“Quintessential New York location! Spectacular sunset views!” The Web site for Ramscale Productions tantalizes wedding planners with photos of its 3,500 sq. ft. penthouse and 1,000 sq. ft. terrace. How thrilling to have a wedding party in a gorgeous penthouse loft in the hottest neighborhood in town! The artist residents of Westbeth are not so thrilled, however, because they have been subsidizing Ramscale’s bargain-basement commercial rent for going on forty years. While the artists face staggering rent increases to pay more than $10 million in hurricane damage repairs and a major façade restoration, the Ramscale tenants sublet their space for as much as $10,000 a day.
For artists, a low-to-modest income is a requirement for admission, but no such restrictions apply to commercial tenants. Given the extraordinary circumstances, would it not be prudent to assess these leaseholders to help pay the repair bills? Apparently, this question is not even being asked.
Westbeth Board Sues the Attorney General
From its inception in 1970 the revenue from artist residents has far exceeded that of the commercial tenants, and for decades the Westbeth Board of Directors’ excuse has been the undesirability of the neighborhood. Although this excuse is no longer valid, the current Board refuses to reveal information about the current commercial rent roll. In fact, Executive Director Steven Neil has told the Westbeth Artist Residents Council (WARC) they do not have the right to receive any details about Westbeth’s finances.
In 2013, an attorney for an ad hoc subcommittee of WARC filed a Freedom of Information Act letter with the New York State Attorney General, requesting the financial records Westbeth had filed with their office. The AG was preparing them for release when the Board sued the Attorney General to prevent it. This legal stonewalling continues. Why is the Board going to such lengths to keep its finances a secret?
Westbeth Is a Public Charitable Trust in Perpetuity
Although the Board refuses to provide information about its current finances, an exhaustive survey of its commercial space conducted in 1985 can be used as a benchmark for current commercial rents. At that time Westbeth was in arrears on its mortgage, and an earlier Board had sponsored a co-op conversion plan as “the only way” to prevent a HUD foreclosure. A group of residents [disclosure: this writer was one of them] retained attorney Gustave Harrow to explore an alternative.
Harrow was a professor of legal ethics and art law at NYU who had recently retired from the State Attorney General’s Bureau of Charities and Trusts. At his initial meeting with the resident artists, they learned for the first time that Westbeth was a public charitable trust with special protections under the law that prohibited a co-op conversion. Its charter as a public trust also provided penalties for trustees who wasted or benefitted from Westbeth’s assets, and its mission mandated that artists’ rents be kept low by deriving a third or more of the rent revenue from its 100,000 square feet of commercial space.
In preparing his alternative to the co-op plan, Harrow did an analysis of ninety commercial leases and was shocked to find “an inexplicable failure of prudent management…with repercussions to this day.” Prime locations on the 12th floor and penthouse of the main building had been “extraordinarily undervalued.” The most egregious “sweetheart” lease was for the Ramscale penthouse, locked in for ten years at $4.20 a sq. ft. As the tenants were also living there illegally, without the necessary Certificate of Occupancy, Harrow could find “no apparent reason why this lease was not being challenged.”
The good news was that the Ramscale lease was one of eighty that would soon expire. Harrow then submitted a “forbearance agreement” that showed how three-year, “extremely prudent” commercial rent increases would resolve not only Westbeth’s current crisis but also ensure a future of “robust fiscal health.” His plan was accepted by the Attorney General, HUD, the NEA, and other relevant government agencies. Whether it was implemented is another question.
Will Westbeth Be the Next St. Vincents?
There are indications that not much has changed: Ramscale is still here, making a killing off Westbeth’s assets. One of the new commercial tenants is the son of a former Board president, occupying an office in first-floor, river-view space. Articles published in the New York Post and Real Estate News in March 2014 quote an agent hired by the Westbeth Board to broker 70,000 square feet of newly renovated commercial space. “Rents will be substantially below market. We could provide someone with a 49-year lease, and they could almost have ownership of a large block of space, with a dedicated entrance.” It seems that history is repeating itself: long leases, low rents, with “repercussions to this day.”
Will Westbeth share the fate of St. Vincent’s—a sudden collapse of a venerable nonprofit institution after years of a Board’s assurance that everything was in order? WARC president George Cominskie does not believe Westbeth is in the same situation, but he notes a similarity. “The Westbeth Board says we should trust their decisions, but if it is not transparent on fiscal and policy items, how do we really know we are not in the same situation? Past Boards took us to the brink of bankruptcy, twice, and we want to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Catherine Revland is a journalist and historian who has lived in the West Village since 1979.
it’s too back the MTA #11 Bus isn’t a hospital!
George, how about some support on getting the MTA to improve the service on the #11 bus.
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Last night, May 17, was just another example of the fact that the MTA really doesn’t care about its customers — especially seniors.
I’ve received several replies from you that you are “looking into” how to improve service on the MTA Bus #11 that ventures North from Bethune Street/Greenwich Street/Ninth Avenue/W. 14th Street/ and Tenth Avenue.
But the service seems worse than ever!
Last night, I arrived at the West 46th Street and Ninth Avenue MTA stop for the
#11 Bus at 10:45/10:50. Some 30 minutes later, with two other potential passengers still waiting [one told me she had been there over 20 minutes when I arrived], here comes a bus. All hopes were high! But it read: NEXT BUS PLEASE. To make
matters worse, the driver gives us two honks. Just what we needed.
Finally, at approximately 11:30/11:35 Bus #6415 arrives. Before boarding I announced how long I’d been waiting == along now, with the other two waiting giving up. And I asked, “Where have you been?”
The driver responded, “You don’t want to know about my day!”
From pick up to Horatio Street, with the driver actually speeding!!!! [must have
been close to his getting off work!!!], I was at my stop at 11:50pm.
I don’t know how bad his day could have been. It was late on a Sunday, and traffic was flowing == often with no cars even in the block when there was a red light.
Who rides these buses? A lot of seniors, who have some problems. And long waits only exasperate the situation.
WHY CAN’T SERVICE BE MORE RELIABLE?
The MTA has added a M12 Bus that does up the West Side Highway to Columbus Circle. I’ve ridden that bus three times == one in the late morning and twice in the early afternoon. On two of those rides, I WAS THE ONLY PASSENGER; on another one, I was one of TWO! What service is this bus providing?
And why can’t some of those empty, one right after another M104s be used on
the M11 route instead of crossing 42nd Street empty.
I am always puzzled that the M11 never earns a spot on the Longest Wait lists.
UNLESS ONE IS VERY LUCKY, waits are up to 40 minutes. This is a disgrace
in a city such as NYC.
A puzzling disgrace!
And the bus is supposed to have a dedicated lane. Why doesn’t the City enforce
this? And why do the buses have to CREEP along at five miles an hour?
Many third world cities I’ve worked in have far superior bus service.
And yet you do nothing! NOTHING!
How about FINALLY doing something!
Not so respectfully,
Ellis Nassour
Well done article but I’d like to see some substiated facts. You know…show me the beef!
During the brutally hot summer of 1984 I started working on a novel in my un-air-conditioned loft, writing on an old-fashioned typewriter, erasure tapes spilling on the floor. A few weeks ago I began revising the final version. Life is short, art is long, and low rent is a form of money that buys time, an artist’s most valuable commodity. But, I ask myself, how important is that value to the developers and financiers salivating over an entire city block of un-gentrified housing in what is now the wealthiest zip code in the nation? (For more information, click on my WestView article, “Will Westbeth Be the Next St. Vincent’s?”)