The majority owners of a Downtown apartment co-op are hoping that City Council-approved changes to the city’s rent control ordinance will stand. Thus, they have asked a Superior Court judge to reconsider his ruling last month to allow tenants of the building to bring the changes to a referendum.
Queens-based Metrovest filed a motion earlier this month for Superior Court Judge Arthur D’Italia to reconsider his Jan. 31 ruling. D’Italia had ruled in favor of tenants at Metropolis Towers (formerly Gregory Park) on Marin Blvd., who sought to strike down a council-approved change to the city’s rent control law via referendum. A hearing is set for Feb. 26.
Metrovest had charged that the City Clerk had not fully disclosed all signatures on the tenants’ petition to bring the matter to a referendum. D’Italia performed his own certification of the signatures and came up with the same number as the city clerk.
Petitioners needed to submit 2,472 signatures to get the rent control ordinance on the ballot.
City Clerk Robert Byrne dismissed Metrovest’s charges this week, and said, “I’m very confident that Judge D’Italia will rule favorably. I have nothing to be concerned about.”
Attorneys representing Metrovest did not return repeated calls for comment.
The ordinance that is now being challenged by some 56 tenants would make a provision to allow former federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-mortgage or HUD-owned buildings coming out of bankruptcy to be subject to a one-time rent increase at market value, and thereafter be placed under rent control.
The council voted 6-3 in October to adopt the ordinance.
The tenants’ attorney, Bryan Blaney, said the latest action by Metrovest is simply a delay tactic, and could cost taxpayers money.
“If they are successful in delaying this,” he said, “it has to go to a special election.” City Clerk Byrne had intended to put the referendum on the May municipal election ballot. An election on a different date could cost around $200,000.
The now-dubbed “Metropolis Towers” were on the brink of foreclosure when George Filopoulos in 1999 assumed a portion of the buildings’ $25 million mortgage owed to the federal department of Housing and Urban Development. He also took over 340 of the two buildings’ 770 units as a major “shareholder.” But when he tried to raise rents – some by as much as 200 percent – on the advice of the city’s rent leveling administrator, he got sued. Filopoulos lost when a Hudson County Superior Court Judge determined that the buildings should still be considered under rent control.
He then got the City Council to approve an amendment to the current rent control law to specifically apply to buildings of that ilk.