Americans today are moving toward a more well-developed awareness of their environment, and what it takes to protect and preserve earth’s natural resources. City dwellers and suburbanites alike typically recycle paper, plastic, and glass st…
2015 September
Focus on... Energy & The Environment
In the past, talking about garbage in New York City was left to disgruntled residents or comedians who were looking for something funny about the Big Apple to joke about. In days gone by, when you opened something up, you simply threw awa…
The process of producing energy for metropolitan area co-ops and condos has dramatically evolved in recent years, advancing to the point in which Lewis Kwit, the president of Energy Investment Systems, based in Manhattan, makes a relatively…
These days, as the summers get hotter, the storms get bigger and climate change is finding its way into more headlines than ever before, more attention is being paid to the environment and how the average citizen can do his or her part to s…
During a recent news conference about noise pollution, Michael Horodniceanu—the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s president of capital construction—had to shout in order to be heard while speaking at a Second Avenue construction proje…
While high-rise residential buildings put many people and families in very close proximity to one another, living side-by-side doesn’t automatically turn a group of people into a community—sometimes it even has the opposite effect. Lives …
Co-op and condo board members are charged with the all-important responsibility to make critical policy decisions that ensure the building, the property, and their neighbors' interests are cared for and protected. It's a job that requires l…
It’s a common scene on a New York street. A woman dressed in head-to-toe black is walking down the street, chatting on her phone. A rat the size of a small cat appears from behind a garbage can and wanders right across the woman's path; her…
Are you a building manager who wants to retrofit your building with energy-efficient lighting? Or maybe you're a board trying to re-do your central air conditioning system, but you don’t know if you have it in your budget? Thankfully, there…
Buying an apartment in New York can be a real odyssey—finding a place that fits your budget and other requirements, securing a mortgage, gathering reams of paperwork for the closing...all very stressful and tedious. But for those buying int…
The presence of unfamiliar cooking aromas, 'foreign' music in the hallways, multilingual chatter in the elevators, and increasing numbers of younger newcomers collecting their mail in the lobby alongside older longtime residents—these are s…
Named after the 32nd president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Roosevelt Island is a narrow island sitting in the middle of New York City's East River. It lies between Manhattan Island to the west and the borough of Queens on Long Island to the …
Q I received a letter, dated May 4, 2015, stating that I have an illegal tenant occupying my unit. It stated that all unit owners must inform management about any tenants and provide proper paperwork, including names, phone numbers, and …