It's Neighbor v. Neighbors in Eviction By Carl Glassman The letter came a week before Christmas last year. George Peck says that after reading it, the next thing he remembers was his blood pressure surging and his son rushing him to the hospital. “I could not believe it. I could not accept it,” said Peck, 68, a retired medical supply salesman who tends bar part time at the Ear Inn on Spring Street. “I had to have my first nitro pill. I was going out.”   The letter said that his landlord and upstairs neighbor, Kerry Riordan, was not renewing his lease for the apartment he and his family have occupied for nearly 30 years. Riordan, who lives on the top floor with her 10-year-old son, also terminated the leases of longtime tenants in the other two rental apartments in her five-story loft building at 462 Greenwich Street. Now the tenants are preparing for a legal battle to keep the homes that Riordan asserts she can claim for her own use under the Rent Stabilization law. The law allows an owner to evict rent-stabilized tenants if he plans to use the space for himself or his family. “It’s horrible, oh God, yes, it’s horrible,” Riordan said of living above the neighbors she is evicting. But she insists that she needs the space. The landlord’s plans are not final, but she says she envisions the top floor for bedrooms, the fourth floor as a large dining room and storage area, the third floor as a studio, office and bedroom, and the second floor as a space for her husband, Michael Nolan, a dancer and choreographer from whom she said she would live separately. Riordan said she needs more room for her work—meditation, yoga, and “hands-on healing” as well as counseling clients of a drug program. And she is always taking people in, she said, from wealthy friends to homeless substance abusers whom she aids in recovery. “Lots of people stay over, all kinds of people,” she said. “I have a very broad spectrum of people in my life.” The building is an inheritance from Riordan’s family, who bought it in the early 1960s for their import-export business. After her father died, it was leased to a tenant who sublet the raw lofts. The family later took the building back and Riordan has lived there for 10 years. Several years ago, she did the work to bring the building up to residential code. Since then, the tenants have been rent stabilized, each paying about $800 a month. (A commercial tenant on the ground floor pays considerably more.) Riordan said the loss in rent would be more than offset by savings on mortgage and taxes. Residents claim that it is money alone, not the need for more space, that is driving their eviction. The law allows her to sell the building or re-rent the apartments at market rate after three years. “I don’t understand how a parent with one child needs four 1,600-square-foot floors,” says Rose Fichtenholtz, a 26-year tenant who lives with her partner, John Gillooly, in the apartment below Riordan’s. If the case goes to court, David Rattner, the lawyer for Fichtenholtz and third-floor tenants Christine Ward and Robert Duffy, hopes to convince a judge that Riordan is not acting in good faith. He acknowledges that it won’t be easy. “If the owner can say with a straight face that he needs these apartments, it shifts the burden to the tenant and that makes very problematic cases.”   In 1996, pioneer Tribeca artists living at 323 Greenwich Street fought eviction from building owner Jonathan Chodosh, who lived on the top floor with his wife and three children. Their lawyer questioned Chodosh’s claim that he planned to convert their building into a single-family home with four bedrooms, five-and-a-half bathrooms, a guest room, a music room and more. The tenants lost. Tenants said that timing made news of their eviction even worse. “How do you decide to evict people less than three months after someone tried to blow up the neighborhood?” said Fichtenholtz. “I have a real sense of indignation about that.” Riordan sees it differently. “There are more places available [to move], and you get incentives,” she said. Because of Peck’s age, Riordan is obliged by law to find him equivalent housing. She says she’s been looking, but Peck says he does not want to leave or be bought out. “I look around and this is my life,” said Peck, who shares the apartment with his 23-year-old son, Eiko. “I’ve seen people born here and die here. I’ve walked through this door a hundred thousand times. I’ve built everything. If I have to go into another place then, mentally, it’s death to me.” Late last month, Riordan told the Trib that she planned to make a “very generous offer” to buy out her tenants. “It’s just all too painful,” she said. As for Peck, whom she calls a friend despite her attempt to evict him, Riordan said he has nothing to worry about. “As far as I’m concerned George and the kids can live with us,” the landlord said.