IPN Owner Says Tenants Should Fear Not by Ronald Drenger To hear Independence Plaza North’s new owner tell it, his worried tenants have nothing to fear. In an hour-long interview with the Trib, Laurence Gluck asserted that the 1,330-unit residential complex not only will become a better place to live after he withdraws it next year from the Mitchell-Lama subsidy program, but it also will remain affordable to its middle- and low-income tenants. “I respect [the tenants] for their concerns, they are natural,” said Gluck, 50, seated in his 10th floor office on William Street, with a sweeping view of Lower Manhattan behind him. “I’m going to make it my business to assuage them and make them feel comfortable. It is not my business plan to evict people. Period.” Gluck said that it would be unfair to subject tenants to full market rents “in one fell swoop.” Instead, he said, he will take a “modest, moderate and humane approach,” increasing tenants’ rents gradually. “I respect the fact that it’s their home.” But Gluck declined to specify the amount or timetable of the increases, saying that they will be established in negotiations with the IPN tenant association and city officials. Gluck and the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) say that, based on income levels, about two-thirds of IPN tenants will be eligible for “sticky vouchers,” a government rent-subsidy program that pays the difference between Mitchell-Lama-equivalent rents and market rents. The rent increases will apply to tenants who are not eligible for the vouchers. Gluck said he bought IPN as a long-term investment. “We can compromise because of the long-term horizon, because it is not our plan to pump up the rents and sell the property in two years.” The owner will be free of the Mitchell-Lama program by the beginning of next summer, barring any change in the program’s regulations. He said he believed that the City Council legislation that was introduced in August, which would make it tougher for building owners to withdraw, or “buy out,” from Mitchell-Lama, is illegal. IPN’s tenant association spearheaded the effort to craft the bill, on which the Council will likely hold hearings next month. “Mitchell-Lama is a state law,” Gluck said. “I don’t believe, as an attorney, that the City Council has the jurisdiction to make a substantive change in a state law. I also believe it will chill negotiations while it’s pending.” Nevertheless, Gluck said he was “very optimistic” that he would reach an amicable resolution with the tenants. He pointed to settlements at other complexes that were pulled from Mitchell-Lama, which he said have been fair to both owners and tenants. But IPN tenant leader Neal Fabricant has said that tenants at other developments that were withdrawn from Mitchell Lama were forced to accept “bad deals,” and some buyouts have led to bitter lawsuits. “We hope that the story has as happy an ending as he portrays,” Fabricant said of Gluck’s comments. “The jury is still out. He’s saying all the right things, but we’ll have to see how negotiations go and what he actually comes up with.” Fabricant and Gluck met once early in the summer, and Fabricant said he was awaiting a written proposal from IPN’s owner. The tenant association worries that the vouchers do not assure protection for needy tenants. Federal funding for the program, they note, is vulnerable to budget cuts. But Gluck said that the program is “not about to be terminated in any willy nilly fashion. It’s true that it’s subject to annual appropriation, but so is the U.S. military. That doesn’t mean they’re going to stop funding the U.S. military.” Gluck said that he plans to retain most of the current IPN staff and that he would make many improvements at the complex’s three 39-story buildings. This fall, he said, he will begin replacing all windows and terrace doors. Other upgrades will come after IPN is out of the Mitchell-Lama program. He said he envisions a health club using IPN’s long-neglected swimming pool—the club would be open to the community, with special rates for tenants—and he wants to transform the third-floor outdoor plaza from a “concrete jungle” into “something beautiful and lush.” He said he also wants to renovate the lobbies and enhance security. I don’t believe the tenants get the type of service that one should expect today,” he said. Gluck, who grew up in the South Bronx, seemed eager to dispel any image of himself as a wealthy developer insensitive to the concerns of low- or middle-income tenants. “I was not born to the business. I was not born to wealth,” he said. After graduating from City College, Gluck went to St. John’s Law School, then worked as a law clerk and litigator before becoming a real estate attorney. In the early 1980’s he bought his first residential properties, in south Brooklyn, then joined Steve Witkoff, a former law firm colleague, to purchase residential buildings in Washington Heights and Inwood. In the mid-1990’s they acquired several major Manhattan office buildings, including the former Daily News building at 220 East 42nd St., before splitting up. Gluck’s company now owns and manages numerous residential buildings, including the 546-unit Phillipse Towers in Yonkers, formerly under Mitchell-Lama; 223 Second Avenue; and a luxury apartment house at 85th Street and Lexington Avenue. He is also part-owner of the Park West Village complex on the Upper West Side. His commercial properties, totalling some 3 million square feet, include 14 Wall Street and 2 Rector Place. Gluck also owns properties in Florida and this year he purchased Berkshire Towers, a 1,120-unit residential complex in Silver Spring, MD. Gluck said that he planned to send all IPN tenants monthly updates on the progress of the buyout and his plans for the complex, and that he was willing to meet with the tenant body in addition to his meetings with the tenant association’s executive board. “If they call on me to meet with them, I will,” he said. “I don’t want to be disrespectful of the leadership.” But Gluck dismissed as a “red herring” the tenant association’s proposal to buy IPN. He said he wants to hold onto IPN for his children and grandchildren. “It’s not my business,” he said, “to buy property, sell it to the tenants or anybody else, and then go on to the next thing.”