One UN Park — Local services in New York

I rarely post negative reviews here, however, some other residents told me their reviews are being erased and I offered to post my own experience with this building - we shall see if it, too, vanishes into the ether. A gentle suggestion to the developer or management or whoever might be removing bad reviews: if you spend the time you would otherwise spend on scrubbing a negative review on actually improving management of the building, there might not be so many bad reviews to scrub? At any rate, my experience with the building was quite poor, based almost entirely on the new developer-heir (Soloviev) and management team that took over after the original developer, Solow, passed away ("almost" because I found what appeared to be several serious construction defects and learned of misrepresentations a few years after an investment in the building). The tenor of the building spiraled from friendly "green" luxury, with networking events, qualified managerial staff, and animal-friendly policies, to completely the opposite with bizarre management choices, ranging from a "FirstService" Residential woman who apparently cannot handle things as simple as a BuildingLink calendar and yet is supposedly supervising the management of the building to a building superintendent who was only terminated after an NYPD investigation into theft of resident property (!) who invited random, non-resident friends to drink beer and party in resident common areas while removing residents from their own common areas, to a very negative tenor towards animals (service animals ejected, destruction of bird nesting grounds, refusal to bird-safe windows, and so on). Questions to management are mostly ignored or answered with lawyer-letter threats (no, for real). The developer-controlled board had their lawyer, Julie Schechter, send me a letter, for example, threatening the "permanent removal" of my dog (?!) accompanied by a directive not to "correspond" with the Board and stating the Board was "concerned" with "challenges" to its decisions. The implication seemed pretty clear: ask the Board questions about management and they'll try to "permanently remove" your dog. Bizarre. Any semblance of luxury beyond the superficial appears to have been thoroughly eliminated. This is also one of the few buildings left in the city still strictly enforcing COVID protocols for food deliveries (e.g., no food deliveries permitted to your door). A caveat: the residents here are wonderful, good people and the desk, cleaning and door staff all seem to be hard-working, kind people caught in the current of poor management and a developer-controlled board. Hopefully, once the developer-controlled board changes hands, the new board will be able to hire a competent and honest management company. Until then, proceed...

While it looks nice and the amenities ($) are useful, the quality of the construction is low and the units look unfinished. The building management, esp. Pete, is arrogant with residents. The service is substandard for similar buildings in the area: staff don't open the door or assist when offloading cars, residents can't leave a key for their guests, donations can't be left for pickups, etc. The building isn't accessible and they put a piece of wood blocking the back doors to refrain residents from using it which is a serious issue in case of fire or evacuation. Lots of second hand smoke is traveling from neighborhood units. If you open your windows to air your unit, management will call to say to shut them - they also send written notice. The harassment from management to resident is incessant. Now that they're having troubles selling units they have a referral program to pay current residents to help them sell or rent empty units.

Lots of issues with elevators. Not unusual to have to go down more than 20 flights of stairs to go to work in the morning. Not accessible (accessibility button to parking hasn’t been working for years). Again as of August 2022, only 1 elevator working for 28...

Marketed as "smart homes," many residents have reported their "smart home" Crestron systems, which control HVAC and shades, malfunction and are defective. The building management company takes no responsibility for the defective systems and owners are left to repair or replace on their own dime. Deliveries cannot be made to your door and, on the 1st Avenue side, bags of food delivery are often simply left on the street. The antithesis of white glove service or luxury accommodation...