Dakota Co-op Board Is Accused of Bias

If true, sounds like a history of discrimination. Honest question...how does a black man get approved and then voted in as president of the board of a racist coop?

You ever see the movie Putney Swope?

It's the let the minority into the yacht club, but don't let him have the biggest slip syndrome.

Fking coops. Its the communist version of a -for profit legal structure-.

Although joking about it is vulgar, AB's wife has a very public history of substance abuse that would be a valid cause for concern, regardless of her husband's ethnicity.

It's all too fishy. Suddenly the board is racist, yet a black man served as president for 2 years. Were they not racist then? He was approved for the purchase of the first apartment, so why not the second? Are his finances that suspect? He must have alienated someone on the board for this to happen. And the Roberta Flack bathtub denial by the board (mentioned in the full article in NY Times) is also very suspicious.

This 45 year old who bought in at 26 all of a sudden doesn't get his way and therefore RACISM. We should cry for him.

Each of Banderas and Griffith are trash, perfect for each other but hardly this building.

Co-op board biased? Of all things. Isn’t that the job of coop boards, to be biased & unfair? Otherwise what good are they?

R u Fking serious w81? So does the Dakota have a zero tolerance policy? Any drug use conviction expels your coop shares? FLMAOzzzzz.

Didn't yoko do drugs?

Fishy all around. He was going to pay 5.7 million in cash with a net worth of roughly 80 million but his finances weren't in order? OTOH, he has a history of lawsuits based on race.

One man's garbage anoher's treasure. WTF fk r u?

Oh excuse my poor grammar. I threw in a double fk.

W67: I doubt John and Yoko would get in today. Back in the 60s and 70s, they were happy to find buyers: musicians, actors, junkies, the occasional coven of witches... (Oh, right - that was fictional.)

Here's an analogy.

Most ppl wipe this butt 2 or 3x. Done. Some ppl wipe 20x and asks for their spouse to double chk to ensure no dangling shit. But YOU KNOW what?, shove your little pinkie 1/2 an inch in, and guess what you'll find? Yep 100% of ppl are full of shit. That includes Kennedy, king, lincoln, Theresa.

Me, I'd love Sheen as my neighbor. Imagine a knock on the door, a half drugged model girl looking for a good time..... W67 -> 'I'm mr.sheen.' FLMAOzzzzz. :)

No need to go back to the 60's... Coke was a very popular drug amid the financial industry in the 80's....and still is.

Point is some banksters bought at the Dakota in the 80's too.

I don't see myself getting too excercised over injustices among the super-rich at the Dakota. The world is going to hell in a hand basket and this is not on my list of worries.

Kwest. You from the middle east I assume.

All injustices are local. I wonder what w81 would think if that crack addict was his daughter.

Rejections are always heartbreaking. FWIW, I believe this failed transaction was unbrokered.

ali r.

DG Neary Realty

Can't wait to read more. I'm positive this will generate more press for this distinguished gentleman and his family and business more than any "racist" board member.

wow, racism at a presitgious co-op. WHo could have seen that one coming? Seriously people, most ultra luxury co-op boards do this. But peopel like to pretend it's not happening.

Holy mothefker. Fk fk fk fk. Holy motherfkers. Ugggggggg. Goddddaaaaammmmmmmit!

Borker speak. Fk you.

1) how many brokered deals in Dakota get rejected
2) how many non brokered deal get past boards in nyc?
3) how many brokered deals get fked up Bc of borkers?

Me, one fking beerytch at the last moment welched on her commitment to lower her fee bY 1% to get my deal over the other. The last Fking minute. Stupid greedy car salesman/borkers. Same econOmics, same morality same intelligence level. R there good caf salesman, sure few and far between. Keithb, my boy!

The best they could do on racism was that Melanie Griffith was denied ?

I don't know who Melanie Griffith is, but the sad truth is that Buddy's two-year-old will now have to grow up in a cramped apartment of fewer than 3,000 square feet (maybe even smaller in real area) -- *with* her extended family of both Buddy and his wife sharing the same space. It's all part of the vicious cycle.

". . . It's all part of the vicious cycle."

Now that's funny!

"Rejections are always heartbreaking. FWIW, I believe this failed transaction was unbrokered."

Nice.

i guess everything relative and we can only see things through our own eyes, which are usually compromised. some people see BLACK MAN some peopple see RACISM and even JEWISH MAFIA thrown in for good measure. i see this

"Mr. Fletcher pledged $50 million to institutions and individuals working to improve race relations. He has donated $4.5 million to Harvard to endow the Alphonse Fletcher Sr. Professorship, a position held by Henry Louis Gates Jr. Apart from a few hundred thousand dollars a year Mr. Fletcher gives in charitable stipends, it is unknown how much more of the $50 million he has donated."

um, failure to deliver on a charitable pledge is a really big deal. i'm guessing it was never his intention to be regular rich person, he's a dakota living rich person who likes to pledge 50mil to charity. a white guy of that stature would be humiliated, shamed, and ostracized for failing to deliver. you pawn grandma's jewels, you eat rice and beans, but you pay your pledges. it's how you remain a respectable, though broke, member of that community. the community of fancy rich people to which he belongs. or, rather, used to belong. guess he wanted to go out with a bang, and FUCK him for crying racism on a board of which he was president, in a building where he lived for 2 decades. roberta flack's bathtub travails notwithstanding.

of right, i also see PETTY CO-OP BULLSHIT

Fking beeeeytches.

When the mob turns on itself, is Sammy worse than the 'family'? Flmaozzzzzzz. Dumb Lucille.

get an opinion on this, lucy

enough waffling already

do the words you type, like, mean stuff?

btw, how about those jews?

"heartbreaking"...."coop rejections"...this crap??

not you. THAT thing.

Lucille, "Jew" is an offensive, objectifying term ... and when you use it in plural, "Jews", you add a dehumanizing nonindividualisticalismness to the mix, as if you're no longer even talking about separate people. Please say "jewish *persons*" if you must reference those people.

Bigotry is a communicable disease.

LucilleIsOnceAgainSloppyInHerAttemptedUseofEnglishLanguage

I am intrigued by La Fletcher's romantic partners. First, an arty white dude for 10 yrs , now an Asian woman (- bet she had perfect SATs).

Name names; link to photos & bios.

"it is unknown how much more of the $50 million he has donated" or will be donating in the future = failure to deliver on a charitable pledge? not sure I agree with your police work, here, Lucille.

i will withold comment--it is doubtful we have heard the last of this situation--there will be low-hanging fruit shortly i'd bet

"Lucille, "Jew" is an offensive, objectifying term ... and when you use it in plural, "Jews", you add a dehumanizing nonindividualisticalismness to the mix, as if you're no longer even talking about separate people. Please say "jewish *persons*" if you must reference those people. Bigotry is a communicable disease."

Alan, get a grip.

Oh my god, I finally agree with something Matt said!

I can't see the term "jew" offensive in any way unless used as a verb.

"Alan, get a grip."

... oh, yeah, like THAT'S going to happen!

With scary first names. Like Bugsy. And Meyer. Louis, even.

La Kosher Nostra.

nonindividualisticalismness - didn't Julie Andrews sing this?

Mary poppins or the sound of music? or both? brilliant, sjtmd.

Mary Poppins - I believe the chimney sweep was employed at The Dakota.

Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay
Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
Even though the sound of it
Is something quite atrocious
If you say it loud enough
You'll always sound precocious
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

WBF's abound at the Dakota!!

back to the OP:

1992 -- deepest depths of the real estate crash trough. UWS coops not moving. Even the majestic Dakota is forced to lower standards. Enter brash 26 year old minority i banker with a fistfull of bonus money. (Cash is king!)

2011 -- aftermath of largest real estate bubble in history. Dakota is packed to its gilded rafters with pompous actual rich people who truly despise everyone not a Royal, waspy 4th generation titan of industry, or artsy celeb Beatle widow. (You want to do WHAT to your bathtub? Oh the nerve!)

PS -- the brilliant banker's 8% long term fund return is less than the mindless index fund return in my 401k. LOL!

be patient...there will be more here to feed on

sued his previous employer as well

verb? as in "are you jewing me?" : )

btw, there is a verb "chinesing"

Would be nice if The Times printed a finished story for a change. Is it too much of a stretch to find out if his pledges were honored? Because if not, besides the obvious, it would mean a) that he is capable of not honoring his financial obligations — in a co-op (!)
and b) serious financial downturn — in a co-op (!)
Let's wait for the NY Post's "Black Ex-Prex Sues for Buy Ax".

I love guys like this. While president he stood by while the board "discriminated" against both shareholders and purchase applicants; even if he voted differently than every other board member, he remained silent and in office. Where was his moral outrage then?

Oh, that's right. He only cares when it's about him and so now he sues. Mr. Fletcher obviously thinks a lot of himself, maybe more than he should. I once had a client who was a mega financier, on the board of some of the city's biggest arts institutions, and like Fletcher, endowed chairs with his name. On paper, his "net worth" was far more than Mr. Fletcher's. How did that work out? He shocked everyone when he filed for bankruptcy. His coop wasn't at the Dakota but in one of those elite 5th Avenue buildings in the E. 60's that I'm sure regretted accepting as fact the net worth statement produced by his own firm.

If the Dakota board's criteria was the same for Fletcher's application as it was for those when he was board president, it's like this guy is suing himself. Except for the part that he has principles only when it applies to him.

To me this suit suggests that Fletcher was embarrassed when his finances didn't stand up to the board's requirements and thus is now trying to embarrass the board. Shabby stuff.

"aboutready
about 3 hours ago
ignore this person
report abuse "it is unknown how much more of the $50 million he has donated" or will be donating in the future = failure to deliver on a charitable pledge? not sure I agree with your police work, here, Lucille."

no police work, marge, that's your job. i just read the article. he made the pledge in 04, if there was ever a time to make and give away buckets of easy money it would have been in the next few years, right? based on the article, he doesn't seem to have made much of a dent in that 50 mil, except the notable endowment to harvard his father's name, which just so happens to be the same as his. having known nothing about the man until reading this, i can infer several things. most significant of which is that he is the sort of person who would allege RACISM to settle a pretty standard internal co op bitch fight, that is obviously driven by greed. fuck this guy.

LucilleIsVulgarBecauseLucilleIsRighteous

good on you Lucille for accepting an account that admitted that the info may have been adversely affected by the coop board, and that the info may have been incomplete. I don't know the truth, the truth certainly doesn't seem to be an issue here, at least for you and the article.

you may be correct. or he may have allocated a certain amount in his estate planning. just because YOU think a certain time period as being the most optimal for his contributions, does that mean you know shit about what the actual plans are?

ok, question. what if, and this is a total hypothetical, someone loses 50% or more of their worth to Bernie?

Reading the Wikipedia entry on this guy tells you all you need to know.

I guess this discussion overtook the discussion about the 43 year old virgin in a midtown east $3200 1 bedroom.

i never claimed to know shit about this, or anything else for that matter. i have no interest in fighting with you, ar.

except one thing,

"$50 million multi-year initiative" could certainly imply whatever you wish to read into it.

Lucille, you must address aboutready as Comps Queen, or just Queen. Unless you advertise on her site BrickUnderground in which case you may call her about or ar.

LucilleIsFullOfShitAndHavingAHardTimeAdmittingIt

cc, please stop addressing me

>LucilleIsFullOfShitAndHavingAHardTimeAdmittingIt

Lucille, is there any hyphenation in your name? Having all of the names squished together is not the way we name our children here in America.

well, except you had a very vehement opinion about this.

really an extreme opinion.

LucilleIsntSorry

So anyway, back to the Dakota.

he is alleging RACISM. i'm not saying he was treated fairly, but boards do this stuff all the time. there is no need to bring race into it. yeah, i think that's wrong. it doesn't matter what i think, because i'm a big unimportant nobody. but i think it's wrong.

I'm confused, Lucille seems to be against bias, and columbiacounty is against Lucille. Does that mean columbiacounty is in favor of bias? Or just in favor of Skippy?

Oops, not Skippy. Buddy!

i'm just confused why everyone is so angry that mr. fletcher is alleging bias by the board. it's certainly possible that he's wrong. it's also possible, based on his allegations, that he's right. rather than pass judgment based on one article, why not wait to see how the case develops?

i am also pretty fascinated by the romantic couplings: ten years with a man, and now he's married to a woman. very unusual.

cc, you've got me rolling on the floor!

actually ar, now that i think about it

pledged in 2004 "$50 million multi-year initiative (words from his own complaint)" does not at all sound like "he may have allocated a certain amount in his estate planning". at any rate, wouldn't you say a "$50 million multi-year initiative" should have made more headway by 2011 than, let's be generous and say 6ish?

"drdrd
9 minutes ago
ignore this person
report abuse cc, you've got me rolling on the floor!"

all he's doing is making up names for me. so......hello. have we met?

I'm Jewish and the presence of a Jewish mafia is news to me. Where is it? Are they covert or something?

I am soooooooooo tired of the RACE and SEX card.

happyrenter...these racial and sexual discrimination cases rarely "develop" because they get settled. And anyone who uses the race and sex card knows this. U want a quick payoff, use the sex or race card. I think the Dakota board should sue his ass for defamation/slander for calling them racists.

"For example, in 2005, while serving on the Board, Fletcher witnessed Board
members' discriminatory statements regarding the purchase application of a prominent,
financially well-qualified white woman and her husband, a Hispanic man. The Board refused to
grant the couple an interview. At the Board meeting itself, at defendant Nitze's insistence, no
discussion of the matter was permitted. Instead, the Board rejected the application outright. At subsequent Board meetings however. Board members made jokes regarding the Hispanic
husband's desire to have a first floor apartment so that he could purchase drugs from people on
the street. Board members repeated this offensive joke for many years."

this is the section on banderas from the complaint. when i read this, i think that their issue with banderas and melianie was that they are HOLLYWOOD ACTORS, a group of people known to be difficult and inclined to, ahem, excesses. if the drugs through the window jokes were the only example of this "racism", it wasn't racism. only a person completely consumed by race and sees everything through that prism could possibly read any more into that.

Funny, everyone who has posted on the Park Ave/Fifth Ave thread today seems to assume that racism is endemic in the fancy boards of the East Side. So why the hostility to this suit?

very cute, fg. this man did not only live in this building for 20 years, he served as board president.

Sally Quinn on Henry Louis Gates, Jr.:

"What nobody will say publicly, for fear of being called a racist, is that he is notorious, especially among many of his colleagues (black and white) at Harvard, for being short-tempered and arrogant. I have had personal dealings with him in which his behavior was not honorable."

if you go through the complaint point by point, it becomes clear (to me, at least) that this constant systematic "racism" exists only in his paranoid mind. these are examples board members abusing their power and bullying shareholders.

The hostility to this suit is because it sounds like whining among the super wealthy which is not usually an effective way to garner sympathy. This man was elected by the supposed racists to be their president. The alleged racists in the building invited him to live among them almost 20 years ago. And just because you can afford one apartment at the Dakota does not mean the board necessarily would conclude you could afford two. Or that the combination you are proposing would be good for the building. The examples cited suggest the claim is more based on self-dealing by the board and other shannanigans. And I don't quite get what it means that the man wanted the second apartment so he could "accommodate his family". Guess, as usual in a lawsuit, I'd want to know a lot more about the facts before making a judgment, but as presented in the article, there are too many questions left open and the complainant sounds a bit silly to accuse the board of suddenly turning racist after he has benefitted from its decisions for 20 years and actually led them.

There are people in Egypt being beaten in the streets, northeastern Australia has just been devastated by a cyclone, cities and states around the US are teetering on bankruptcy, NY hasn't enough money for schools or medical programs for the poor anymore.... and we're supposed to get up in arms because a guy who is rich beyond imagination can't get TWO apartments at the Dakota.

Yeah....what's with the hostility? Why isn't there more.

So, you say you want more facts before making a judgement and then proceed to make a judgment anyway. What does that tell you?

If I were to be called upon in some bizarro world to decide the actual suit I'd want more info. As outlined here there isn't enough to begin understanding what's really going on. But for discussion's sake, going just with the article copied above, it all sounds silly. Before I go around now saying the Dakota is racist or whatever, I'd want more info.

i agree with you that there aren't enough facts to have an understanding of what's really going on; what i am questioning is why you and others would appear to have such a clear opinion on the lack of merit of the suit.

Should Roberta Flack get a new bathtub?

Without making a judgement on this issue, I do wonder about how a co-op board might change over time. The people who let this guy in 20 years ago may not still be on the board? I guess I'm wondering if these boards are somewhat fluid or if someone pretty much stays on the board for years & years ~ & years.

Sigh. I feel like I talked to everyone in my class (including Buddy, who has been a friend for 25 years) yesterday.

I think KW's take that there's a gap between what's in the complaint -- which is 57 or 58 pages long, I haven't read it -- and what's been distilled out in the newspaper is a fair one.

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

Ali, dear, if he's a friend of yours, that's a few points in his favor as far as I'm concerned. xox

Well, dr, THAT made my day. :>

ali

kylewest,

no one is expecting you to be "up in arms" over alleged discrimination at the dakota. this is a lawsuit. just because horrible things are happening in the world doesn't mean that people shouldn't stand up for themselves and their own interests.

it makes me so angry when people accuse anyone who even mentions racism of "playing the race card." it's only a card if the discrimination didn't take place. do you people really feel in a position to determine whether it did or it didn't? that's what the courts are for.

unlike ali i am not friends with alphonse fletcher but i have met him a few times. he's certainly a well-respected person. and by the way, his supposed "history" of law suits charging racism is the successful action he took against kidder, peabody. he won over a million dollars in arbitration.

i thought you couldn't sue a board...why aren't there more lawsuits by rejected buyers?

Good points from almost everyone here.

My guess is that the Board has become particularly averse to celebrities, what with having had a crazed gunman stalk their entrance with some success a number of years ago. And also I heard, years before that, that the building was very unhappy that Lennon had amassed about 8 apartments scattered around the building.

So there goes Banderas (who's probably not aging well anyway), and not knowing otherwise I'm willing to believe that the two adjacent apartments that were offered subsequent to Buddy's rejection were cut-ups being restored, while Buddy's and the adjacent one were not, and the building favors the former combo type but not the latter, palace-building type.

Flack's bath? I can only assume that someone (possibly previous to her ownership) had illegally installed an oversize bath, or installed it over a dry area, and the building wants it out, not repaired and certainly not replaced unless it conforms with building guidelines.

But maybe I'm wrong all around.

from the complaint:

"3. More specifically, last spring Fletcher entered into a contract for the all-cash purchase of Apartment 50, with the apartment's owner, free of any financing contingency. Ruth Proskauer Smith, whose Estate now owns the apartment, was Fletcher's next-door neighbor and friend and had long made clear to her family and other Dakota shareholders that she wanted Fletcher to purchase the apartment after her death. She wanted this to happen so that Fletcher
could restore the two apartments to their original layout as one unit, and so that he could have a largerresidenceintheDakotaforhisfamily."

The suit is against the Dakota Inc. and individual members of the board. Also, the description I saw says that Fletcher is alleging "defamation, tortious interference with a contract, and breach of fiduciary duty."

Julia, I am not a lawyer, but I have been led to believe by one that the rights of a pre-existing shareholder are different than the rights of an applicant to the building.

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

agree with ah's guesswork, on all fronts

i add my guesswork, despite saying i would hold off: mr fletcher's finances will be found to be not at all as presented--his attempt to shame the building will require that the building share info that led them to believe his finances were far weaker than presented

we will hear on this--too rich to be ignored by army of ambitious "journalists"

i predict there will ultimately be a NY mag piece from this