The Southbridge Towers board of directors has decided to reschedule the co-op's annual meeting from May 5 to June 29 and to hold an election for a new board of directors on June 28 and June 29 instead of in early May as required by the co-op's by-laws.

This, said a letter to the shareholders from SBT board president, Wallace Dimson, is to allow management to "deal with the issues relating to the reconstitution without having the additional task of conducting the meeting process."

The several thousand people who live in Southbridge Towers of course are interested in this development, but in a city where affordable housing is so scarce that thousands of people apply for every available affordable apartment, what's happening at Southbridge Towers affects many other people as well.

For anyone who has not been following the Southbridge Towers odyssey, here's a summary. The Southbridge Towers complex of 1,651 apartments just north of the South Street Seaport, opened in 1969 as a New York State subsidized Mitchell-Lama co-op for which shareholders paid as little as $5,000 per apartment. In December 2005, the shareholders of Southbridge Towers began talking about taking their low-cost apartments out of the Mitchell-Lama program and privatizing them so that they could be sold in the open market. With Manhattan real estate currently at a premium, these apartments would now sell for a half a million dollars each or more. Nine years after the privatization discussion began, in September 2014, the proposition was finally put to a vote, with passage requiring a two-thirds majority of eligible shareholders (each apartment, getting one vote). Privatization seemed to have passed by a margin of 10 votes. But some shareholders said that the vote was faulty - that some apartments were unfairly disqualified from voting.

Then the scuffle began in earnest, with recriminations and lawsuits. Nothing has been definitively decided to date.

A legal action filed by SBT Cooperators for Mitchell-Lama and the SBT Shareholders Association is scheduled to be heard before Justice Joan Lobis in the Supreme Court of New York on May 6. She will have written submissions from DHCR (the Division of Housing and Community Renewal, which administers the co-op) and the privatization Sponsor (the SBT board of directors) and from the plaintiffs as to the validity of the September 2014 vote. On May 6, she will decide whether to set a date for oral arguments or to decide the case based on the written submissions.

Meanwhile, the SBT Cooperators for Mitchell-Lama and the SBT Shareholders Association have been trying to get DHCR to weigh in on the postponed annual meeting and board of directors election, but DHCR has not responded. The Cooperators and Shareholders are saying that the postponement is not just a matter of convenience but an effort by the current board - some of whose members are term limited, including its president Dimson - to hold the board election after Justice Lobis has rendered a decision on the validity of the privatization election in the hope that she will rule in their favor and the co-op's current by-laws can be tossed out.

"Our present by-laws and our Mitchell-Lama status remain in force," says the SBT Shareholders Association. "In the by-laws of a privatized  SBT there are no term limits. The board wants to delay the annual meeting until after reconstitution, should it happen, so they can run for re-election without being term limited."

Dimson, in his president's report to SBT shareholders, minced no words. He said that responsibility for the delay in finalizing the privatization process "rests solely on the shoulders of the few disgruntled shareholders who filed litigation against DHCR and Southbridge, in what we  believe is a frivolous and divisive effort to overturn the result of the September election, in which shareholders voted overwhelmingly to reconstitute Southbridge as a private cooperative."

Dimson called the litigation "reckless" and referred to those who had brought the legal action as "a vocal and strident minority."

The SBT Shareholders Association responded that Dimson's accusations in his President's Report were "an opinion piece; it's a shareholder misusing his position as Board President to distribute his personal tirade."

Regardless of what Justice Lobis decides, it may take the Southbridge Towers shareholders a long time to put this fight behind them. Maybe they won't.

 
A sunny day - not too hot, not too cool - blessed the opening on April 25 of the South Street Seaport Museum's 2015 season and the crowd assembled on Pier 16 for the opening ceremony.

For the first time, Capt. Jonathan Boulware officially took the stage as the museum's executive director and not just its interim president.

"The trustees, the city administration - we couldn't be happier," said Tracey Knuckles, Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs and museum board member.

  

Boulware read a letter of congratulations from Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said that he regretted that he couldn't be there himself. De Blasio referenced the museum's historic ships, its Water Street properties and the "bustling Schermerhorn Row." He spoke of the variety of programs that the museum organizes for children and adults and said the museum "brings the past to life," playing "a vital role in the city's cultural landscape."

  

"It's a heartening thing to receive from any mayor but certainly this mayor at this time for the Seaport Museum," Boulware commented.

 

The subtext of his remark were the tribulations that have beset the museum since Superstorm Sandy knocked out the electrical system at its 12 Fulton St. galleries on Oct. 29, 2012, forcing them to close. The electrical system still has not been fixed.  

 

On the museum's other flank, The Howard Hughes Corporation, a Texas-based developer with long-term leases on parts of the Seaport, has been eyeing the museum's properties.   

 

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and South Street Seaport Museum Executive Director Jonathan Boulware

"We're here for the future of the museum," said Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, who has been a staunch and vocal supporter of the museum and of the Seaport Historic District. "We're here for the South Street Seaport in general to be a historic site, and we're here to make sure that the 60,000 families who now live in downtown in District 1 Manhattan have a place to go that is family friendly and at the same time conserves the history."  

 

City Councilmember Margaret Chin, who represents District 1 and who plays a pivotal role in determining what happens to land use applications in the South Street Seaport, echoed Brewer's sentiments. She said that she and City Council would "continue to work to make the museum stronger so that it will be here for years and generations to come.

 

"We must protect the historic South Street Seaport and the museum," she said.  

 

Boulware said that he had no illusions about the enormous task ahead but that he believed that with the help of the many people who cared about the museum, it could realize the vision of its founders.

 

"Peter Stanford, who founded this museum, said repeatedly - as often as anyone would listen to him - this museum is people," Boulware said.  "It's as true now as it was then, in fact, it's even more so. The volunteers, the staff, the crowd that is here today, our new members - are the crowd who will make this place what it can be."

  

City Councilmember Margaret Chin and the Ambrose bell.

In a moment in the ceremony that brought tears to the eyes of some of those who listened, Boulware invited Chin to ascend to the deck of the museum's lightship Ambrose and ring its bell.

 

The Ambrose was the first lightship to take a station in the newly deepened Ambrose channel in 1908 and the first lightship to have a radio-direction finder signal. "This meant that big ships were zeroing in their radio direction gear directly on this lightship," Boulware explained. "They could, with pinpoint accuracy, steer their steamship at 22 knots directly at the lightship and occasionally that meant that they continued right on on that course and didn't turn. In fog, lightship crews had a vested interest to make a lot of noise, so this bell had a very important purpose in the safety of the lightship itself and also in the safety of the ships that were using the bell to find their way into New York."

  

Using both hands, Chin pulled and pulled at the heavy bell and it rang with insistent solemnity. When she finished, neighboring boats sounded their horns and the crowd applauded. 

 

"To the extent that there is a sound that represents New York, that represents the growth of the port, this is it," Boulware said.

 

"This is where it started - between these ships here and those buildings there," he said, gesturing. "This is where New York as we know it today, began."

 

- Terese Loeb Kreuzer   

 

Pier 16 on the opening day of the South Street Seaport Museum's 2015 season.

Bits & Bytes

Tickets are still available for the 18th Annual Sailors Ball, a fundraiser for the NY Harbor Sailing Foundation, which will take place on Friday, May 1 at the Downtown Association. For more information and tickets, click here. (Photo: Courtesy of the Mahattan Sailing Club)