By Chris Lombardi

The January 12, 2007, notice to Edward Haddad, landlord of the Breslin Hotel, was simple and stark: “There is reasonable cause to believe that harassment occurred at the premises.... A notice specifying the date, time and place for a hearing to be held on the issue will be mailed to the applicant.” It was signed by Luiz Aragon, Deputy Commissioner, New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

When she learned about the notice, Margi Foster, an officer of the Broadway Breslin Tenants Association, was thrilled. Within days, she and other association members were placing fliers under their neighbors’ doors, urging their fellow tenants to “tell HPD your story!” This was their chance, she thought, to take their building back from the mysterious men she had seen on her floor for a year. And when the hearing finally began on June 5, Foster was the first tenant to stand and testify.

The hearing in question, which is becoming a common theme in New York City’s latest wave of gentrification, represents another attempt by big real estate money to empty a rent-regulated building of tenants. This installment pits Haddad’s Hadsen Realty, which has held the lease on the 103-year-old Breslin Hotel (a residential hotel at 1186 Broadway at W. 29th St.) for more than 25 years, against HPD, which is drawing on testimony from the Broadway Breslin Tenants Association. Last year, Haddad filed an application for a Certificate of No Harassment so his company could convert more than half of the Breslin’s 11 floors to a fully transient hotel. Not surprisingly, the tenants association has been working worked furiously against that certificate, and the conversions, for nearly a year.

Chelsea Now photo by Jefferson Siegel Stephen Colvin, president of the Broadway Breslin Tenants Association (left), and Vice-President Lacrasia Duchein, standing outside the Hotel Breslin recently. Colvin has lived at the Breslin for 20 years, Duchein for 15.

After the hearing was over, HPD requested in writing that Judge Lewis deny Hadsen’s application for the certificate, while Haddad’s counsel stated that none of the evidence presented constituted proof of harassment. The only thing that seems clear, as all await the verdict, is that the fight is nowhere near over.

High stakes, high rollers

The dispute at the Breslin takes place in a nasty climate for rent-stabilized tenants. As neighborhoods become targets for developers seeking to create the next high-end destination, Herald Square, where more than 20 such development projects are now on the boards, now joins the boom with a boom of its own.

Tenants of single-occupancy rooms, like most at the Breslin, are especially vulnerable.

According to a recent piece in the New York Law Journal titled “Winning Battles, Losing the War,” in New York City in 2006, there were only 42,000 SRO rooms remaining of the 165,000 available in 1971, the rest having been either converted to apartments or torn down. While the tenants of the remaining rooms are protected, for the most part, by rent-stabilization laws, hotel owners have ample motivation to evict tenants whenever possible: “It doesn’t take a financial genius to figure out that if you have a stabilized tenant paying $245 a month, and suddenly you can rent a room for $100 a day, that it makes sense to change things,” said Stephen Russo, executive director of the Goddard Riverside Community Center, which hosts the Goddard Riverside West Side SRO Project.

One of the two attorneys representing the Breslin tenants is Molly Doherty, director of that project. Doherty, along with Susan Cohen, of Manhattan Legal Services, began working closely with the newborn Breslin Tenants Association after spring 2006. They arranged for tenants to meet with HPD investigators and worked with the association to compile testimonies from other tenants.

HPD’s determination of harassment, Cohen told Chelsea Now last week, was likely based on “repairs not taken seriously” and on “the efforts of the lessee, and the prospective lessee, to intimidate people into moving.”

Neither “the lessee,” Edward Haddad, nor the “prospective lessee,” GFI Capital, would speak to Chelsea Now for this article. As a result, much of the information below is drawn from the statements made by Hadsen managing agent Robert Carolan and GFI associate Adam Cassidy at the June hearing.

Asked last Friday whether Chelsea Now could talk to GFI’s “transition team” at the Hotel Breslin, GFI marketing director Linda Novellino at first said “Yes!”, promising to bring in “the whole development team.” But on Monday afternoon, Novellino canceled, saying only that “it is not GFI’s practice to discuss pending legal proceedings.”

Excuse me, Your Honor

The transcripts themselves offer a comprehensive picture of the conflict.

Hadsen managing agent Carolan, who told the judge he had been with Hadsen Realty for 33 years, stated that his company took over management of the Breslin in 1982 and that he had been responsible for renting out rooms. By March 2006, he said, “we were aware of what was going on…. We wanted to create vacancies in the building.” Asked by HPD attorney Susan Bronson what he meant by “what was going on,” he said, “The sale of the lease.” It was not clear whether Carolan meant a sale to GFI, to investors GFI represents or to someone else.

Adam Cassidy, of GFI Capital, explained to Judge Lewis that he had been living at 1186 Broadway for 13 months on behalf of his employer, GFI, and under questioning by Bronson, admitted he had been paying no rent. “I’m sort of on a transition team, and we’re taking over the building, operating inside the current management company...so that I can correspond with architects, contractors and other investors.” Part of that work, he agreed when asked, was to help Carolan negotiate “buyouts” of current tenants, of which Carolan reported “about 150” had already occurred.

By the time Cassidy and Carolan testified on June 7, Judge Lewis had already heard two days of testimony from eight tenants, some describing those negotiations, as well as conditions in the building prior to those discussions.

Although Cohen and Doherty represent the Tenants’ Association, the case against Haddad and GFI was actually presented by Susan Bronson of HPD, in defense of her agency’s finding of “probable cause” of tenant harassment at the Hotel Breslin. Bronson spent much of her initial questioning working to paint the picture of a building which, 20 years ago, had buffered hardwood floors, working elevators and repairs that were conducted on time, but where conditions had declined precipitously in recent years.

Among the conditions described by tenants were lack of heat during recent subfreezing winter months, common bathrooms on each floor overflowing, and three out of four elevators constantly on the blink (many of which were recently marked as violations on the Department of Buildings’ Web listing for 1186 Broadway). Several tenants described a period just this past spring when they received none of their mail, learning it had been sent back “return to sender,” including a priority mail packet sent to one tenant for her birthday.

Many of the tenants also told of interactions with Carolan and Cassidy that did not sound particularly friendly. (Names and some identifying details have been withheld below to protect their anonymity.)

“Bob,” who has lived at the Breslin for more than 10 years, said Carolan offered him $15,000 to move, telling him that “things were going to be changing, they are going to be moving very quickly,” and that he could help him find somewhere to go, perhaps the Bronx. Carolan said Bob would be better off negotiating with him, since they knew each other. If he did not, Bob reported, Carolan told him that “there was a good chance that I would be left with nothing,” Cassidy was also present for most of the conversation, Bob said, a “two-on-one” situation that made him uncomfortable.

A number of female tenants testified about repeated phone calls from Cassidy, including at their work phone numbers, after they ignored or brushed off his requests for a face-to-face meeting. “Jane” reported a pattern of receiving weekly, then daily, calls from Cassidy and said she had felt personally frightened when she then saw him in front of her door as she arrived at her apartment one day. Others who did meet with him told the same story as “Bob,” of being told that “things were changing” and that they had better settle up now.

Of the 150 tenants who did accept buyouts and move out, one testified on behalf of Haddad, saying that she found the tenants association obnoxious and that their hostility had been one of her reasons for moving. Another, one of only two Asian-language tenants on the witness list compiled by HPD against Haddad, flew home to Korea at the last minute, buyout cash in hand. The other Asian tenant also withdrew without testifying, on the day of the hearing. (More on both of them, and other immigrant tenants of the Breslin, in the next issue of Chelsea Now.)

No harassment whatsoever

In the same email that canceled GFI’s agreement to talk to Chelsea Now, spokeswoman Linda Novellino said: “No harassment has taken place whatsoever at The Breslin.” At the hearing, GFI’s Cassidy, Carolan and Breslin repairman Vincent Carolina were kept busy elaborating on that statement.

Most of their testimony contradicted tenants’ testimony, and asserted that the violations in question had already been corrected. Their attorneys closed by stating that none of the tenants’ testimony amounted to actual proof of harassment.

GFI’s statement exhibited full confidence: “A judicial decision affirming that there was no harassment at The Breslin is expected soon.” Meanwhile, Breslin Tenant Association President Stephen Colvin and Vice President Lacrasia Duchein say the evidence for the opposite is irrefutable.

Cohen, their attorney, told Chelsea Now that even if the administrative decision goes against her clients, she has other legal paths to pursue, including some odd language included in the “rent registration” many receive in lieu of a lease. But even if the tenants win a judgment and can remain in their homes, the Breslin’s tenants know that as long as Manhattan’s hotel boom lasts, their fight will continue.

“These people [capital firms like GFI] think of things in 20- or 30-year terms,” Colvin told Chelsea Now last week. “They’ll just keep on pushing.”