Tenants will receive $68 M. in damages.

The tenants of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village have finally settled their class action suit, winning $68.7 million in damages that will be awarded to tenants who were overcharged on their rent between January 2003 and December 2011 as a result of illegal rent deregulation.

The settlement means an end to the lengthy Roberts v. Tishman Speyer legal battle. Tishman Speyer defaulted on its loans in 2010 and the property is now owned by CW Capital Asset Management LLC. The damages, to be paid by CWCapital (on behalf of the
bondholders' trust) and former owner MetLife Inc, will be divided among 21,250 tenants in 4,300 units.

The settlement, pending final court approval that could come as early as April 2013, will mean that damages of some $10,000 will be awarded to each of the 4,300 units deemed to have been affected by overcharging. It also means that tenants' plans to buy the complex themselves in a bid to protect the buildings as a increasingly rare refuge for Manhattan's middle class might finally move forward.

Tenants sought $215 million in compensation for the rent overcharges, which is far more than the current award, but the plaintiff's attorneys say that the final agreement will bring the total recovery in the lawsuit to at least $146.8 million. In addition to compensating tenants for past rent overcharges, the agreement also includes savings in the form of future rents, which will be based on a formula that factors in market conditions and tenant turnover rates.

"We believe this settlement provides an extraordinary recovery for our clients and we couldn't be happier for them," said Ronald Aranoff of Bernstein Liebhard, one of the plaintiff's lead attorneys, in a statement.

The agreement also guarantees rent stabilization through 2020, when the complex's J-51 tax benefits expire, reinstating the benefit to a number of residents whose units had been erroneously deregulated. Tenants who signed market rate leases will be offered modified rents or their original rent grown by the yearly rent guidelines board increases.

The settlement comes after some 18 months of negotiations. The complex has been mired in drama ever since Tishman Speyer bought the complex for $5.4 billion in 2007 with plans to draw an upscale clientele in the market for luxury apartments.

CW Capital Partners took care to point out that they took over the complex almost four years after the suit was first filed.

“Since then we have worked hard to try to balance the interests of residents and bondholders, recognizing that our fiduciary responsibility to investors must respect the concerns of tenants who call Peter Cooper Village Stuyvesant Town home," wrote CW managing director Andrew MacArthur in a release.

The settlement deals with less than half of the complex's 11,229 units spread out across 56 buildings.

Rather than heralding the announcement, lifelong resident and council member Dan Garodnick issued a cautious statement.

Currently, there are 78,000 valid parking placards distributed by various authorities in the city. The president of Transportation Alternatives, Paul Steely White, said his group surveyed six neighborhoods, and out of 1,450 permits found, 343 were fake. "That means that between 10,000 and 25,000 fake permits are used regularly in the city," White said.

That's more than the 12,000 yellow taxi cabs currently on the road here, he noted.

"More often than not these placards are getting a free pass," said City Councilman Dan Garodnick, who joined White and others on the City Hall steps to announce the findings. "We can assume that is because parking permits denote a level of prestige and privilege and many traffic agents want to risk running up against someone in power even if they are parked at a fire hydrant or on a sidewalk."

Garodnick introduced the Authentic Permit Act to the City Council in early February, calling for a barcode to be added to all legitimate permits so that parking enforcement agents can scan each permit to see if it is both real and being used by the registered car.

"If there is no barcode, there is no reason to not write a ticket," Garodnick said.

Garodnick's bill, which has 21 co-sponsors, was introduced nearly three months ago, but he said that he has spoken with Jimmy Vacca, the chair of the Council's Transportation Committee, and Vacca reportedly "expressed an interest in the bill and a desire to hold a hearing on it." While no hearing date is set, supporters hope it will come in the next few months.

Parking issues are making big news throughout the city, as 40 NYPD officers are being investigated for reportedly "taking care" of their friends parking tickets as a courtesy.

Late last week, just before co-owners Tishman Speyer and Blackrock decided to jump ship on the property, Charles Spetka, president of CWCapital Investments, penned a letter to Councilman Dan Garodnick, who lives in Peter Cooper Village.

CWCapital, which is the special servicer on the senior mortgage and will likely control the property from here on out as it sorts through the desires of the various creditors, didn't say much definitive, but pledged to be open throughout the process. "We are committed to continuing to develop a better understanding of the residents' point of view, maintaining open lines of communication, and working together to find a solution which is fair and just," Mr. Spetka wrote.

(This stands in contrast to the firm's press strategy, which is summed up on its Web site: "Due to the confidential nature of special servicing contracts and functions we can not discuss any details related to properties within our special servicing portfolio.")

Mr. Spetka made clear in his letter that the firm's obligation is to "protect the first mortgage lenders' ability to be repaid the $3 billion that was lent," though he suggested the interests of tenants and lenders are aligned. "The current situation is difficult but we believe strongly that the underlying value of these properties is directly linked to maintaining the attributes of Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town that have consistently attracted residents to the properties and led so many residents to call them their home for generations," he wrote.

He ended the letter by lavishing some praise on Mr. Garodnick for his leadership on the issue—never a bad move with an elected official, particularly one who was a thorn in the side of Tishman Speyer.

"We understand that you are an outstanding community leader," he wrote. "We pledge to you that as we move forward in this process, we will make every effort to work cooperatively with you and the residents."

CW Capital _ 1 22 2010

There's now a common bond between Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village and a sea of new homes in the Las Vegas suburbs: mortgage default.

Last week, the giant real estate firm Tishman Speyer and its investors missed the full monthly debt payment on their $3 billion mortgage, triggering default and a new era of uncertainty at the 11,200-apartment complex.

A small city in its own right, Stuy Town has always been more of an emblem of broader real estate trends than just another set of red-brick buildings. It emerged in a postwar building boom in the 1940s, and sold in late 2006 at the exuberant peak of the market for the highest price ever paid for a single property.

Now, as a restructuring looms over what is presumably the largest ever default on an individual property, a fight to shape the complex's long-term place in Manhattan is in its nascent stages. Tenants and elected officials hold that the historic property should stay a permanently affordable home for middle-class New Yorkers-a refuge insulated from the long-term upward march of rents. On the other side are the investors who bought the complex without permanent affordability requirements, and are presumably cool to the idea of anything that might further injure their red-soaked balance sheets. Already, tenants are looking to buy the property themselves; real estate firms are swirling, looking for involvement; and the Bloomberg administration is signaling a new willingness to intervene, with all looking to steer Stuy Town in one direction or another.

"There's a mountain of interest amongst the residents," Al Doyle, president of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village tenants association, said of a sale. "We'd like to try to be able to influence-to have a say in our housing situation."

A Restructuring Awaits

The question of Stuy Town's future is not a new one, and indeed, just three years ago, it seemed to be answered pretty definitively. With the Tishman Speyer-led team in control of the property's fate thanks to their superhigh bid, the East Side property was on course to be a luxurious Manhattan enclave, complete with shiny granite, a new movie theater, a thick forest of added trees and shrubbery and, eventually, a full stock of market-rate-paying renters.

This route was chosen-understandably, given the $5.4 billion MetLife and its shareholders received-in the face of a tremendous effort by tenants and sympathetic lawmakers to publicly pressure MetLife into keeping much of the complex affordable. Rallies with bullhorns and public grandstanding by every politician from Senator Chuck Schumer to Council Speaker Christine Quinn were apparently not enough to affect the end result.

But the reckoning of a bid with audacious assumptions about rent growth and apartment deregulation has opened the door once again to a debate over affordability. With the cash shortage-the owners assumed that by 2011 the property would be generating $480 million annually; this year, analyst firm Realpoint estimates, it will have just $285 million or so in revenue-a default now means that Tishman Speyer and its partners no longer control the property. A restructuring awaits; Tishman Speyer wants to hold on to the property, but it's not uncommon for owners in large foreclosures to be removed.

Post-Tishman Possibilities

Just what a restructuring would look like is tremendously murky, but the fate of the complex for now lies in the hands of a player that has suddenly become a new force in New York real estate: CW Capital. The Massachusetts-based real estate firm is the "special servicer" meant to sort through all the various debt holders on the $3 billion mortgage, which was chopped up into pieces and sold as bonds of a commercial-mortgage-backed security in 2007.

Given that the complex is now valued by analysts at about $2 billion-a surprise court decision that ruled that the owners were not allowed to deregulate stabilized units has helped keep the price low-many of the bondholders are sure to take a hit of some sort. It will be up to CW Capital, at the advice of various bondholders who have the most at stake, to figure out just what to do. CW Capital declined to comment.

Going forward, questions abound for the special servicer in the immediate future, particularly in the wake of last year's court decision that has left murky waters: Will the owners renovate apartments? How many vacant apartments will they rent, and at what prices? What will they do about litigation related to the rent-regulation lawsuit?

And, perhaps most significantly for Tishman Speyer in the short run: Who will manage the property? Tishman Speyer, which only put about $56 million into the deal itself, currently gets a fee to manage the property. Often in foreclosures, the special servicer removes the manager, given that it could have skewed incentives (to cut back on maintenance, for instance), particularly if it's unlikely to emerge as the owner after a restructuring.

Then there is the question of who will own the property, and how it will be restructured. A Deutsche Bank report from November said that the "most likely workout strategy," in the view of the authors, was a bankruptcy filing that could leave the Tishman Speyer team in, with a restructuring in which the mortgage holders take a hit. The costs of selling the property would be high, the authors, Richard Parkus and Harris Trifon, pointed out, and there is uncertainty over the value in the wake of the court decision.

Another option would be to foreclose and to flip Stuy Town, as the debt holders at the 1,200-unit Riverton complex in Harlem have asked for on that distressed property; this move would clearly remove Tishman Speyer. (By comparison, Riverton has been enmeshed in the courts for nearly a year, after owner Stellar Management defaulted on a $225 million loan.)

It's hard to say how smoothly everything will go over, but as a general rule, the more angry investors involved, the greater the potential for lengthy legal battles. And there are a lot of investors who have lost tens, if not hundreds, of millions (to name a few: a state of Florida retirement fund; two California retirement funds; the Church of England; and SL Green, New York's largest office landlord).

Daniel, Fannie and Freddie

Whatever happens, the tenants, who make up a large and vocal constituency for any of the local elected officials, have made clear that they want a seat at the table, and that they want affordability guarantees for the long term (which is not to say that any of the private firms involved have any obligation to listen).

The strategy thus far of the elected officials and the tenant association has been to pressure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who hold a considerable amount of the debt on the property-local Councilman Daniel Garodnick said he believes it to be about $2.1 billion-to push for a solution with affordability, perhaps through a sale to the tenants.

They don't shy from playing the bailout card, as the federal government committed up to $200 billion in 2008 to back the two government-chartered companies.

"I believe they're significant players in any restructuring," Mr. Garodnick said. "If they choose to wield their influence-taxpayers bailed them out in the last 12 to 18 months and supported their restructuring-we expect that they will stay true to their charter and find a way to support the tenant goals here. ... There is no limit to their influence."

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac counter that they do not have a legal say in the matter. They hold senior debt on the property and would be the first to be repaid in a sale, and thus, legally, the special servicer is obligated to listen to the less-senior debt holders first. (A spokeswoman for Freddie Mac said the firm does not expect losses on the property, as its holdings are credit-enhanced, a form of bond insurance.)

Still, Mr. Garodnick, who lives in Peter Cooper Village, isn't buying it, and the strategy remains to apply pressure. The tenants association launched a postcard-writing campaign to both companies, along with CW Capital, requesting a seat at the table. And Mr. Garodnick helped put together a letter from numerous elected officials, including Representative Carolyn Maloney, requesting the cooperation of Fannie and Freddie (to which the companies replied that they do not have control).

This strategy-lean on Fannie and Freddie until they cooperate with tenants, instead of selling for a higher return-worked in the Bronx on a property in which Fannie owned a $29 million loan. Affordability advocates rounded up numerous elected officials, including Senator Schumer, to repeatedly hold press conferences pressuring the companies. The result was a sale to Omni New York, an affordable-housing developer.

"We thought they would like to do something that was preservation-minded, but it was quite a bit of a struggle-quite a bit," Dina Levy, policy and organizing director for the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, a nonprofit group involved, said of Fannie.

Still, Fannie and Freddie also receive much pressure in Washington to achieve financially solvency, a competing aim of theirs.

And Then There's Mike ...

Then there is the issue of the Bloomberg administration, and what role it will play, if any. Officials there are looking at the property closely, though it is premature to say how they could intervene if they wanted to, as, for now, it is a fully private deal. In 2006, administration officials looked at backing a tenant-led effort to buy the property, but ultimately backed off, preferring to direct its housing money for building new units in the outer boroughs as opposed to affordability preservation in the Manhattan property, which officials said at the time was more expensive.

Costs of preservation at the complex have fallen, though, and last week the commissioner of the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Rafael Cestero, issued a statement saying it is the city's "overriding concern" that the apartments at Stuy Town "remain a key component of the city's affordable-housing stock for generations to come."

Of course, whatever occurs from the restructuring, it's not going to happen overnight, and it could easily remain a private transaction. All the bullhorns and bluster demanding affordability in 2006 had no effect on the result, and the private firms that have the most at risk generally have an obligation to see the maximum return.

ebrown@observer.com

The owners are still trying to restructure about $3 billion in debt, which must be galling, since current estimates put the value of the building at about $1.9 billion. No one's sure what happens next.

"For so many years, this was the epitome of stability for middle-class New Yorkers," Councilman Dan Garodnick, and longtime resident, told the Times. "Now there are endless questions about its future."

The purpose? To declare victory against the money-loving, rent-raising, tenant-hating behemoth (their implied description) landlord that is Tishman Speyer, and to show the 20,000 or so tenants/constituents/voters who live in the complex that they support the decision. The ruling, which still must be interpreted by a lower court to determine its full implications, will halt the deregulation of vacant rent-stabilized apartments, and end the pressure Tishman Speyer has felt to step up evictions of regulated tenants (thereby gaining market rate rents from the next tenants).

"After what they have done to tenants for the past several years--legal notices, aggressive actions, now inspections of every unit on the property with very, very little notice or warning," Garodnick said, "it's hard to feel very bad for them."

Thompson, who has said he wants more rent protections for existing tenants, didn't go as far in lashing out at Tishman Speyer, but celebrated the tenants.

"This is a great day, a great victory," he said.

He went on to recall the failed effort of the tenants to buy the complex in 2006, and called the day when Tishman was officially named the winning bidder, "a dark day for affordability in New York."

But it's almost curious he didn't make a bigger deal of this, as it's a populist, pro-tenant issue where he actually does have a rather different approach than Mayor Bloomberg. Thompson supported the tenants' efforts to buy the complex themselves--for which they were hoping for city subsidies to help keep the property affordable--whereas Bloomberg preferred to let the private market do its thing, going to the highest bidder. The guiding theory behind going with a high bid--aside from a general predilection toward an unrestrained marketplace--was that the market rate complex would bring in tremendous amounts of tax revenue that could be better put to use to build or preserve housing on less valuable pieces of land. (The sale alone brought in more than $240 million to the city and state in transfer and mortgage taxes.)

Mid-afternoon, Bloomberg issued a statement that did not take a strong position either way--he said it "provides some degree of clarity on an issue that has been debated for a long time"--consistent with the approach his administration took during the litigation process. 

Here's the full statement:

"Today's decision provides some degree of clarity on an issue that has been debated for a long time, although the scope of its impact will take more time to know. Creating and preserving affordable housing in a city with a growing population has been one of our most important priorities. The tenant protections provided by the State's rent regulation laws have long been an essential measure to ensuring New York City accommodates people with a broad range of incomes, and today's decision means fewer units will fall out of the system than otherwise would have. But we know that - despite the ruling - the regulations still don't provide affordable housing to enough New Yorkers. That's why we created and are implementing the nation's largest municipal housing plan to create and preserve 165,000 affordable units - units with protections that go beyond rent regulation laws and maintain affordability based on New Yorkers' incomes."

The stated purpose of the inspections is to ensure temporary walls comply with building and fire safety codes, an issue the Fire Department has previously raised with the owner. Tenants and elected officials, however, suggested that the inspections were an excuse to evict longtime tenants, allowing the company to convert the units to market-rate rents.

"Without any clear purpose or limits to these inspections, tenants are left to worry that this is just a last-ditch effort to clear out longtime residents," said City Council Member Dan Garodnick, a lifelong Stuy Town resident. "These inspections should not be used as a way to play 'gotcha' with residents."

They also say that Tishman Speyer is unreasonably giving them only 48 hours' notice of an inspection and don't specify inspection times beyond 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Residents with "unsanitary conditions" have been threatened with eviction and some have had their gas turned off, they say.

Mr. Garodnick displayed a letter from Tishman Speyer, which stated that an architectural consultant and property management representative would inspect an apartment, with inspections taking five to 10 minutes.

"A landlord has the right to inspect, we appreciated that," said Mr. Gardonick, but demanded that Tishman Speyer give tenants more notice in advance of inspections, more specific inspection times, and meet with tenants to address their concerns.

John Marsh, vice president of the Tenants Association, called the inspections a "sweep" that went beyond Tishman Speyer's concern for safety. He said a man's apartment was walked in on when he was sleeping; and a female tenant was in the shower when the inspectors went into her apartment.

A tenant who said she had lived in the complex for 61 years said that inspectors did accommodate her request that they arrive between 1 and 3 p.m., but when she told them to wait outside while she was on the phone, they left after a few minutes.

"The law requires that all temporary walls be compliant with code. We take that very seriously," Tishman Speyer said in a statement. "As a result, we are conducting these inspections. If other hazards are observed during a visit, we work with our residents to address them as well."

Tishman Speyer is currently involved in a lawsuit with tenants that claims the landlord unfairly de-regulated rent controlled apartments. The landlord is also at high risk of defaulting on its loans, as the revenue the complex generates, enough to give it a value of about $2 billion, is far too little to cover payments on its $4.4 billion in debt. 

rli@observer.com

"This is a cute way of trying to go around the City Council, and I’m confident it will be subject to a legal challenge," said Brooklyn Councilwoman Letitia James.

The project in question, announced in March 2008, would turn the fabled institution at First Avenue and 30th Street, which has served the psychiatric needs of legendary, and legendarily unstable, New Yorkers like Eugene O’Neil, Charles Mingus and Allen Ginsberg, into a hotel and conference center.

At the time, according to Ms. James and Councilman Daniel Garodnick, who represents the district in which the former psychiatric hospital is located, the city promised that the project would be subject to ULURP.

A recent letter from the Economic Development Corporation to Community Board 6 Chair Lyle Frank admits as much, explaining that the city's Law Department determined, upon further review, that since the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation will lease the property directly to the chosen developer, rather than first transferring the property to EDC, no ULURP is required.

EDC also emphasized that, once a bidder is chosen for redevelopment, the proposal will still go through an extensive public review process, including appearances before the Bellevue Community Advisory Board, Community Board 6, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer's office, and New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation. It would further require the approval of the HHC Board of Directors, the City Council, and Mayor Bloomberg.

That might just be enough to satisfy Messrs. Garodnick and Frank.

"If EDC commits to noticing, seeking and getting a recommendation from the community board and borough president, it may not be all that different than a ULURP process," Mr. Garodnick said.

Ms. James isn’t so sure. The reason she and other Brooklyn pols even give a hoot is that the redevelopment of the hospital has a direct impact on Crown Heights. At the moment, Bellevue houses Manhattan’s largest homeless shelter, with 850 beds, including more than 100 dedicated to homeless men with special needs, according to a recent article in the New York Press. That intake center would be relocated to the Bedford-Atlantic Armory in Crown Heights, one of the more notorious homeless shelters in the system.

"The data and evidence here are clear: You need to maintain an intake center, the front door to the homeless shelter system for homeless men in Manhattan," said Coalition for the Homeless's Patrick Magee at a recent press conference, according to NY1. "There is no reason in the world that the city should propose moving that intake center out to Brooklyn."

The city has since committed to opening another Manhattan intake center in its place, though it has yet to indicate where.

Ms. James argued that the backtracking on the ULURP process removes one of the opposition's main points of negotiating leverage with the administration. And as far as the replacement public procedures outlined in the letter are concerned, she is dubious.

The "devil is in the details," Ms. James wrote, in an email.

Under the proposal, which was endorsed by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and State Senator Tom Duane at a press conference, Tishman would also agree to a set of ground rules for attempting to evict tenants for allegedly breaking rent-stabilization rules.

“Over the last two years, we have seen an aggressive pursuit of tenants by Tishman Speyer, claiming that people are not using their apartments as their primary residence,” Mr. Garodnick told The Observer before the press conference in front of Stuyvesant Town, echoing accounts from tenants, their advocates, and the other electeds who spoke. “Under Tishman Speyer's own numbers there are more unsubstantiated cases than there are successful ones, so it is clear that they are casting their net too widely, and that they are bringing perfectly legal tenants into their dragnet.”

Mr. Garodnick, himself a Peter Cooper Village resident, said his neighbors have had to spend thousands of dollars on legal fees contesting notices from Tishman Speyer falsely accusing them of offenses like voting outside New York City, having an out of state phone number or drivers license, and of owning property elsewhere.

“There is no excuse for Tishman Speyer, with all their lawyers, to continue bringing frivolous cases that are easily refuted by publicly available information,” he told reporters and more than a dozen tenants, prompting one woman to cheer “Atta-boy Danny!”

“When Tishman drops a case," Mr. Garodnick said, "they should drop a check in the mail.”

The guidelines also ask that Tishman put a moratorium on legal notices until they publicly explain their standards and how they are going to avoid these mistakes in the future; only send notices to tenants suspected of not living full-time in a rent-stabilized apartment after first giving them an opportunity to explain their situation; compensate tenants who do not hire a lawyer when they are challenged and later have their leases renewed with a free month of rent; and not challenge tenants who have proven legitimate occupancy when their leases are up for renewal if the facts remain the same.

It did not seem likely that Tishman Speyer would adopt the guidelines as of late Tuesday evening. A spokesman did say that 87 percent of residents at Stuy Town and Cooper Village have had their leases renewed “without question” since Tishman took over the complexes in 2006.

Mr. Garodnick did not have the numbers of how many tenants had received notices or of who has been evicted after their occupancy is challenged.

Of the remaining 13 percent who have been asked by Tishman to demonstrate that the complexes are their primary residence, roughly half have turned out to be illegal, a Tishman Speyer spokesman wrote in an e-mail responding to our request for comment.

“To just name two, we found a TV anchor living in Kalamazoo who had a rent-stabilized apartment at Stuy Town and a full-time resident of the Upper East Side who leased his Stuy Town apartment for profit,” the e-mail said. “We feel it is unfair for those people to abuse the system and do not support a culture that encourages this.”

There are certainly those who have been targeted for eviction unsuccessfully, just as there are surely those who have been justly evicted. One 17-year Cooper Village tenant at the press conference who did not want her name used in this story said she was given a lease non-renewal notice almost immediately after Tishman Speyer acquired the complexes from Met Life for $5.4 billion.

“[It] put me on the edge for several months,” said the elderly woman, who shares her tenancy on her $1,200 apartment with her brother. “They said I lived in Florida, which I do not; and I had to pay a lot of money for a lawyer, which I’m very upset about.”

Though Tishman eventually agreed to renew her lease, her relief was tempered by the knowledge that the same thing might happen every two years when it comes up for renewal. “I find it stressful because you don’t know what they’ll come up with next. The lawyers are not very nice people.”

We stopped by the party after 6 before any real dancing had begun, but the Gramercy Park church hall was already packed with mainly elderly residents decked out in denim, flannel, and other Western regalia, fuelling up on dinner before the main event.

Gaining protective status for Stuy Town is not a new idea. The Historic Districts Council first endorsed the proposal seven years ago and five years later told the Tenants Association that the complex was eligible for honorary state landmark status.

But the square dance was the first push to get the landmarking process off the ground since Tishman Speyer paid $5.4 billion for the planned community in 2006, though the tenants we spoke to Saturday night insisted the campaign is not related to their new landlord.

“I don’t connect this to Tishman Speyer,” Mr. Garodnick, clad in apropos jeans, told us.

“The landmarking effort in Stuy Town is based on its unique configuration and contribution to the social history of New York City. Even if you were to landmark the buildings it doesn’t take away the developers’ right to [charge market-rate].”

But it would prevent Tishman from building a big luxury condo in some of Stuy Town’s underutilized public space, as other developers who’ve bought planned communities in the city have done. Simeon Bankoff, the executive director of the Historic Districts Council, said preserving the configuration and layout is probably driving the “renewed push for landmarking.”

“They are fairly plain buildings so this is not about the windows,” he said.