“It’s…
By Tien-Shun Lee
Since it first opened in the 1940s, the Fresh Meadows apartment complex, a sprawling 140-building development with 3,258 apartment units, has been home to many families who pay rent-stabilized prices and enjoy the quiet, residential neighborhood.
“It’s basically a family place with a percentage of senior citizens,” said Florence Kleinfeld, a spokeswoman for the complex’s tenants’ association who has lived in the complex for 35 years.
Kleinfeld said the complex is a good place to live in general, even though there have been complaints of management not having much dialogue with tenants. Management offices are at 188th Street and 64th Avenue.
Originally built by New York Life, the complex has a mix of two- and three-story buildings, two 13-story buildings and one 20-story building, which was built in the 1960s. With a total area equivalent to 106 football fields, it is one of the largest residential developments in the city.
In the early 1980s, the complex was taken over by Harry Helmsley, who tried to institute an “unconscionable” rent increase of about 18 percent, Kleinfeld said. Tenants fought the increase and managed to prevent it.
In 1995, the property was taken over by Kreisel Management, which managed the complex for two years until it was bought by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for about $180 million.
In the beginning of last year, the property changed hands again to its current owner, real estate investor Rubin Schron, who also owns the $60 million Franklin Avenue Plaza office complex in Garden City, L.I. and part of the Woolworth Building in Manhattan.
Since Schron took over, apartments are no longer rented out through the complex’s management office. Instead, people seeking to rent must go through a broker and pay a broker’s fee.
Rents for apartments in the complex vary greatly, depending on how many years the tenants have lived there, Kleinfeld said. A woman in the management office of the complex said that one-bedroom apartments are being rented out for $1,175 per month and up.
Recently, a new heating and boiler unit for the hot water system was installed in the complex. As a result of this Major Capital Improvement, rents were increased by an amount based on the cost for the MCI divided by the number of rooms in the development, Kleinfeld said.
Leases on Fresh Meadows apartments are renewed once every one to two years, depending on what the lease holder prefers. Every time a lease is renewed, rent may go up by 4 to 5 percent, depending on rent-stabilization guidelines, Kleinfeld said. In total, Kleinfeld said her rent has about quadrupled since she first moved into the complex.
“We’ve enjoyed living here and this was a great place to raise kids. I think it still is,” said Larry Lansner, who has lived in the complex for 46 years. “The rents keep going up, but that’s part of rent-stabilization business. I think it’s still as good a neighborhood as there is in New York City.”
Reach reporter Tien-Shun Lee by email at Timesledger@aol.com, or call 718-229-0300, ext. 155.
