Judge rules that homeowner must fix up landmarked house

From the Daily News:

A Staten Island judge on Thursday ordered the owners of one of the city's oldest houses to fix it immediately or run the risk of having to pay fines of more than $8.5 million — 20 times the property's fair market value.

In a colorfully written, 22-page decision, Staten Island Supreme Court Justice Philip Straniere said the owners knew in 2009 when they bought the historic Manee-Seguine Homestead that the house and surrounding acres were landmarked and they would be responsible for maintaining the building.

Instead, he said, they adopted a policy of “demolition by neglect” and ignored prior court orders to make repairs and post bonds that could be used to fund fixes.

Straniere added that the owners never filed a hardship application with the city to get out of the landmark designation for the house, which was built starting in 1690 and designated a landmark in 1984.

Under the designation, the owners were allowed to build residential units on the two-acre, ocean-view parcel as compensation for maintaining the historic home — one of the six oldest houses in the city. But they did not do that, either.

"(The owners) do not have to take any steps to develop the property; that is their choice. But they are required by the statute to maintain it. They have not done so," the judge wrote.

He said the city's request for an injunction to block the owners permanently from “continuing their policy of ‘demolition by neglect’... is granted.”

LPC goes after owner of neglected landmark

From DNA Info:

The city is suing the owner of one of Staten Island's oldest houses for letting the property fall into disrepair and then blaming the damage on Hurricane Sandy.

The historic Manee-Seguine Homestead at 509 Seguine Ave., which was built in the 1670s, has a large hole in its roof and a crumbling chimney that the owner has failed to repair, the Landmarks Preservation Commission said in papers filed April 22 in Staten Island Supreme Court.

Leonard Tallo, who owns Intrepid Construction, bought the building in 2009 and told the LPC that he would get the building into shape. But the court papers claim he's failed to do so.

“Defendants have failed to maintain this building in a condition of good repair, despite repeated requests to do so over the past three years by Landmarks,” the suit said.

“Because of the neglect... the structural integrity of this landmark building has been compromised and there is an on-going significant deterioration of its important character-defining architectural features.”

Andrew Lenza, Tallo's lawyer, told the city that the homestead was severely damaged by Sandy, that it was “red-tagged” by the Department of Buildings and that it was slated for demolition, the court papers said.

But when workers from Landmarks went to see the destruction, they found no evidence that the storm surge even reached the historic home, the suit said.

Nick Matranga, 43, who started the Friends of Abraham Manee-Seguine Homestead, said his group has tried since 2010 to coordinate with Tallo to help restore the dilapidated home, free of charge, but Tallo was unresponsive.