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D E C E M B E R Le Havre Board President Stanley Greenberg sat down recently with Habitat
Magazine to discuss the “ups and downs” of Le Havre’s history, from its development
in the 1950s, to its conversion to a co-op in the 1980s, to its present and future
improvements. Following is a reprint of that article.
The Rollercoaster Ride at Le Havre
Co-op Nears a New Peak
Le Havre co-op looks out at the East River and the Throgs Neck Bridge.
WWW.QNS.COM | DECEMBER 2020 | LEHAVRE COURIER 7
BY BILL MORRIS, HABITAT MAGAZINE,
DECEMBER 2, 2020
Stanley Greenberg likens life at Le Havre co-op in
Beechhurst, Queens, to a rollercoaster ride. It began
on a high note in the 1950s, when legendary developer
Bill Levitt, the creator of Levittown on Long
Island, erected 32 nine-story buildings overlooking
the East River and Little Bay and surrounded them
with amenities that included swimming pools, basketball
and handball and tennis courts, an ice-skating
rink, even a sandy beach.
After Levitt sold the property in the 1960s, years
of decline set in and the rollercoaster headed down,
says Greenberg, who rented an apartment at Le Havre
in 1972 and served as the inaugural board’s treasurer
after the 1,024-unit complex was converted to a co-op
in 1984. The sponsor addressed some of the complex’s
problems, but the cinderblock buildings were plagued
by leaks from the roofs, windows and walls.
In 2005, the board signed a whopping $53 million,
30-year mortgage with National Cooperative
Bank (NCB), which provided the cash to repair
facades, replace windows and roofs, repave parking
lots. Greenberg arranged for the first five years of the
loan to be interest-only, which allowed the board
to make the long-overdue repairs without jacking
up monthly maintenance. The rollercoaster was on
its way back up.
“Once we completed that work, there were no more
leaks,” says Greenberg, a certified public accountant
who became president of the self-managed co-op’s
board in 2011. But capital projects kept coming,
including repairing drainage systems and sidewalks
that cracked during freeze-and-thaw cycles of an
underground water table, switching the 32 boilers
from oil to natural gas, converting to LED lighting,
installing video intercoms, enhancing security cameras.
Then came the epiphany.
“Last summer,” Greenberg recalls, “I was talking to
our attorney, Geoff Mazel, and he told me how low
the interest rates had become. He put me in touch
with Ed Howe at NCB, and I told him my main concern
was the prepayment penalty on our mortgage,
which had run half of its 30-year amortization. I
learned that the penalty was 1% of the balance, which
came out to about $440,000. That was palatable. We
worked to get it below 1%.”
Better yet, the interest rate on the new loan would
go from 5.58% to 3.52%, a significant drop. Next
question: How big should the loan be? “I decided I
wanted to go back to the original amount of $53 million
so we could tackle our 10-year capital improvement
projections,” Greenberg says. “Nothing lasts
forever.”
Now came the stroke of genius. The co-op’s capital
improvement fund is fed by an ongoing assessment
that’s baked into the monthly maintenance.
Greenberg decided that, despite the lower interest
rates, shareholders would continue to pay as though
they were servicing the old debt. Greenberg then
created what he calls a “major major capital improvement
fund” of $8 million from the $53 million –
which will be fed by the monthly savings on debt
service. “It’s not going to affect shareholders,” he
says. “Everything’s going to stay the same.” Well, not
quite. In 10 years, the $8 million major major capital
improvement fund will mushroom to $22 million – at
no added cost to shareholders.
Greenberg doesn’t foresee any problem finding
ways to spend the windfall. All 32 elevators will
soon need to be modernized. The roofs will need
to be replaced again in about 10 years. Local Law
11 facade inspections and repairs are looming in
a few years. Energy-saving retrofits will likely be
required by 2024 under the city’s stringent Climate
Mobilization Act. On and on it goes. This co-op,
unlike so many others, is ready.
“We just closed on the loan, and I feel great,”
Greenberg says with evident pride. “The rollercoaster
is back on the upswing.”
PRINCIPAL PLAYERS – LENDER: National
Cooperative Bank. ATTORNEY: Hankin & Mazel.
BACK OFFICE: Metro Management.
Reprinted with permission
/WWW.QNS.COM
