Talk about a lousy way to greet 2006: We hear the co-op shareholders at Castle Village (right) in Hudson Heights - site of the massive retaining-wall collapse last spring - are getting slapped with cleanup costs of anywhere from $12,000 to about $20,000 each! The entire project has a price tag of $20 million, according to a subletter/tipster, which includes "rebuilding, repaying the city for the original cleanup costs, and suing the insurance company and the engineering firm originally hired to shore up the wall." More unsettling details:
Shareholders received a notice with their latest maintenance bill ... This means an $11 million assessment for shareholders, to be paid in three installments over the next year - anywhere from $12K to about $20K, depending on the size of the apartment and the floor. Shareholders ... say there was no warning given about the forthcoming assessment - in fact, a new buyer was told back in the fall that there would "probably not" be any kind of assessment in the next year. Of course, that's no guarantee, but she thinks she might not have gone ahead with the purchase if she had known she would be billed $20K. Castle Village has long been thought of as a pretty good deal - big, bright apartments, river views, doorman, etc., without the UWS prices. This might change things a bit, and I worry about the little old ladies who have lived there for 25 years and have no way of coming up with a huge pile of cash within the next twelve months.
· The Hole Situation Update: Status Quo at 181st [Curbed]
· Uptown Wall Collapse [Gothamist] UPDATE: Wondering about that mention of a lawsuit? Our tipster elaborates: "The notice from the board said that any money retrieved from the insurance company or the lawsuit against the engineering company would go to repay the loans the co-op has to take (in order to get the work started) and to pay legal fees. So nobody's expecting to get anything back."