
Could Get Millions to Turn Factory into Condos, Is Not Selling - danso
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/nyregion/etna-tool-die-noho-real-estate.html
======
crispyambulance
But she is going to rent it out, eventually.

    
    
        > The shop closed two years ago. Since her father died,
        > the factory space is Ms. Galuppo’s to use as she wishes,
        > but she is not rushing to rent it out. Before seeking a
        > new commercial tenant, she wants to find the right way
        > to dispose of all the old equipment, file cabinets and
        > other workplace detritus.
    

This person just wants to move on her own timeline. That's perfectly fine. The
family must be pretty flush to be able to do that however.

What would be bad is allowing the space to disintegrate like what happens in
many other cities.

~~~
onetimemanytime
Plus is not like Manhattan land is going to drop in value any time soon.
That's like money in the bank...unless NY decides to make them a landmark
site.

For all we know they are seeking partners by saying we don't want to sell.
This article was probably pitched

~~~
zone411
The land prices in Manhattan have cooled down somewhat in the last couple of
years. They are now at the 2015 level
([https://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/new-york-city-
land-p...](https://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/new-york-city-land-
prices/)), so actually down a bit if counting inflation.

~~~
mertd
Do the percent fluctuations really matter if the final amount is still an
absurd amount to the seller?

~~~
wolco
Yes by waiting a few years the money will double.

------
sdenton4
'Mr. Familia, now the super of 42-44 Bond, uses the shop for maintenance work.
Mr. Liang simply likes to come by. “This is my second home,” he said after a
cup of tea at his desk. As for what he does now at the shop, Mr. Liang
explained, “I take a look at machines.”'

This reminds me of the Anthony Bourdain visit to the Congo. They visit a
defunct train station, which even after twenty years has a small band of
people coming in every day, trying to keep the trains and machines in good
repair, waiting for when there's sufficient government to restart the service.
People love their machines...

~~~
liotier
> People love their machines...

They do - and HN readers who manage technical people should remember it. Break
that bond and detachment will ensue. For example, if you are scaling up and
getting rid of snowflake servers with cute names and personal history,
consider giving the admins something else to bond with.

~~~
SamReidHughes
It reminds me of how more than one watch company was able to restart its
mechanical watch manufacturing after employees secretly preserved old
equipment in their home or in long-forgotten attics and storerooms.

~~~
guildan
Would you have an article or the name of the company. It seems like it could
be a good read!

~~~
SamReidHughes
One case is with Zenith and an employee Charles Vermot.
[https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/charles-vermot-the-man-
who...](https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/charles-vermot-the-man-who-saved-
the-el-primero-and-possibly-zenith)

------
bluetidepro
I wonder if she will ever end up regretting it? I feel like I've heard so many
stories about people trying to hold on to stuff like this, but then either the
government or other rich entities use the law and sketchy tactics to end up
getting the building in the long run, by those other means. And then the
person basically gets what they were trying to save stolen, and just
regretting that they tried to hold on for a battle they would never win. They
end up just losing out on making money from it instead of going down fighting
and getting nothing. This may also be my cynical way of looking at it, though.

~~~
drugme
What "sketchy tactics" are you referring to? Aside from an eminent domain
seizure -- and these are quite rare -- there really isn't anything they can do
to just "get" your building.

~~~
rticesterp
OR they can raise property taxes or your appraisal to the point where the
taxes aren't affordable. Then you have to sell on your terms to prevent a
forced tax lien sell.

~~~
gamblor956
Appraisals aren't based on the theoretical value of a land at its most
profitable use. They're based on the estimated market value of the land based
on its _current_ use.

~~~
dragonwriter
They are based on the current _condition_ , including current constraints on
use (zoning, etc.) That isn't restricted to current use (if alternative use
was worth more even given current condition, such that the highest paying
offer were it sold would be a buyer planning to switch uses, that would be
reflected in appraisal.)

~~~
gamblor956
It turns out we're both wrong at least with respect to the way NY appraises
property.
[https://www.tax.ny.gov/pit/property/learn/howassess.htm](https://www.tax.ny.gov/pit/property/learn/howassess.htm)

(This is very different from how CA appraises property, and doesn't take into
account how counties appraise tangible business property.)

~~~
dragonwriter
What I said is exactly a consequence of the market method (the first
assessment method listed.)

~~~
gamblor956
Which applies to residential properties in NY, not industrial/commercial
properties, which have a "comparable use" method most similar to what I
originally said.

~~~
dragonwriter
The page linked indicates neither that the market approach is used only for
residential properties nor that a comparable use method is used for
industrial/commercial properties (in fact, it explicitly says that a cost
based approach is used for _some_ industrial properties.)

The closest thing to a comparable use method listed on the page is a rental-
based method, for which the example given is residential.

I'm not saying you are wrong, but your claim is certainly not supported by the
only authority cited in the thread.

~~~
gamblor956
Well, I am saying you are wrong, and quite specifically saying that the
authority cited earlier says that the Cost Method (#2) based on comparable
uses is used for industrial sites.

The Cost Method entails: \- assessor calculates the cost to replace a
structure with a similar one using today's labor and material prices \-
subtract depreciation \- add the market value of the land \- used to value
industrial, special purpose and utility properties

This is not a rental-based method. #3 (Income-based) is a rental-based method,
and is used for residential and commercial non-industrial (i.e., retail or
office) sites.

The property mentioned in the NYT article is currently an industrial site and
would be governed by method #2: replacing the current factory with a similar
facility (i.e., comparable use) based on today's costs.

------
CoreSet
Sometimes I just have to laugh / cringe reading HN.

The detailed analysis of how this woman who wants to hold on to a piece of
sentimental property is actually mistaken, is destroying the neighborhood, is
willfully naive for not exploiting her position to make as much money as
possible, etc, etc is predictable but tiring.

Fears about about "cash being the sole nexus between human beings" seem pretty
realized on HN. It's as if no one - or at the very least the VC crowd -
accepts that anyone could be doing anything _other_ than living their life in
pursuit of profit.

And if they are, they're ignorant, naive - even selfish - for not aligning
their intent with a profit motive.

~~~
padobson
I feel like profits need a re-branding campaign. It's so easy to paint them as
a negative, and even the most vocal capitalists will shrug and suggest they're
something neutral.

Profits are a signal, and a powerful one at that. Outside of rent seeking,
which I regard as fairly rare, profits signal that an entrepreneur is
delivering value in excess of the costs to produce the value. Spread out over
the size of a community, region, or nation, that's like magic!

Furthermore, they're not cold and unemotional, as is suggested here. Value
almost always has an emotional component. The profitable condos that people
want to build aren't going to be inhabited by automatons. They'll be inhabited
by people - people who will date, get married, have children, people that will
graduate from high school and college, people that will march in parades,
protest in political movements, enjoy and create culture. To look at the value
that companies want to create in this space like a shameless cash grabs
ignores the very humanity that assigns that value in the first place.

Profits are not evil. They're a signal of efficient production of value, and
value implies a benefit for humanity.

~~~
CptFribble
I feel like sweatshops need a re-branding campaign. It's so easy to paint them
as a negative, and even the most vocal capitalists will shrug and suggest
they're something neutral. Sweatshops are a tool, and a powerful one at that.
As opposed to outright slavery, which I regard as fairly rare, sweatshops are
used by entrepreneurs to deliver value in excess of the costs to produce the
value. Spread out over the size of a community, region, or nation, that's like
magic!

Furthermore, they're not cold and unemotional, as is suggested here. Value
almost always has an emotional component. The profitable clothes that
sweatshops produce aren't going to be worn by automatons. They'll be worn by
people - people who will date, get married, have children, people that will
graduate from high school and college, people that will march in parades,
protest in political movements, enjoy and create culture. To look at the value
that companies want to create in sweatshops like a shameless cash grab ignores
the very humanity that assigns that value in the first place.

Sweatshops are not evil. They're a tool for efficient production of value, and
value implies a benefit for humanity.

~~~
iguy
Yup!

Sweatshop (n.) Factory located in a country whose peasant farmers are so poor
that I'd rather not think about them, and serving an export market.

~~~
skookumchuck
People who work in sweatshops do so because the alternatives are worse. The
sweatshops tend to disappear as the surrounding economy gets more prosperous,
and people have more choices.

------
moonshinefe
For some people money isn't that important or the end all of everything. So we
get articles like this with "shocking" behaviors of people who "could be rich
but don't do X." It's an interesting commentary on our society.

~~~
randomacct3847
When you have too many people living in the past, you get the mess San
Francisco is in with NIMBYs blocking market rate housing projects, declaring
rundown laundromats as “historical landmarks” and fights over shadows.

~~~
anoncoward111
Lol did they really declare a laundromat a landmark? I swear the tactics that
certain people will do to get their way....

~~~
beatpanda
No, they didn't, after years of legal battles the plans to build on that site
were finally approved. [https://hoodline.com/2018/09/plans-for-8-story-
mission-devel...](https://hoodline.com/2018/09/plans-for-8-story-mission-
development-move-forward-after-laundromat-s-appeal-defeated)

~~~
monkeynotes
Both the laundromat and the new building they want to construct are pretty
numb. When I look at the architecture of the early-to-mid 20th century I can't
help but feel we've lost a lot.

These days economic architecture reigns, and probably for good reason. It's no
longer affordable to have ornate brick-work or any kind of embellishment.
Interiors are functional and efficient, we've done away with unnecessary
mouldings and again dispensed with ornate detail in general.

I wonder how the economics of the property market used to bear the additional
cost of all that extra work? Were people just more proud of what they made, or
was labour just so incredibly cheap that making a building beautiful made
little difference to the bottom line?

~~~
FiddlyPack
I think physical presence was more important to a company’s “brand” in the
past. Those were marketing dollars that are now spent on website theming /
sophisticated animations / well-polished apps.

------
lmm
So hundreds of people who could live in those condos will instead have to
commute from further out, or pay more for an alternative apartment, or not be
able to pursue their New York dreams at all. Why is that something we
romanticise?

~~~
dspillett
So she should be forced to abandon a working factory for someone else so use
the space? Is your house bigger than you _absolutely_ need? Do you have a
garden? Would you like to be forced to give it up so multiple smaller living
units could be built?

It is hers, she can choose to maintain it for its current use if she wishes,
unless it is causing harm. There is a grey area here with derelict sites, as
that is a waste of space and often they can be dangerous, but that does not
appear to be the case here.

~~~
lmm
FWIW it sounds like it's not even a working factory any more.

A rich person has every right to burn a pile of money or spend it on some
extravagant luxury, but we still consider it distasteful when they do.
Particularly when that pile of money is unearned, which seems to be the case
here - it's only an accident of birth, and an accident of factory location,
that means the factory is now on such valuable land.

In my ideal world there would be a land value tax so that people paid a fair
rate to the rest of society for the land they were taking up, rather than the
lottery of buying land once and owning it forever.

~~~
dspillett
_> FWIW it sounds like it's not even a working factory any more._

In that case it falls into the derelict site grey area and genuinely wasteful,
not providing any real worth even to the current owner's whims.

------
stronglikedan
> In contrast to these cool glass and granite residences, 42-44 Bond is a
> tawny brick loft building. Its arched windows represent a classic feature of
> the late 19th century Renaissance Revival style. Some would say it could use
> an update.

I think it looks great, but could use a clean-up instead of an update.

[https://www.google.com/maps/@40.726082,-73.9929773,3a,60y,19...](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.726082,-73.9929773,3a,60y,19.29h,114.45t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sKnRw28QoxxlFx1KSjBrtlw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Agreed! I wish it were still possible to build buildings that looked like
this.

------
SmellyGeekBoy
Wow, and here I was thinking that this headline format was finally dead.

------
speeder
Reading the article about what is inside...

Why not turn the whole thing into a museum? So people in the future, in the
age of 3D printers, will know how things were made before them...

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Because running a museum requires a constant input of money and there are
already many measuems that house manufacturing equipment.

She's probably contacted museums already and they've probably either told her
that none of the equipment she has is of historical significance or that
they'd love it but they don't really have a budget for acquiring stuff. There
is somewhat of a surplus of old machine shop (basically what this business
was) equipment. People retire, sell most of their stuff to other shops or
individuals and keep a few of their most versatile machines for themselves
(and their kids then sell or scrap them). Stuff doesn't usually get scrapped
until it's a) totally clapped out or b) inherited by someone wealthy enough
that they're not gonna bother selling old machines for a grand or two and
would rather just call a scrapper to clean everything out. Also, the larger
size machines that most production shops like this aren't worth much because
the market is basically limited to other shops and a few industrious
individuals and other shops already have equipment (and if they don't they're
rarely buying old stuff).

~~~
Varcht
Do industrial themed apartments, have a mini museum up front with a couple of
the cooler machines and measuring tools. If she needs to keep machining to
satisfy her fathers wishes save a couple 1000 sq/ft and buy a few modern CNC
machines that can do the job of the existing antiques.

------
EamonnMR
Old factories are a charming feature of many New England towns as well. I used
to work out of a converted factory office in my hometown. Every few years the
owners of the property say that they're going to redevelop it into housing,
but they haven't yet. If you're interested in checking out the inside of one,
the Noble and Cooley drum factory[1] in Granville Massachusetts offers tours.

1: [http://www.ncchp.org/](http://www.ncchp.org/)

------
Magnets
Looks like she is planning on renting to a commercial tenant.

~~~
agumonkey
She should. It's probably not against her father's will to use (part of) it
for good purposes. As said above, it would turn into costly ruins otherwise.

------
olivermarks
When Anchor Steam Beer sold to Sapporo during the beer slump they were good
enough to look after their landmark Potrero Hill brewery building to make sure
it wasn't converted into yet more San Francisco yuppie hutches.
[https://www.brewbound.com/news/keith-greggor-explains-
sold-a...](https://www.brewbound.com/news/keith-greggor-explains-sold-anchor-
brewing-company). 'San Francisco’s commercial real estate has been on fire for
years, and we have been in Potrero Hill since the late 1970s. The property is
worth a lot of money. Their goal is to preserve Potrero Hill and enhance it.
They think it is a jewel within the brewing industry. It was not an option for
us to have someone buy the brewery, stick it in the desert and then turn the
building into condos. That would have destroyed Anchor’s legacy.' The Japanese
seem to take US heritage more seriously than the locals...

------
jcampbell1
She can get millions without selling. She could walk into any bank and get a
$10M line of credit the same day from this property. This could be arranged in
24 hours or less.

------
dekhn
I had to laugh when I saw the Bridgeport mill in Manhattan. One of the
craziest things I've ever seen is Autodesk's facility on a pier in SF
([https://www.autodesk.com/pier-9](https://www.autodesk.com/pier-9)). They
have a room with floor-to-ceiling wall-to-wall glass looking onto the bay
bridge with an absolutely clean Bridgeport mill. That says "$$$" like nothing
else.

~~~
monkeynotes
Fill me in, why is a Bridgeport mill in Manhattan amusing? Honest question -
all I know is it's a piece of nice looking machinery.

~~~
dekhn
because nearly all heavy industry has moved out of manhattan. maybe amusing is
not the right word- there is no english word for the feeling of nostalgia you
get when looking at an incongruous historical artifact of high quality.

------
cimmanom
Lease it?

Also, modern building techniques could probably make it feasible to erect a
high-rise that straddles the original factory without displacing it (maybe
carve out a small area for an entrance/small lobby depending on how much of
the lot the existing building takes up).

Though having to avoid damaging or obstructing an existing structure might
make construction extra-challenging and add to the expense.

~~~
Something1234
I thought people owned the first 500 feet of airspace above their property.
Also that's a very expensive solution.

------
Animats
Perhaps TheShop.build, the successor to TechShop, might be interested. They
want a NYC location. They can use those good Bridgeport mills.

~~~
Xunxi
How I wish they had a NYC location. I've been ruminating over a product a
could really use this to make some parts. NYC resistor unfortunately is not
equipped enough.

------
nakedrobot2
Really misleading headline. It will gentrify like everyone else, the factory
has already been closed for two years! Jeeeez!

------
paulsutter
And she’ll get even more millions if she waits. She can also develop
apartments, collect rent, and maintain ownership. And she can wait as long as
she wants to do either.

EDIT: of course she needs to pay property taxes but that’s her choice isn’t it

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> And she’ll get even more millions if she waits.

Probably, but maybe not. 2008 happened; something like it could happen again.

~~~
paulsutter
I bought 15 houses in 2009. Still own them. Have collected more in rents than
I paid for the houses.

------
rajacombinator
Was the title of this changed to remove pronouns? Bizarre choice.

------
YeahSureWhyNot
she will sell or lease it in 2 years

~~~
bhauer
Lease, yeah. The article makes it pretty clear that she probably will lease
it.

------
namlem
This is why we need a land value tax. If she wants to hold onto that property,
she should have to pay out the nose.

------
darawk
If you don't like NIMBYism, you certainly shouldn't be supporting this.

------
jackfrodo
If she really isn't in it for the money and wants to honor the building and
area's working class history, she'd develop it into affordable/low income
housing.

------
mc32
I admire her perseverance and wanting to preserve blue collar work, but why
not sell at a premium and then move to a more affordable area and improve her
factory with the added capital, maybe expand (jobs and capacity) and modernize
her tooling to produce even better tools?

~~~
xfitm3
The factory has been closed for two years according to the article. I wouldn’t
modernize that shop, bridgeports are workhorses. Tools like that aren’t made
anymore.

------
plink
She should just ship the machines over to China as that country seems better
able to appreciate the art of manufacturing.

~~~
plink
Ha ha, downvotes! I'm no more enamored of my observation than are thou, but
sometimes the truth stings.

