Kim Velsey

NEW YORK — In 2014, Ian Jarvis — along with many of his neighbors at 360 Central Park West — received some unwelcome news. He got a letter from the landlord, Argo Real Estate, informing him that Argo would not be renewing his lease. The building, an elegant prewar rental on the park, was going condo, and he would have to leave.

Jarvis knew that he’d never find anything remotely like his apartment, a generously proportioned one-bedroom on the 16th floor of the building with a sweeping view of Central Park. At least, he’d never find it for less than $3,000 a month.

He’d moved into the apartment in 2006, after living on the Upper East Side, in a perfectly nice apartment between Park and Madison. But he wasn’t in love with the East Side — he’d moved there a few years earlier, after the Los Angeles-based cosmetics company where he’d been a partner was sold, freeing him up to move back to New York — so he reached out to a broker.

“I said, ‘I want to move, but I’m not going down and I’m not going to the side. I’m only going up. Let me know what you can find,’” he recalled.

The broker’s first few options didn’t appeal, but one day he called to say that he’d found something on Central Park West and Jarvis needed to come right away.

“I felt like I’d hit the rental lottery,” said Jarvis, who despite the previous tenant’s waist-high stacks of newspapers going back to the Nixon era, saw the apartment for the rare gem it was. Rent was $2,600 a month.

“I thought it was an extremely good deal,” he said. “I was close to the tennis courts, the crosstown bus. There is a great staff and it’s dog friendly.”

The last item was important because his wife, Lisa Jarvis, who spends the majority of her time upstate in Copake, New York, has a dog. Lisa Jarvis runs a company based there that designs and manufactures decorative hardware for furniture and cabinetry, and the couple visit each other on weekends.

Lisa Jarvis helped him decorate the apartment, which when cleared of newspapers and covered in a fresh coat of paint, proved as charming as he’d hoped. There is a proper foyer with a coat closet, which opens out onto a large living and dining area. Here, Ian Jarvis keeps a piano — he’s been taking lessons and writing songs “in the style of Leonard Cohen and Philip Glass” — a tiny galley kitchen “that belongs on a boat” as he put it, and a good-sized bedroom with stunning views of the park.

“I really wouldn’t change anything,” he said. “This apartment is delightful to me.”

After receiving the nonrenewal notice in 2014, however, it looked like change was imminent, but he didn’t have much time to dwell on the bad news. Within a few days, the building’s tenant association discovered that Jarvis’ apartment, in addition to a number of others, could be protected under rent stabilization laws through the J-51 program (there are also other rent-stabilized tenants in the building).

Argo declined to comment, but according to a lawyer who represented the tenants’ association, leases signed during the period when the landlord received J-51 benefits were ruled to be rent-stabilized. J-51, a housing program that grants tax breaks to landlords of rental apartments who make certain repairs, prohibits landlords from deregulating apartments while receiving the tax benefits.

Since then, Jarvis said, some other tenants have taken buyouts, but he has no intention of leaving and has turned down several buyout offers. (He would not disclose what he had been offered and he said he did not know how much other tenants had received.)

“I overlook Central Park. If I move I will never again have this luxury,” Jarvis said. “I said come to me when you have a number that’s magical because I’d be happy here forever.”

“I like renting, I think the price is right,” he continued; he now pays $2,913 a month. “And I have concerns about the condo market. I think you’re in it for 10 to 20 years if you buy.”

Of course, living through a condo conversion has not always been a pleasant experience. For a number of months, he didn’t have cooking gas, during which time he had to prepare meals on a hot plate. One of the building’s main elevators was also shut down for a while, resulting in long wait times. Dirt and dust were often prevalent; he also said he saw an uptick of mice and roaches.

“Which was troubling to a lot of people, but it’s to be expected,” he said, adding that all the issues have since been resolved. “We knew going in that they were doing a conversion. It’s not going to be the Immaculate Conception.”

And he also got an unexpected conversion boon — as part of the architectural refurbishment, a second park-facing window has been installed in his bedroom. “The dust and dirt was unbelievable,” he said. “But in the end I had two windows.”

The only thing that he really minds, he said, has been the departure of a number of the building’s longtime residents, although the tenants on his floor have all opted to stay.

“It’s been a friendly place since the day I moved in,” he said. “The building had characters. And it still has some characters. The people moving in, I like them all, too, but I do have a judgment on everyone who moves in: They’re rich. The lowest apartments are going for like $1.5 million.”

$2,913 | Upper West Side

Ian Jarvis, 63

Occupation: Business consultant specializing in leadership and succession issues. Jarvis is also writing a book called “Live With Your Lights On,” which is about “how to attack and change your habits. People get to a certain age and stop doing new things, trying new things.”

On the neighbors on his floor: “They’re a really interesting group,” he said. “We help each other out. On a less intimate level, it’s like ‘Friends.’ ”

Five years ago: It seemed that Jarvis would have to move out, but the tenant association discovered that his apartment was likely protected by rent stabilization laws. “I didn’t spend much time on the fear factor,” he said. “J-51 didn’t seem that complicated to me.”

This article originally appeared in

A Rent-Stabilized Apartment on Central Park? Of Course He's Staying

(Renters)

NEW YORK — Fernando Gómez-Baquero moved into his one-bedroom apartment on Roosevelt Island one day before the building officially opened in the summer of 2017.

“I convinced them to let me come here early,” said Gómez-Baquero, the director of the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute’s Runway Startup postdoc program at Cornell Tech, the technology-based graduate school that opened on Roosevelt Island in 2017. He makes it a habit to try to arrive early in general, whether to new technology or rental housing on the Cornell Tech campus.

Which might explain why he is so pleased to be living in what is being marketed as the world’s first passive-house high-rise, a 26-story tower called The House.

“I geek out on this building,” he said. “I was really fascinated by how you make a building this tall consume 60% to 70% less energy.”

His position at Runway Startup came with an offer of on-campus housing. At the time, he was living with a friend in a Tribeca two-bedroom, but he liked the idea of having a short commute to work (it’s only 49 steps to his office at the Tata Innovation Center). The main draw, however, was the building itself, which generates a steady stream of data for researchers and engineers at Cornell Tech. Several companies in his program have used the data or intend to use it in the development of energy-saving technologies.

During the past 10 years, the passive house, a form of green design that originated in Germany, has surged in popularity. By creating an airtight building envelope with thick, insulated walls and triple-paned windows, passive houses can eliminate the need for heating and cooling systems in temperate climates and greatly minimize it in a place like New York.

But applying those design principles to the construction of a 26-story high-rise is more complicated than it is in a single-family home.

“The design is very clever,” said Gómez-Baquero, who thinks that the designer, Handel Architects, balanced the ratio of windows to walls in the building very well — keeping the windows large and numerous enough to maximize light and views without compromising the building’s functionality (walls make for better insulators). He also admires the heat-recovery ventilation system, which minimizes the energy needed to heat or cool air as it comes into the building. Last year, his highest monthly heating and electricity bill (from midwinter) was about $30, which he pays on top of his $3,100 rent.

Thermostats in units can be adjusted to between 68 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit, which prevents residents from turning their apartments into saunas or freezers, throwing off the building’s balance and squandering energy.

“To me, that is very comfortable,” Gómez-Baquero said. “I think what a passive house can do is show you that you don’t need temperature extremes.”

A further inducement to energy saving is the digital tally in the lobby that tracks energy consumption by floor, which he sees as a fun way to urge residents to do better.

A native of Bogotá, Colombia, Gómez-Baquero came to the United States to attend a Ph.D. program in nanomaterials at the State University of New York at Albany. While there, he developed the idea for his startup, Besstech, which applied that technology to make longer-lasting, fast-charging lithium-ion batteries.

After selling the company in 2017, he was looking to bring other clean energy ideas to market when he heard about the Runway Startup program, which provides five Ph.D.s a year with support, guidance and about $300,000 each to turn their ideas into market-ready technologies. He thought he might be a good candidate for the program. Instead, he ended up becoming the director.

Gómez-Baquero’s apartment comes with a striking view of the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. “There’s something about the bridge that calls to me,” he said. “I am an engineer.”

His living room furniture is limited to a desk, a table and chairs and a few bookshelves.

“I’m a very minimalistic type person,” he said. “I thought about getting a sofa, but why put more things here? I don’t want it to feel cluttered. I like that it feels empty and big.”

He does, however, make an exception for a few things: a telescope, books, an electric piano, an accordion, a zampoña and any musical instruments in disrepair that cross his path.

“Some people rescue animals; I rescue instruments,” he said. “Craigslist is the best place to find them. I got my piano really cheap there because it wasn’t working.”

And although the campus is only one-third complete at the moment — and Roosevelt Island’s dining options are limited to little more than sushi, pizza and a Starbucks — Gómez-Baquero said he couldn’t be happier that he moved in when he did.

“It feels like I’m in the right place at the right time,” he said. “I like being close to things when they get started. I like being in this place where it’s empty, all possibilities.”

$3,100 | Roosevelt Island

Fernando Gómez-Baquero, 41

Occupation: Director of Cornell Tech’s Runway Startup program. He is also a founder of ipHaus, an organization that develops off-the-grid affordable housing.

The world’s first passive-house high-rise: The House, a 26-story residential tower developed by the Hudson Companies and Related Companies, is designed to consume 60-80% less energy than a traditional high-rise, for a projected annual savings of 882 tons of carbon dioxide.

Limited access: Apartments in the building are available only to Cornell faculty and students.

Leaving the island: Gómez-Baquero said he finds it easy to go to meetings on mainland Manhattan, by taking the tram to Midtown or the ferry to Lower Manhattan. The F train also has a stop on Roosevelt Island.

Limited dining options: They don’t bother Gómez-Baquero, who cooks his own breakfast and dinner.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/realestate/living-in-the-first-passive-house-high-rise.html" id="1cd0b4f5-4deb-3f74-a638-852e6f0d8008">The New York Times</a>.

Living in the First Passive-House High-Rise

<h1>(Renters): In New York, where apartments tend to be small and good ones hard to come by, real estate often plays an outsize role in romance, speeding along some relationships and straining others as couples juggle the stages of courtship with lease terms and the lure of cheaper rent.</h1>

At least, it did for Helga Traxler and Joachim Hackl, who now live in their third apartment together — a spacious and meticulously designed one-bedroom. It’s the first place they’ve shared that wasn’t something of a relationship test.

The couple met as roommates in a Williamsburg share in 2014, after a mutual friend unintentionally played Cupid by offering Hackl his recently vacated room in the four-bedroom apartment where Traxler lived.

“When our common friend told me, ‘You’re going to have a new roommate. I was like, ‘Ugh! Another new roommate?’” said Traxler. “In the three years I lived there, I had so many new roommates I lost count.”

But within a few months, Traxler, a freelance photographer, and Hackl, who was doing a fellowship at a small architecture firm at the time, had started dating.

“All the other roommates were away for Thanksgiving,” said Traxler who, like Hackl, is Austrian. “We took the chance.”

A relatively short time later, they once again found themselves facing a relationship decision when Hackl was accepted to a master’s program in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture at Columbia University, which came with a tempting offer of student housing. The apartment was a tiny one-bedroom on 112th Street in Morningside Heights for $1,500 a month.

After talking, they agreed that, rather than make theirs a cross-borough affair, they’d move into the apartment together. Since they were both in the country on visas, they didn’t know whether they’d get another chance to live in Manhattan.

“If this happened back in Austria, it’s not something we probably would have done,” Traxler said. “But I think it’s a typical New York thing. It made sense versus having two New York apartments and having to travel to see each other.”

And, having lived together as roommates for about a year before moving to Manhattan, there weren’t many surprises. “You’ve already seen how the other person acts in their natural habitat,” said Hackl.

Still, the apartment was only about 360 square feet, with a big bedroom and hardly any living space, which presented an issue as they were both, essentially, working from home during that period.

“Looking back, I’m very surprised it worked out so well,” said Traxler, who credited differing schedules and having a gym nearby to get their aggression out with keeping them sane.

When Hackl finished his two-year program, they had to give up the apartment. Traxler had grown to love the convenience of the neighborhood — a one-minute walk to the subway, a 20-minute train ride to Midtown, and a 24-hour grocery store nearby. But with a budget of $2,000 a month, they knew they couldn’t afford to stay in the area.

As they started looking in Brooklyn, they realized how difficult it was to get a lease in New York as foreigners with limited credit history. A promising lead — their friends, who were leaving a two-bedroom, recommended the couple to their landlord — evaporated after the landlord decided to turn the listing over to a broker rather than take them.

They were at a friend’s birthday party, talking about losing the apartment, when a couple who owned a brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant overheard them. The tenants in their garden apartment were leaving and the space was available.

“It was a great coincidence,” said Hackl. The apartment was $1,887 a month and much nicer than anything else they’d seen. The landlords, a German artist with an architectural background and her husband, whom they knew a little socially before moving in, had renovated it to a very high standard, including installing triple-paned windows that, when closed, eliminate all outside noise. (The brownstone is renovated to passive house standards, which also means it stays cool in the summer.) Their apartment also has access to a huge shared backyard — their landlords and the owners of three adjacent houses agreed to take down the fences between their spaces.

They moved in two years ago, installing twin desks in the living room, though Traxler works all over the apartment and Hackl now has a full-time job as an exhibition designer at the Brooklyn Museum.

“You work everywhere you can put your laptop,” he said to her. “I nap everywhere I can put my butt.”

Traxler noted that it was nice to have enough space that they can both hang out or work in the apartment without having to be in the same room. “And if we need some time for ourselves, there’s a door that can be closed.”

Since moving in, they’ve filled the space with art from friends, plants, a sofa (their last place was too small for one), and many books — which, for a couple who has to reapply for visas every few years, is the riskiest element of their living situation.

“When we met, we were both like, ‘If you see a good book, you buy it,’” said Hackl. “So we have a lot of books. Friends come over and ask, ‘Are these all your books?’”

“But that’s what makes it home,” said Traxler. “You want to be comfortable. You don’t want to think, ‘What if I ever move?’”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/realestate/when-a-great-apartment-plays-cupid.html" link="null" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

At least, it did for Helga Traxler and Joachim Hackl, who now live in their third apartment together — a spacious and meticulously designed one-bedroom. It’s the first place they’ve shared that wasn’t something of a relationship test.

When a great apartment plays Cupid

“When my nieces and nephews came over, it was always like a party,” Santiago said. “I loved it.”

She remembers playing in the snow in the empty lot behind her apartment building, attending P.S. 12 and going to church with her parents, who were members of the Primitive Christian Church on East Broadway. Her father, a minister and army veteran, spoke English fluently and wanted his children to, as well.

Eight years later, at the urging of her parents, Santiago moved back to Puerto Rico. But she retained a fondness for the city and her old neighborhood. And later in life, after her husband died in 2010, she longed to return to the Lower East Side.

“After he passed on, I always had this yearning to come back,” Santiago said. “In Puerto Rico, I was very involved with the community and politics. I needed a fresh start. This is where I had good memories. I had good memories there, too, but it was very connected to my husband.”

She met her husband, Juan Hernandez Ferrer, who grew up in Brooklyn, shortly after moving back to Puerto Rico, where she worked as a bilingual secretary to the mayor of Toa Baja, a municipality in the north. Hernandez Ferrer happened to be the mayor. He later became a senator in District 2, and they had two sons, who are now 32 and 33 and live in New York.

On a rental budget of less than $1,000 a month, she could hardly afford to live in New York, let alone in a highly sought-after area like the Lower East Side. Santiago, who is retired, spent most of her life doing counseling, as well as community-, arts- and church-related work, much of it unpaid, and now lives on Social Security income.

But memories weren’t the only thing drawing her to the Lower East Side. She also wanted to be close to family members who lived there, including an 85-year-old sister with Alzheimer’s. “I said, ‘I want to be in my old neighborhood,’ and I didn’t want to live in an old apartment — I was worried, I see a lot of fires,” Santiago said. “My son says, ‘Mom, you’re asking too much. You’re never going to get that.’”

“But I believe in prayer,” she said. “I was like, ‘God knows my heart.’”

And then her brother-in-law told her about Essex Crossing, a mixed-used development primarily on the south side of Delancey Street, that was giving affordable housing preference to those who could prove they lived in the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area between 1965 and 1973.

During that period, Robert Moses had demolished tenements, displacing and dispersing the ethnically diverse communities that had long called the area home. After that, the land remained vacant for decades, until the Bloomberg era, when a coalition of companies now known as Delancey Street Associates (including L+M Development Partners, BFC Partners, Taconic Investment Partners, the Prusik Group and Goldman Sachs) was selected to build a mixed-use complex with 1,079 apartments, more than half permanently designated for low- to middle-income families.

Using church records, Santiago was able to verify that she had lived in the neighborhood as a child. But her income was too low to qualify for any of the available apartments. So she asked her younger son, Carlos A. Hernandez, a cook at Russ &amp; Daughters, if he would like to apply for a two-bedroom with her.

“In our culture, you live with your parents until marriage,” she said. “When we applied together, it worked.”

They were offered a two-bedroom apartment at 125 Delancey St., known as the Essex, a mixed-income building above a Regal Cinemas theater and the new Essex Market, for $1,065 a month. And in December, they moved in with their two rescued tuxedo cats, Travieso and Waffle.

“Even today, I look at the place coming back, I can’t believe it,” Santiago said. “It’s like a dream. I always thank God.”

Friends and family have been generous with old furniture and kitchenware. “I’ve been blessed for coffee makers. They know my taste: red,” said Santiago, who also has a red love seat and a red step stool, and that morning was wearing a red dress.

She has decorated the apartment — and the furniture — with her art. A sculpture she made of Don Quixote sits in the foyer, along with a bench and hatrack she painted with a sunflower motif. In the living room, she covered a drop-leaf table with a scene of a Puerto Rican fortress at night. On the wall behind are illustrations of the indigenous Taino people and the Spanish colonization of the island that she did for one of the 17 children’s books she has written but never published.

She walks an hour or two every day for exercise — her phone tells her when she has met her goal — which has helped her get to know a neighborhood that is old and new to her at the same time.

“This area is very different, but it’s looking good,” she said. “The building where I was raised is not there anymore. And there was a live poultry place under the bridge that’s gone. But I’m getting to know some little shops and restaurants. There’s one, this very cute restaurant called Beauty &amp; Essex, that you have to walk through a pawnshop to get to.”

Ruth Santiago, 64, and Carlos A. Hernandez, 32

Occupation: Before retiring, Santiago founded and ran the Nehemiah Foundation, a nonprofit focused on religion and the arts in Puerto Rico. Hernandez, her son, is a cook at Russ &amp; Daughters.

The youngest of 17: “I was protected by my parents and my brothers. I felt like a little princess,” she said. “Cuchy was my nickname growing up — I was very ticklish since I was a little girl and I was always laughing, laughing, laughing.”

She speaks English fluently: “But I still have my accent,” she said. “I don’t want to lose it. I keep it intentionally.”

On food: “My son does most of the cooking,” Santiago said. “I can do some Spanish dishes like arroz con pollo, but he likes to show off.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/realestate/coming-home-to-the-lower-east-side.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

(Renters): NEW YORK — In 1966, when she was 11, Ruth Santiago moved from Puerto Rico to an apartment on Pitt Street, on the Lower East Side, with her parents and five brothers. The youngest of 17 children, Santiago had many older siblings already living in New York by then, which made the move feel like an adventure and a homecoming.

Coming home to the Lower East Side

“I really did not want to move,” said Williams, 31, a teacher at Liberty Avenue Middle School in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn. “I’m a Coast Guard military brat, and I don’t mind moving, but I’ve moved eight times in six years.”

She figured that her best chance of staying put in the future would be to make sure that hers was the only name on the lease. She just didn’t know if she could afford it. The absolute top of her budget was $1,600, which is about the bottom of the market for studios and one-bedrooms in Brooklyn, where she had been living and wanted to stay.

Since Williams hadn’t been expecting to move, she had no money set aside for a security deposit, broker’s fees or moving expenses. She only learned that her roommate, the leaseholder, had been cashing and keeping the rent money from her and another roommate when the landlord called to say that rent hadn’t been paid in months. (Because she was on a sublease, she was not liable for the unpaid rent.)

But her long spell of bad apartment luck was about to change.

Shortly after the call from the landlord, she came across a listing for a large one-bedroom in eastern Bedford-Stuyvesant, near Ocean Hill, which was about a 15-minute motor-scooter ride from the school where she works. It had just posted, there was no broker’s fee, and the rent was $1,550 a month.

When she went to see the apartment the next day, the first thing that caught her eye was the blue kitchen cabinets, which reminded her of the kitchen in her favorite childhood home. “I loved the blue cabinets,” said Williams, who immediately felt drawn to the space.

There were other pleasant surprises: high ceilings, an enormous mirror in the living room and, even though the apartment was on the second floor, a huge outdoor space on the roof in the rear of the house. It was also the entire floor of a town house, which meant it had good light on two sides. And the rent included electricity, which made it feel like a little less of a stretch.

Then, as she waited to hear back about her application, wondering how she’d assemble the move-in money, she started receiving unexpected checks. There was an insurance reimbursement from when someone had hit her parked scooter in January, then two more checks from after-school work that she’d forgotten were coming. Friends volunteered to help her move. Then the broker called to tell her that since her credit was excellent, she could have the apartment.

When people ask her how she found her new home, she tells them: God. “I’m serious,” said Williams, who keeps a copy of the Bible on her coffee table. “I wasn’t prepared at all and the timing just worked out perfectly.” At the lease signing, she was excited when the landlady told her she’d prayed for a tenant like her.

“Living alone, I always wanted to do it — I think most people do — but I never thought I’d be able to with my salary and paying off loans,” said Williams, who moved in this April.

When Williams first came to New York six years ago, living alone had been out of the question. It was hard enough to afford room shares working as a researcher at an educational nonprofit. Later, when she started training to become a teacher, money was even tighter.

She got along with her roommates, but no place she lived really felt like home. There was a teeny-tiny, $1,100 bedroom in the East Village and a windowless bedroom on the Upper East Side, followed by shares without heat, shares with collapsing ceilings, shares with paper-thin walls and shares where one of the four roommates was always an Airbnb guest.

She often found herself longing for the quietude of her own space, where she wouldn’t have to make conversation in the kitchen or the hall.

“I identify as an introvert,” Williams said. “I love to be alone, to journal or read in the evenings or listen to music without lyrics, especially after spending a long day with 13-year-olds.”

She started sprucing up her new space shortly after moving in, repainting the living room from a buttercream hue to a grayish white, and replacing the light fixtures in the living room and bedroom.

“I really want to do the apartment justice. It has a lot of character, but it’s older so it needs love and attention,” she said. “I’m learning a lot about my own style. With roommates I had to make the most of what was given to me. Here I can get a sense of what I actually like.”

The landlady, who lives downstairs, has also promised to help her learn to garden — a welcome offer since Williams has had trouble even keeping succulents alive, which she admits may not be the fault of bad light in her previous apartments.

“I feel comfortable here; it’s becoming a home,” she said. “It feels like I have privacy and space, but if I need anything I can just shout.”

Occupation: English teacher at a public middle school. She also trains teachers through the New York City Teaching Collaborative and New York City Teaching Fellows.

Kitchen cabinets for art supplies: On a friend’s recommendation, Williams started keeping her nonperishable food in the refrigerator to free up space for her arts-and-crafts supplies. She taught herself how to macramé and also makes candles with essential oils.

Unexpected bonus: “Now that I live by myself, my dad wants to visit. He’s never visited me in New York before. So that’s exciting.”

On upgrading from a scooter to a motorcycle: “There are so many potholes in New York, I wanted to focus on learning how to navigate through the streets safely before I had to manage the clutch. I’ve wanted a motorcycle since I was a kid.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="1c8e7cd7-2b71-4022-83a9-a08370df309d" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/realestate/a-nice-one-bedroom-even-on-a-teachers-salary.html">The New York Times</a>.

A nice one-bedroom, even on a teacher's salary

(Renters): NEW YORK — Rachael Williams decided it was time to live alone this winter, after the second time in three years one of her roommates stopped paying rent.

But they always came away from the tree-lined streets feeling something was lacking. They were moving to New York, in part, to be closer to their son and daughter. But they weren’t coming here for the peace and quiet. What they wanted was action.

They found it on the 34th floor of a Herald Square high-rise.

“When I walked in here, I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh,’” Carolyn Thornton said. “We wanted those views.”

Thornton added: “It’s a great way to wake up — seeing the sky, the clouds, the light. At night, it’s so beautiful. We always say it looks like diamonds.”

The couple went on to describe the many things they have seen in the seven years since they took up their perch high above the street in the Continental, a 53-story glass tower on Sixth Avenue: Fourth of July fireworks, the construction of several skyscrapers, the yellow river of taxis that flows along Sixth Avenue, parades, protests, marching drum lines and the occasional solitary trumpeter. During snowstorms, the flurries whirl around them as if they were inside a snow globe.

“Our daughter was like, ‘Why did you choose to live in Midtown?’” Carolyn Thornton said. But they thought it ideal to be above all those subway lines and right in the mix of things, within walking distance of so many places.

“When we first moved here, we’d walk everywhere,” she said. “I think that’s the best way to get to know the city.”

Of course, there is the matter of navigating the crowds.

“Leaving the building is like entering a motorway; there’s a constant flow of people,” Thornton said. “If you don’t like that, you’re not going to like Midtown. But we like the excitement.”

“It’s like living in a movie set,” Carolyn Thornton said.

Before moving to New York, the couple had only ever lived in Texas, where Carolyn Thornton worked as a librarian and Bill Thornton, in addition to his term as mayor, was an oral and maxillofacial surgeon.

“We’d lived in San Antonio for 40 years. We were deeply embedded there: in our church, civically, professionally,” Carolyn Thornton said. “And we both had good lives, complete lives. But we were open to new opportunities; we wanted to grow in a different way.”

The day they left their house in Texas, Carolyn Thornton said their daughter called to ask if she was doing OK. “I said, ‘Well, yeah!’”

“We had to let go to allow this to happen,” Bill Thornton said. “We knew we couldn’t maintain a residence there if we were really going to live here. Like Cortes, we burned the boats on the beach.”

From their sparsely decorated two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment — their philosophy is who needs paintings on the wall when you have a stunning view in every room — they make regular excursions to plays and musical performances. On a recent morning, they walked over to the New York Philharmonic to hear Brahms Symphony No. 4 at one of the orchestra’s open rehearsals.

“We’re sitting there on Wednesday morning, listening to this world-class music,” Carolyn Thornton said.

On Sundays, they walk over to services at Marble Collegiate Church and, not infrequently, they also go out for lunch or dinner. They are such big fans of the neighborhood, in fact, that Bill joined the local business improvement district, the 34th Street Partnership, as its residential representative.

Living in a commercial district has been lovely, he said: Cleaning crews keep the streets tidy, and there are plenty of potted plants, shrubs and trees, along with chairs, tables and free public programs.

One thing that did concern them when they moved into the building was the age of the other tenants, who were decades younger. Would the building be noisy? Would they feel out of place?

Happily, the answer has been no on both counts. They have befriended several 30-something couples in the building and, feeling emboldened by the success of their cross-generational overtures, have also gotten to know several younger people through their church.

“We ended up having a lot of fun, going to brunch together,” Carolyn Thornton said. “I feel like a lot of people in this town miss having an older generation around, and we were totally free. We weren’t their parents. I can’t imagine that happening in any other place.”

They have also discovered some distinct advantages to being the only resident graybeards. For most of the day, the building’s public terrace is essentially their private terrace. Of late, they have taken to watching a pair of hawks that usually put in an appearance around 4 p.m.

“Because everyone else is working or going to school, when we go out, we’re usually the only ones there,” Bill Thornton said. “We take some wine and our binoculars, and go on up.”

$7,225 | Herald Square Carolyn and Bill Thornton, 72 and 74

Occupations: Carolyn Thornton is a retired librarian; Bill Thornton is a former mayor of San Antonio and a retired oral and maxillofacial surgeon.

California or New York: “In Newport or Laguna Beach (California), you wake up, the grass is green, the ocean’s blue, there’s a yoga class on the grass. You wake up the next day, the grass is green, the ocean’s blue, there’s a yoga class on the grass,” Bill Thornton said. “We wanted a more stimulating environment.”

Fluctuating rent: It started at $7,100, rose to $7,400, then came down to $7,225. “We really appreciated that the owners adjusted the rent when the market went down,” Bill Thornton said.

Party tricks: When friends come over, Bill Thorton asks which colors they would like to turn the top of a nearby skyscraper. He then makes it happen with an invite-only app called Spireworks that allows users to control the colors of lights on nearby spires.

On becoming New Yorkers: “In Texas, it’s kind of rude to ask someone how much their house cost,” Thornton said. “But here, everyone is fascinated by real estate.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="c3dc4e6f-08de-48f9-8141-3054516204e7" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/realestate/a-quiet-retirement-no-thanks-theyll-take-herald-square.html">The New York Times</a>.

A quiet retirement? No thanks, they'll take Herald Square

(Renters): NEW YORK — When Carolyn and Bill Thornton decided to retire to Manhattan from San Antonio, where Thornton had been mayor in the mid-1990s, they started by looking at apartments in placid residential neighborhoods like the Upper West Side.

He heard about the loft from a friend. On the top floor of an old factory building in a small, still-industrial area on the northern edge of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, the apartment consisted of a single enormous room with two, partially enclosed loft beds that reminded him of birdhouses. Computers and computer equipment were scattered around the room — his first roommate worked in IT — but even so, there was a lot of space.

“It was so open, it was just like this dream creative space,” Horner said. “I knew that this was a space I wanted to live and create a community in.”

In the years since, he founded the nonprofit folk music festival Porch Stomp on Governors Island, as well as Mergers and Compositions, a works-in-progress series that he produces with Will Berger, the Metropolitan Opera radio commentator, whom he met at a heavy metal show. He also tours with his band, Nick and Luke, which he describes as a “raucous brothers’ harmony duo.”

At the time, however, he was not sure what shape the community — or his musical career — would take. After leaving Michigan, where he had worked at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, a fine arts boarding school, he sensed that New York and the loft were the right places to figure it out.

Many of his neighbors were creative types drawn to the large, open spaces and the reasonable rent. Horner’s apartment has rented for $1,550 a month since he moved in, of which he pays half.

There is one catch: The rent doesn’t include heat. And because of the extremely high ceilings and rattly old windows, that can run up to $400 a month.

“I remember the first winter; it was so cold. It was really miserable to live here. I couldn’t really afford heat,” he said. “And I was so broke at first that I used to live off eggs and 50-pound bags of rice, so I wasn’t really eating well enough to stay warm.”

The first few winters were bad. But after a fellowship at Make Music New York, he started Porch Stomp, and a catering gig made it possible to stock the kitchen with more than just rice and eggs.

Frugality remains a way of life, however, and he still under-heats the apartment to save money. Now, when his hands get numb, he sometimes works at the nearby Brooklyn Kolache Co., a bakery specializing in Texan-style Czech pastries.

“You have to learn to like fashions involving sweaters,” Horner said. “If you’re cold, you go out and do stuff, or just deal with it.”

Cold winters aside, the loft has been everything he hoped it would be. He has held countless musical gatherings there, and it has become a hub for the various communities he has fostered in Porch Stomp and Mergers and Compositions.

“It’s been a huge part of my experience. I learned to be an adult here, fixing plumbing, building things. Like I built this stage from leftover wood from a project in the building,” he said, gesturing at a low platform the sofa sits on. “It’s not much, but it sets the tone for performances.”

Roommates have come and gone over the years. He makes sure new arrivals are aware before they move in that the loft functions as a community space, he said, “and they might come home to find five guys sitting in a circle with banjos.”

The décor is a mix of function — clothing racks hanging below the loft beds — and eclecticism: Covering the large walls is art bequeathed by friends, scavenged from the street or taken from the leave-behind piles of tenants moving out.

The space used to be packed with a lot more, including three large bookshelves, but of late Horner has taken pains to pare things down, putting “take a book” signs on a shelf, for example, when he has performances in the loft. He recently started touring more, he explained, and wanted to clear out stuff, “in case I have to leave abruptly.”

The lease is month-to-month, and there are signs that the landlord has positioned the building to attract more upscale tenants. The lobby has been renovated, vacant apartments upgraded and construction noise from the rooftop above his loft — a huge and heretofore completely unfinished space — has become a regular occurrence.

When Horner is not touring, the roof is among his favorite spots in New York. He uses it as a place to write, play music and exercise.

“I go up there whenever I need to escape the world,” he said. “I feel like I’m constantly faced with pressure to succeed.”

The roof, he added, “anchors me in a lot of ways — at night, it’s the most serene experience, to be above it all.”

$775, Bedford-Stuyvesant

Nicholas Horner, 30

Occupation: Musician. Horner is a singer and songwriter, and he plays guitar, banjo and upright bass. He is a member of the band Nick and Luke, and also produces musical events.

On living a 10-minute walk from a subway station: “I love its location,” he said of the apartment. “It’s an easy bike ride to rehearsals and far enough from the train that it feels a bit sequestered.”

On thin walls: When his neighbor watches TV, he can hear it, but he has fielded only one noise complaint, “when an old roommate was playing drums for hours and the rehearsal immediately segued into a flat-footing rehearsal,” he said. “We learned our lesson and now keep everything respectful!”

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This article originally appeared in <a id="7165db9e-6d11-4778-8347-55c664382f8d" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/realestate/a-cold-loft-in-an-industrial-part-of-bedford-stuyvesant-sure.html">The New York Times</a>.

A cold loft in an industrial part of Bedford-Stuyvesant? Sure

(Renters): NEW YORK — From the moment Nicholas Horner walked into the loft where he now lives, he knew it was exactly what he was looking for. That was 5 1/2 years ago, when he had just moved to New York from northern Michigan to develop a music career.

The charms of Bushwick, Brooklyn, had already started to wear thin for Ryan Cheal when the L train shutdown was announced in 2016. So he started looking for a new place last summer, about six months before repairs were scheduled to begin.

His girlfriend, Kelly Godzik, lived a few blocks away and was also dreading the looming shutdown, but had no plans to move, as her lease wasn’t up soon and she really liked her roommate.

But subway and real estate realities often can lead couples down unanticipated paths. Godzik was browsing listings on Cheal’s behalf when she came across a one-bedroom in a new building by the Broadway Triangle — an area where Bushwick, Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant meet — a short walk from the J, M and G trains. And she decided to accompany him when he went to see it.

“Our jaws were dropping when they showed us this place,” said Cheal, whose previous apartment had been a rough-around-the-edges three-bedroom share that rented for $3,000 a month.

Godzik felt her resolve to stay at her current place — also shabby and soon to be in the boondocks of Brooklyn — melt away.

“Coming in, everything was so shiny; no one has lived here before. All the places we’d lived before were pretty beat up, walls not repainted between tenants,” Godzik said. “We were like, ‘Get us out of the Bushwick dingy hole.’”

Moving in together was a big step, but after seeing the building’s rooftop, which would be outfitted with a number of barbecues come spring, the couple conferred for only a few minutes before deciding that they wanted the apartment. But only if there wasn’t a broker’s fee.

Kim Velsey

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