The group commissioned SBI Consultants, an engineering firm, to study mechanical and structural issues. Slinin, the president of Corporate Transportation Group, said he was working with about 40 “concerned unit owners,” out of about 103 units, not including staff apartments, to rein in costs and address possibly dangerous conditions in the building. The residents, many of whom live elsewhere most of the year, have splintered into groups. When the building opened in late 2015, homeowners were required to spend $1,200 a year on the service in 2021, that requirement jumps to $15,000, despite limited hours of operation because of the pandemic. Some residents also railed against surging fees at the building’s private restaurant, overseen by the Michelin-star chef Shaun Hergatt. The insurance hike was partly because of a sprinkler discharge and two “water related incidents” in 2018 that cost the building about $9.7 million in covered losses, according to a letter from the residential board of managers. Residents at 432 Park complained of creaking, banging and clicking noises in their apartments, and a trash chute “that sounds like a bomb” when garbage is tossed, according to notes from a 2019 owners’ meeting.Įduard Slinin, a resident who was elected to the condo board late last year, wrote a letter to neighbors in 2020 reporting that the building’s insurance costs had increased 300 percent in two years. He has heard metal partitions between walls groan as buildings sway, and the ghostly whistle of rushing air in doorways and elevator shafts. One of the most common complaints in supertall buildings is noise, said Luke Leung, a director at the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Wind sway can cause the cables in the elevator shaft to slap around and lead to slowdowns or shutdowns, according to an engineer who asked not to be named, because he has worked on other towers in New York with similar issues. A management email explained that “a high-wind condition” stopped an elevator and caused a resident to be “entrapped” on the evening of Oct. Many of the mechanical issues cited at 432 Park are occurring at other supertall residential towers, according to several engineers who have worked on the buildings.Īll buildings sway in the wind, but at exceptional heights, those forces are stronger. The case was settled quietly the next year. The would-be buyer, who was in contract for a $46.25 million apartment, was a member of the Beckmann family, the owners of the Jose Cuervo tequila brand, according to sources familiar with the suit. The anonymous buyer of unit 84B cited a “catastrophic water flood” that caused major damage to the 83rd to 86th floors in 2016 as grounds to back out of the deal. Abramovich’s apartment several floors below the leak, causing an estimated $500,000 in damage, she said. Czarnecki said he was “not at liberty to comment.”Īfter the first incident, water seeped into Ms. Four days later, a “water line failure” on the 74th floor caused water to enter elevator shafts, removing two of the four residential elevators from service for weeks. 22, was caused by a “blown” flange, a ribbed collar that connects piping, around a high-pressure water feed on the 60th floor. There have been a number of floods in the building, including two leaks in November 2018 that the general manager of the building, Len Czarnecki, acknowledged in emails to residents. “That’s how I went up to my hoity-toity apartment before closing.” “They put me in a freight elevator surrounded by steel plates and plywood, with a hard-hat operator,” she said. She was disappointed with her purchase on Day 1, she said, when she left her home in London in early 2016 to move into what she expected to be a completed apartment, and found that both her unit and the building were still under construction. Abramovich and her husband, Mikhail, retired business owners who worked in the oil and gas business, bought a high-floor, 3,500-square-foot apartment at the tower for nearly $17 million in 2016, to have a secondary home near their adult children. The construction manager, Lendlease, said in a statement that they “have been in contact” with the developers, “regarding some comments from tenants, which we are currently evaluating.” Macklowe Properties, the other developer, declined to comment. (Developers typically control condo boards in the first few years of operation.) “Like all new construction, there were maintenance and close-out items during that period,” they said. CIM Group, one of the developers, said in a statement that the building “is a successfully designed, constructed and virtually sold-out project,” and that they are “working collaboratively” with the condo board, which was run by the developers until January when residents were elected and took control.
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