By Stephen Stirling
City Councilman Tony Avella (D−Bayside) said the Landmarks Preservation Commission has agreed to bring College Point’s Schleicher’s Mansion up for a vote in the coming months, but the residents of the house still remain out in the cold.
Avella said the city agency’s decision to vote on whether or not to landmark the exterior of the building, built in 1851, is a victory for the community and the tenants since it precludes the house’s owner from demolishing the structure or selling it to a developer who would do the same.
The hulking Victorian exterior of Schleicher’s Mansion is intact, but the building has fallen into disrepair in recent years. An antiquated electrical wiring system coupled with 17 open city Department of Buildings and Environmental Control Board violations forced the city to issue a full−vacate order on the property in July, leaving about a dozen residents of the building without a home for nearly six months.
As a result of the vacate order, some of the tenants have been forced into shelters, while others are sharing cramped quarters with relatives around the city. Two of the tenants, unable to adjust to the move, said they have lost their jobs over the ordeal while another tenant said her daughter now has to travel more than two hours by public transportation to get to school.
“It’s an ongoing nightmare,” said Edna Rodriguez, a tenant.
Avella said while the LPC calendaring a hearing on the topic does not get the tenants back into their homes, it precludes their landlord from razing the building entirely.
“There is some feeling that the owner has deliberately allowed these violations to exist in hopes of demolishing the building altogether,” Avella said.
Avella said he has been speaking with both the DOB and the city Department of Housing in hopes of getting the city to foot the bill for repairs, which would then be billed to the building’s owner, Eva Rohan.
“We’ve been going back and forth with HPD and the DOB and they’re basically been pointing the finger back and forth at one another,” Avella said. “The bottom line is the city should step in here. These families have been out of their home for months. There is a [city] program for this, I don’t understand what the reluctance is here.”
Following a meeting with Avella last week, two of the tenants — Kalvis Macs and Esperanza Douglas — said they got to witness the agency bickering first hand.
“They started playing pingpong with us saying that HPD was ready to go in to do the work, the bidding was over and their contractors are ready,” Douglas said. “But before they go in, they need some kind of authorization from The Buildings Dept, who placed the vacate order. It is so ridiculous to have to go back and forth to the departments which are about 50 feet from each other.”
Neither the Department of Buildings nor the Department of Housing, Preservation and Development could be reached for comment by press time.
Reach reporter Stephen Stirling by e−mail at sstirling@timesledger.com or by phone at 718−229−0300, Ext. 138.
