A Brooklyn developer who cut a deal with Mayor de Blasio to create more affordable housing runs a building that’s dangerous and mold-infested, tenants say.
Last week, the City Council approved Two Trees Management’s plan to transform the Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg into a mixed-use development with 700 low-income units.
In March, the de Blasio administration pressed Two Trees into adding 40 more affordable units — an additional 110,000 square feet — to its Domino proposal.
But residents of Two Trees’ Court House Apartments want the city to crack down before the company works on the Domino site.
At 125 Court St., a modern 11-story building with 321 affordable and rent-stabilized units, there are split and buckling floors teeming with mold, and a broken elevator that often gets stuck and traps people — including a visiting Post reporter.
Two Trees says the tenants refuse to let repair people into their units and are looking to drum up bad press.
“We strive to provide excellent service to every resident . . . but these isolated tenants, who have not paid rent in two years, have made that impossible by barring access to their apartment for maintenance,” said Dave Lombino of Two Trees Management. “This incident is in no way reflective of conditions in the building.”
In Jeff Goodman’s two-bedroom pad, the living-room floor is warped several inches off the ground. White mold oozes from other patches and he contains it with plastic sheets.
Goodman says his rent was $3,900 when he moved in four years ago. Now he’s paying $6,600, which he says is in violation of his “rent-stabilized” lease.
In 2012, tenants filed a class-action suit in Brooklyn Supreme Court accusing the company of violating Department of Housing Preservation and Development rules on rent.
Two Trees founder David Walentas, 75, made his fortune buying 2 million square feet of waterfront industrial space in 1979 and transforming it into the luxe Dumbo neighborhood. The company has $3 billion worth of commercial and residential real estate.