. The common goal is the proper, safe, maintenance and protection of the asset. So that would be my takeaway.

Carol Ott: For this group of people to get to the common goal, was it the fear of what happened in Florida that made them all agree on a common goal?

Kevin Bone: I would honestly have to say that contributed. I think that the foot dragging strategies, which were maybe buying time for people, became unacceptable. And also, from my position as an architect and a consulting structural engineer, both of us agreed that if this building would not take action, that we were going to the building department, because it's also our professional liability at stake. If we are aware of a condition that potentially compromises public safety, we're obligated to report that to the building department. So we also began to take a hard line after the Miami Surfside collapse.

Carol Ott: Okay. Well, I think this is a very good lesson and a lesson probably most boards need to learn. So thank you very much for joining us today.

Kevin Bone: Carol, thank you very much. And thank you to Habitat Magazine for all the work you guys do.