From the Daily News:A top official at the embattled Board of Elections has let a landmark brownstone she owns on the upper West Side become a neighborhood nightmare.
Community leaders have spent years pleading with Diane Haslett-Rudiano, the Board of Election’s chief clerk in Brooklyn, to unload the vacant and decrepit townhouse on W. 76th St.
The 123-year-old building, which city records show she bought for just $5,000 in 1976, could fetch as much as $5.5 million today, according to real estate brokers — yet Haslett-Rudiano refuses to sell.
And so the building slips into further disrepair by the day.
More than $12,000 in back taxes and 20 Buildings Department violations have piled up, records show. Last month, the Landmarks Preservation Commission slapped Haslett-Rudiano with a violation for failing to maintain the cornice, threatening a fine of $5,000 a day.
“It’s a tragedy,” says Judy Samuels, a teacher who has lived in an adjacent townhouse since 1984.
Another neighbor, Kristine Reynal, a banker, calls the dilapidated building a “health concern and a safety concern.”
“I am horrified that this public figure is so negligent and disrespectful,” she said.
The brownstone is in such disrepair, it was named one of the five ugliest buildings on the upper West Side last year by the West Side Spirit.
4 comments:
In 2005, the city Department of Investigations unearthed evidence that she lived in Queens ....
WELL THAT EXPLAINS A LOT.
In 1990, it was given landmark status as part of the Upper West Side/Central Park West Historic District.
LANDMARK THIS WHILE BUILDING AFTER BUILDING IN QUEENS GETS REJECTED?
OVERTURN THE LANDMARKS LAW!
Pray tell, sir...
on WHAT BASIS do you propose overturning the landmarks law?
That law has been upheld numerous times in the United State Supreme Court.
The real problem that exists with historic preservation, is people like yourself...who continually babble,"Do this. Do that" without any legal footing.
Gramps, get out of your armchair and find a lawyer to ...LOL...overturn the landmarks law.
Do you have a learning disability?
You've been told time and again that you have no legal leg to stand on here.
Every person deserves equal protection under the law. If your councilman is against it, the law does not exist in your community even though you pay taxes to support it.
There are many ways to contest the law. These particular points have never been brought up in court.
The landmarks law is a sham.
The Landmarks law is indeed a sham, since it only pertains to the connected 1% in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Only.
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