So your condo or co-op’s management company is getting ready to hire a new service employee. It could be a doorman, it could be a maintenance man, it could be a swimming-pool supervisor. Is this a simple process, or a complicated one? A…
Buckminster Fuller, a thinker, inventor, artist, mathematician, (the list goes on,) once said, “People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things.” Fuller, most famous f…
On September 7, 1927, 19-year-old Philo T. Farnsworth created the first television system that could not only display, but transmit signals between separate rooms. Now more than 80 years later, another historic date in broadcast transm…
Of all the responsibilities that come with being a manager of a residential building, few are as important as ensuring the safety of your residents. “Safety is part of our job description,” says Bob Grant, director of Managemen…
Over the past two decades, New York City has become a safer place than it once was. But events in recent years, both at home and abroad, have made Americans more aware of security—how much they have, how much they’d like, and how much s…
Falling bricks. Rickety scaffolding. An errant nail and an unsuspecting foot. Things can go wrong during renovation and restoration projects no matter what the size and scale of the work at hand. Whether the job is tackling a new façade…
Some building hazards—things like cracked sidewalks, broken windows or crumbling masonry—are obvious to even an untrained eye, making it easy to conduct repairs and prevent further deterioration and potential injury. Other buil…
Whether it affects a small portion of one unit or the entire association, a fire is easily one of the most devastating and destructive events that can happen in any multifamily building. New technology and current regulations have made …
Jane Jacobs, the late, legendary urban planner whose grassroots activism prevented Robert Moses from turning Battery Park into a series of bridges, highways, and on-ramps, wrote at great length of the importance of well-used sidewalks …
Inside most multi-unit residential buildings, there are many areas that should be strictly off-limits to everyone but trained building staff—and we’re not just talking about the manager’s inbox. Machine rooms, elevator shafts, compactor …