So awhile back, we gave you some tips about living in the McKibbin Lofts. The post proved to be controversial, oddly enough. But now we’re going to have to update it with some new relevant information: apparently management has had it with you rotten kids and your rock and roll music and has decreed that there shall be no more parties. The buildings’ conversion to luxury condos is right around the corner, we imagine.
ANIMAL got a tip from one of their readers that management put up flyers that declared:
1. NO PARTIES ARE ALLOWED IN THE BUILDING
2. THE POLICE DEPARTMENT WILL BE CALLED AND WILL
SHOT DOWN THE PARTY3. IF YOU ARE PLANNING TO HAVE A SMALL GATHERING,
PLEASE CONTACT OUR SECURITY PERSONAL, SO THEY KNOW
AHEAD OF TIME
[sic] throughout, of course. I can’t say I’m too surprised. The building appeared to be going through the beginning stages of Loft Law compliance when I lived there, and given the money that goes into bringing that ridiculous place up to code, Bamboo Hills, the company that owns the buildings, probably wants to squeeze everything they can out of it. Which, according to my old landlord when I called him, is kind of difficult with the parties. “They kept damaging the building,” is all he told me when asked about the new policy. When I asked if there was anything that happened recently, he got agitated and repeated the line about damaging the building.
I’m skeptical of the idea that it’s getting too expensive to put up with the parties. When I was moving out, brokers showing my apartment kept talking about how they were turning my four-bedroom into a five-bedroom, and jacking the rent from $2500/month to $4000. Which is a goddamn ridiculous amount to pay to live in bedrooms with no windows, even before you get a policy that says having a few people over has to be cleared by building security. Of course, I could just be bitter, since this law-and-order policy didn’t exist when my roommate asked what we could do about living next door to the world’s shittiest house DJ and he was greeted with a shrug.
I don’t know if this is the smartest thing to do with the incoming wave of Bushwick tourists though. McKibbin could have positioned itself as an authentic party spot where anything could happen. Now what’s special about it? Who knows, maybe they’ll keep one apartment in the usual state of dishevelment, like how the Tenement Museum exists in old tenements.
This is just the natural order of things I guess. The McKibbin Lofts, while not all that nice, are in a suddenly prime location. You can’t attract I-bankers, people who really like khaki shorts and people who worry that the city will fall apart without Mike Bloomberg if there are crazy parties every weekend. But now at least, we know the order of how you bring a party loft to heel. First you actually start enforcing the ban on smoking in the hallway, then you put an alarm on the roof to keep people off it, and finally you make building security into narcs. They probably won’t even help you buy weed anymore, which I’m going to go ahead and say is the biggest tragedy out of all of this.
But buck up, remaining party people of McKibbin. To paraphrase our murderiest president, Andrew Jackson, Bamboo Hills has made their decision. Now let them enforce it.
View Comments (10)
This place was like the Murray Hill apartments of Brooklyn anyway.
^That doesn't make any sense!
you're paying that extra $1500 so you don't have to live next to the world's shittiest house dj. hipster life without hipster living.
They aren't turning the building into luxury condos. They are kicking out residents when their lease expires and converting the units into as many bedrooms as possible. Then they are renting out the rooms on a short term basis.
They saw what people were charging on Air BnB and want in on the action.
Meanwhile we've have almost a week without water last month and illegal construction happening all the time.
This "No parties without calling security first" has actually been a policy for a long time, just never really enforced.
Unless it's a rider to a lease it's not really enforceable anyway.
Oh, I don't expect luxury condos, that was a joke. But the situation currently going on there that you describe sounds pretty shitty.
When I lived there, I don't remember there being a policy on parties at first, then it was "If you have a party, just let security know," not "If you have a big party we'll bust it up." Really, it was all downhill for me once they installed that goddamn roof alarm.
http://theportobellosuites.com/?page_id=41053
Yes, it does. Murray Hill is overpriced and in a shitty location. Cue Bushwick...
STRONGLY DISAGREE. Re: Bushwick, anyway.
Is this for both buildings?
STOP PAYING YOUR RENT IF YOU LIVE HERE!!!!!! (see below) LOFT LAW COMPLIANCE IS NOT HAPPENING IN THIS BUILDING. The landlords have made it clear they have no intention of actually bringing this building up to code, only adding as many bedrooms and raising rent as much as possible and continuing to blatantly break the law so long as the Dept. of Buildings is so backlogged. The lower 3 floors still have no residential certificate of occupancy and the C of O for the top two floors is FRAUDULENT! The DOB is aware of this and IF they ever do actually getting around to inspecting this death trap I had called home most of the last decade, they will make serious changes to this building that will impose such a cost on Bamboo Hills that their only option will probably be to turn the place into some yuppy palace. My former neighbors stopped paying their rent a year ago and are still living there (now a year rent free). The landlords can do NOTHING to collect since the ENTIRE building is an "illegal occupancy". If you live here and have no intention of staying longer than 6 months to a year, STOP PAYING YOUR RENT NOW!!!! (and if you don't believe me, explain the situation to any loft lawyer and they'd tell you the same). McKibbin had a good run, but every party has to end at some point...
So what area of the city still stands as the rent-low party-hard block that picks up where McKibbons left off? Some other place in Bushwick? Somewheres in Bed-Stuy?