From GlobeSt:The city’s Loft Board, which oversees the conversion of loft buildings from commercial to residential use, has been folded into the Department of Buildings, the Bloomberg administration announced on Friday. Mayor Michael Bloomberg made the change via an executive order.
The transfer is intended to streamline communication among code enforcement agencies, including the Fire Department and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and to facilitate compliance with the law by the remaining 300 buildings under the Loft Board’s jurisdiction, according to a release. Bloomberg says in a statement that the order "provides the board with more resources to ensure the remaining properties that do not meet code standards are renovated to meet those standards."
Created in 1982 as a result of the state Legislature’s enactment of a law to establish a framework for converting lofts, the Loft Board is chiefly responsible for working with owners and tenants of loft buildings on making renovations to comply with code provisions and obtain residential certificates of occupancy. Once compliance is reached and certificates of occupancy are issued, the buildings move out of the board’s jurisdiction.
1 comment:
This "board" was just a sop to landlords.
My Father was an art dealer here in the 50s -late 1970s most of those lofts were occupied by artists who were given cheap rents in exchange for leasing properties that would never again house the manufacturing business they were built for. The low rents were quid pro quo for maintaining income from those building while artists did -all- of the repairs and modifications needed for residential occupancy...the City inspectors looked the other way.
Along came Mayor Crotch and his R.E. buddies in cahoots with the hick republicans upstate and soon you had a framework that allowed landlords to legally rent these spaces for living quarters....and as always happens...the artists were either evicted outright or simply priced out.
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