It’s a case of the halves and have-nots.
The managers of a Tribeca high-rise complex that was once a bastion of lower- and middle-income residents are chopping studio and one-bedroom apartments in half and raising the rents exponentially.
A 700-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment at Independence Plaza that once rented for around $1,000 has been partitioned into a two-bedroom with a price tag of $4,795.
The future tenant of the apartment at 310 Greenwich St. will get two tiny bedrooms, each less than 10 feet wide, plus a renovated kitchen and bathroom.
“He wants to pack as many people in and get as much as he can get,” a tenant leader said of Laurence Gluck, who heads Stellar Management, which owns the property along with Vornado Realty Trust.
He called the new units “outrageously pricey.”
One long-time tenant said the constant apartment conversions each come with “45 days of noise” and work that goes on from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Independence Plaza, a fortress-like complex, opened in 1974 with a total of 1,300 units in three 39-story brick and concrete towers and 69 town houses. It was built under the Mitchell-Lama program that provided tax breaks and low-interest loans to developers in exchange for keeping rents low.
When it opened, Tribeca was a neighborhood of warehouse buildings and storage sites without the hip restaurants and bars that line its streets today.
Gluck bought the complex , which includes a pool, gyms, shops and parking, in 2003 for a reported $156 million and said he’d leave the Mitchell-Lama program. Before the Mitchell-Lama protections were removed in 2004, the standard rent for a one-bedroom without a terrace was $670, and for tenants with higher incomes, it was $907.
Under a deal Gluck struck with tenants, rent increases follow those set yearly by the city’s Rent Guidelines Board for regulated apartments. A separate group of lower-income tenants receive federal Section 8 vouchers in order to subsidize their rents.
But as these long-timers leave, Gluck is free to raise rents sky high. Studio apartments start at $2,550 and one-bedrooms at $3,650.
One apartment, advertised as a one-bedroom penthouse loft with a balcony is currently on the market for a whopping $7,995 a month. There does not appear to be a true bedroom, only a 12 foot by 10 foot section called a “sleeping area” on a floor plan.
The apartment was originally listed in July by Stellar Management for $9,995, but the company apparently dropped the price when there were no takers, despite the apartment’s wine refrigerator and washer and dryer.
A spokesman for Stellar Management refused to comment on the apartment conversions.
