Define “Major League City”
Here is one definition: when the downtown OKC skyline is prominently featured as the last image you see in a national campaign ad that is a montage of basketball being played in some of the nation’s greatest cities.
Merry Christmas!
Wow
(Thanks to Will Hider for bringing this clip to our attention!)
The Story Behind the Crown Heights Menorah
State Sen. Andrew Rice brought back a fond memory for me as he challenged me to answer a trivia question: where in OKC is a lighted public Menorah? I not only knew the answer, but I also knew the story behind it. Mark was a good friend, and I miss him dearly. Matt Dinger did the story shortly after Mark’s death at a time when I and others were still very much mourning his loss.
Mark’s legacy lives on … consider this warmest wish of a happy Hanukkah to all:
RABBI SAYS DISPLAY WAS ‘ONE OF THE WARMEST WELCOMES I HAD TO OKLAHOMA’
Legacy shines on in city community
HANUKKAH
FORMER CITY LEADER HONORED AT MENORAH-LIGHTING CEREMONY
By Matt Dinger
Staff Writer
mdinger@opubco.com
Monday, December 29, 2008
Mark Schwartz, Oklahoma City councilman and community leader, was honored in the ceremony at the Crown Heights Menorah in the median of Shartel Avenue at NW 40 on Sunday. Schwartz died Nov. 13 following an extended battle with prostate cancer. He was 58.
The Hanukkah prayer “Rock of Ages,” led by Dr. Ali Reshef, was sung while the servant candle, or shamas, and the eight peripheral candles were lighted following a brief address by Marcy Price, program director of the Jewish Federation in Oklahoma City.
Schwartz and neighbor Dan Schonwald constructed the menorah from steel pipe and electrical wiring in the late 80s, Price said, before working through the city council and neighborhood association to integrate the candelabrum into annual Hanukkah festivities. The menorah has been refurbished in bright colors by neighborhood artist, Robin Orbach, and rewired by the Krueger family.
Rabbi Ovadia Goldman said he was driving on an icy patch of Shartel Avenue a decade ago when he first saw the menorah shining on the grassy median. Goldman and his family moved to Oklahoma City from Brooklyn to help establish the Chabad Jewish Center in 1998.
“It was one of the warmest welcomes I had to Oklahoma. It was a very touching moment,” he said.
Schwartz and Price traveled with Gov. David Walters to Israel in 1992. He came back with plenty of stories and ideas to invigorate the community, Price said.
“He died too young. He had lots of vision. I miss his energy, love of life and inclusive attitude about community,” she said.
Schwartz served on the council between 1987 and 1998 in the city’s second ward. He is credited with helping pass a 1989 public safety sales tax used to hire additional police and firefighters and upgrade equipment.
Everybody, Sing Along!
Idea of the Day (My Gift to the Downtown Development Community)
Imagine a true draw for locals and tourists: start up a “Dad’s Slot Cars” shop just like the one in Chicago, only better. Because in an ideal world, this operation would merge with a new restaurant that recently opened up in Edmond, “The Fair.” Open this establishment along Automobile Alley, decorate the walls with photos of the area’s proud automotive history, and of course make sure you have the right entrepreneur/operator, and you may have a hit on your hands (this same mix, minus the Automobile Alley history, could easily be a hit as well in Bricktown).
Don’t say I never give you anything. Merry Christmas.
Project 180: What We’ll be Missing
It’s been a busy few weeks and I’m still trying to catch up on all that is happening downtown. We’ve seen a lot written about the cutbacks on Project 180. One early ambition that is apparently victim to all this is the desire to improve the intersection of NW 4, NW 3, E.K. Gaylord and Broadway.
A few years back Blair Humphreys, OKC’s own rising star on urban design and planning, suggested a change was long overdue for this intersection, a creation of the I.M. Pei Plan of the 1970s. Humphreys’ suggestion was rather simple: reconnect 3rd Street and Broadway, end E.K. Gaylord at 3rd where traffic either turns right or left instead of merging into one giant intersection with Broadway, 3rd and 4th Streets. Walkability Jeff Speck said a big “amen” to Blair’s concerns. Ironically, the project that prompted Blair to delve into the problems caused by this intersection, the construction of a new headquarters for the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber, appears to be in a deep freeze. But the issues for downtown commuters and pedestrians remain the same.
Here is what was proposed early on with Project 180:
Notice that when given a chance to pursue the fix proposed by Blair Humphreys and Jeff Speck, designers at the instruction of city staff went instead with a “dressing up” of the existing grid instead. Keep in mind, city staff was never enthused about the changes proposed by Humphreys and Speck.
So what’s next? Does this issue die all together?
What Happens if Yashouafar Goes to Prison?
This is my final post today on the First National situation. One line keeps popping in Nevada news accounts about the six-count indictment against Aaron Yashouafar: “Yashouafar could face decades in prison if convicted.”
Wow.
So Why Did the Village Voice Name Aaron Yashouafar One of New York’s 10 Worst Slum Lords?
Here is what the Voice wrote about Yashouafar, who owns First National Center, in the March 16, 2010 story:
In November 2006, the Yashouafar brothers—two Los Angeles real estate developers better known for signature luxury high-rises in Las Vegas and the redevelopment of historic commercial buildings in downtown L.A., Oklahoma City, and other Western venues—ventured into the Bronx.
They were used to far-flung adventures. Solyman, the elder, fled the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and landed in Southern California. Younger brother Aaron had come to the U.S. in 1977 and attended Beverly Hills High School; he entered the family’s real estate business when he was 16.
Their high-flying portfolio is based in the Sun Belt, but the brothers, who control a family-owned company called Milbank Real Estate, got a $35 million loan from Deutsche Bank and used it and subsequent loans from other banks to buy about 20 Bronx buildings containing about 1,000 apartments. Many of the buildings, like 1576 Taylor Avenue in Parkchester, are in rough-hewn parts of the borough. And the buildings themselves already suffered from blight, safety violations, and both abandonment as well as squatters. Far from trains and even, in some cases, from bodegas, they were nevertheless billed by the Yashouafar brothers as “positioned for significant gentrification.”
The brothers’ pitch to investors was to call these buildings “Bronx Collections I & II” and refer to them as “multi-family assets” that had “poor prior ownership with a history of neglect.”
Under Milbank, the plan was that “revitalization would occur by infusing the capital necessary to improve the condition of the buildings, as well as aggressively pursuing the collection of past-due rents—allowing for an improved tenant base and increased income from the properties.” Milbank further assured investors that it “provides full-service management” that covers, among other things, “evictions, collections, and other legal general matters.”
Things appeared to have fallen apart even before the company could put into place its publicized eviction strategy. The company still claims (online, at least) to own 18 properties in the Bronx, but at least 13 of its original 20 are actually in foreclosure proceedings, according to court papers. Milbank’s top execs couldn’t be reached for comment.
Quotable: Milbank CEO Aaron Yashouafar, recalling for another publication his romance with property: “I loved it. When the other kids were going to McDonald’s and Burger King after school to have fun and drink milkshakes, I’d drive to our office and take care of business.”
What it’s like to live there: On a recent frigid day in the Parkchester neighborhood, a giant boiler-services truck is parked outside 1576 Taylor Avenue, pumping emergency heat into the building. It’s too late to pump financial life back into the place; the bank foreclosed on the Milbank building in 2009.
Right down the block, Milbank’s building at 1535 Taylor Avenue is not in foreclosure, but it’s in constant hot water—if only figuratively: The 41-unit building (formerly controlled by notorious landlord Frank Palazzollo) has 251 unresolved violations at last count. That number doesn’t quite capture the ambience of the place: When it rains, the leaky roof discharges water onto the top-floor apartments. Luis Delatores and his wife, Erica LaGuerre, recently moved with their newborn son from their decrepit fifth-floor apartment down to the second floor after she fell down soggy stairs and badly bruised her back.
During their first four months in the building, their shower didn’t work, so they had to take the subway to Erica’s mom’s apartment on Mosholu Parkway to bathe. Delatores estimates that the building has had heat this winter for about 20 days.
Tenants at 2427 Webster Avenue, near Fordham, say they endured six consecutive months last year without heat or hot water before rebelling in late November. In a protest preserved on YouTube, tenants rallied in front of the building, carrying “No Hot Water! No Heat!” signs and displaying rats they’d caught in their apartments. As the melodrama continued, Milbank’s field manager, Ray Radpadvar, showed up at the protest and, while ripping down the protest signs, told State Assemblyman Nelson Castro, who had joined the protesters, “Tell the fucking tenants to pay their fucking rent.” The heat and hot water weren’t restored until after Fannie Mae started foreclosure proceedings on the building in January.
The day of the Voice‘s visit to 1535 Taylor Avenue, Radpadvar, the field manager who co-starred in the Webster Avenue protest video, is in the building to oversee the repainting of a stairwell. He says he’s doing his best to take care of the countless repairs, but that funding is tight—in short, the banks and the company aren’t giving him enough money to do his job. The Bronx portfolio was a stupid deal, in his opinion. When the California owners came to New York for a few days before purchasing the buildings, he says, they were shown only the best properties. “We were lied to,” he says. “Some of the apartments looked vacant on paper, but they were really full of squatters!”
Listening to Radpadvar is tenant Delatores, who later says, “I can’t feel sorry for that man. How can you buy a building and not know who lives there and who doesn’t? He’s seen what goes on.”
If life weren’t tough enough in Milbank’s Bronx buildings, busted elevators are a theme: Tenants at 2427 Webster say they recently went through a whole year without a working elevator—elderly fifth-floor tenant Leonides Correa says she suffered asthma attacks from trudging up the stairs in the chronically underheated building.
The only elevator in Milbank’s six-story building at 780 Garden Street (which has a startling total of 584 unresolved violations) was broken for at least six consecutive months last year; its tenants include the elderly and at least one disabled veteran of the Gulf War who can negotiate stairs only with great difficulty. The tenants were so desperate that they contacted “Help Me Howard” at WPIX. He couldn’t get through to Milbank’s executives, either. In December 2009, the bank initiated foreclosure proceedings on the building.
Mitigating factors: Of the five Milbank buildings that the banks haven’t seized, two have front-door locks.
Future:Now it’s up to court-appointed receivers, for the buildings that are in foreclosure proceedings, to try to pry money from the banks for repairs.”It’s triage, you know? I almost feel like I’m on a battlefield with the wounded coming in,” says Joe Cicciu, the court-appointed receiver for 10 of the Milbank buildings that have gone into foreclosure proceedings. “Not everyone is shot up. Sometimes these are only flesh wounds. So we go to some of those apartments and try to fix things, patch things up, to give people a chance to live in decent apartments. But for people with the collapsing ceilings, we are trying to relocate them into vacant units. The problem is, most of the vacant units need a gut renovation! And we don’t have the dollars for that anymore.”
SO HOW DID YASHOUAFAR RESPOND TO ALL THIS? IN MY LAST INTERVIEW WITH HIM (JUNE, 2010), HE HAD THIS TO SAY:
QUESTION: You’ve seen properties in L.A. and New York go into foreclosure and the newspaper accounts paint a pretty bleak picture of your company – how do you respond to that?
ANSWER: Although Oklahoma has been, to a great extent immune, the rest of the nation is undergoing one of the most significant recessions, with the real estate industry taking a substantial hit and undergoing tremendous devaluations. Many properties, many owners, and many banks have gone out of business. Milbank, however, on behalf of the various owners it represents, is continuing to deal with the economic slowdown by repositioning the properties it manages. Many other owners faced with the same facts, have simply abandoned the properties.
QUESTION: What’s your reaction to The Village Voice describing you as one of New York City’s “worst slumlords”?
ANSWER: I am not sure you have all the right facts. Milbank has not been managing the properties in question for nearly a year and a half. The lender hired its own management company to manage the properties, and that management company is the one being blamed. Unfortunately, when that management company was engaged, Milbank was prevented from carrying out its plan to improve and stabilize that property. In fact, the tenants are suing the lender now because of its lack of care for the properties. During the time that Milbank was managing those properties, many violations from prior owners were removed, the buildings improved substantially, and the tenants were being tended to. We do not believe that Milbank is a “bad manager” – especially here in Oklahoma City, where occupancy at the FNC has increased threefold in four years.
More Allegations of Financial Wrong Doing by Owner of First National Center
Today I broke the story of how the owner of First National Center, Aaron Yashouafar, has been criminally indicted on charges of theft by false pretenses and embezzlement regarding his involvement with a Nevada condominium complex that is home to mostly senior citizens. Other reports are coming out questioning whether he is fit to be involved in running tenant properties, including this one on his Sky condominiums in Las Vegas:
This leads to the next question: at what point does all this play a role in Yashouafar’s ongoing bankruptcy with First National? I’ve asked Yashouafar to do an interview about these latest reports. He is aware of those requests. So far they’ve not been granted.
