Jackson Heights Life

I believe the prices were as quoted above - about $160K for a studio and 1brs starting at 210K.  My friend was very specific with her needs, so we weren't shown prices on every available unit.  We were told an 880 sq foot one bedroom with an alcove was available on the first floor for 250K, and I think the maintenance was in the $500 range.  That unit wasn't able to be shown, so we were shown a mirror-image unit on a different floor that hadn't been renovated.  I'm not sure it was 880 sq feet but looked to be at least 800.  The floor plans were available but I didn't get one.

The units that were renovated and staged were quite nice - open spaces, nice layouts - kind of Ikea style.

The way I understand it - they have a certain number of units available now, and then when some of the market-rate leases are up, those tenants -since they are not protected by rent-stabilzation- will not be offered another lease and those units will also come on the market (unless the current tenant wants to buy, in which case it will never come on the market). 

The units that we went into seemed surprisingly well-insulated against outside noise, however, I can imagine that at certain times of day that the street traffic and honking can be kind of miserable.  Also the apartment we spent the most time in was filled with people and conversation so that always makes outside noise seem like less of an issue. And on a Sunday things were pretty quiet out on the street.  Still - the price seems right and it seems like it could be a good deal for people who want to buy in that price range and don't want to go through board approval and the hassle of renovating.

It might only have been 30 minutes - it was definitely a bit of a wait.  Unfortunately we didn't see or ask about the roof deck.

The marketing efforts are slick, but they're selling post-war cookie cutter coops from the look of it. Good luck to them I suppose.

I've lived in the Birchwood House for 30 years.  The building has always had a doorman starting at 4pm and yes, the building has always had a roof deck which is tiled.  It's been closed for a couple of years and it is being renovated to what it was before with lounge chairs and plants.

Yes, 73rd Street is very noisy because of the traffic caused by people coming from the Tri-State area and beyond to shop at the Indian Stores.  The area has always been a neighborhood shopping area and never was meant to be a shopping mall that gets shoppers from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

The problem with the above is that Helen Sears seens to care more about the merchant owners than about the people who elected her.