Stuy Town in Major "Technical Default" Trouble

EssG's Flickr

A collective cry of "uh-oh" is echoing through Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village. That's because owners Tishman Speyer will miss a $16 million loan payment on the East River complexes today, which would put them in "technical default" on their mortgages. The whole confusing financial mess reaches back to last year; then in October, Tishman Speyer was ruled to have improperly charged market rates on previously rent-stabilized apartments while getting tax subsidies, and over Christmas the government refused to sponsor a bail-out.

The Times has more details here. Residents have been told a minimal amount of information, and sound appropriately flustered and nervous: “For so many years, this was the epitome of stability for middle-class New Yorkers...Now there are endless questions about its future.” And Soni Fink, a tenant since 1961, suggests the rich yuppies and NYU kids have betrayed Stuy Town's essence: "People used to move in and settle down here. Now there are moving vans in the circle all the time. You hardly ever saw moving vans in here unless someone died.