Press return to see results.
cmd / ctrl + k to open and close.
Last spring, I spent an afternoon watching two contractors install a drop ceiling in a derelict prewar apartment in Crown Heights. The new, lower ceiling would conceal the old one, which had sustained water damage over the years. It was a superficial—and very common—fix. The resident-to-come would probably lose about a foot of the room’s height, along with some tasteful old crown molding. The work was part of a maintenance blitz: Its landlord, Pinnacle Group—one of the city’s biggest holders of rent-stabilized units—had put up a majority of its properties for bankruptcy, and this building, along with ninety-two others, would be going to auction in a few months.
Foreclosures are a common enough occurrence in New York, but the Pinnacle case drew more attention than most due to the scale of its neglect, its CEO Joel Wiener’s astronomical wealth—he is one of New York’s chief slumlords—and its history of debt issuances in Israel. There’s also the ire of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who hosted his first press conference in office at 85 Clarkson, a Pinnacle-owned building. It was there that he announced three of his administration’s first executive orders and vowed that his office “would be taking action in the [Pinnacle] bankruptcy case” to support the tenants involved.
