A notorious Syracuse apartment complex has new owners. Can they turn things around?

Syracuse, N.Y. -- One of the new owners of Parkside Commons was in Syracuse Friday to meet with city officials when havoc erupted at the sprawling low-income housing complex. A vandal made his way to the roof of one of the buildings and cut a copper pipe in the utility room, sending water streaming down through the four-story structure. It rained from light fixtures and smoke alarms, streamed through electrical and plumbing chases, down walls and hallways. Some 30 tenants were evacuated to live at a hotel for a week while the damage is repaired. It was an inauspicious start for Ernst Valery and the other new owners, but they knew when they bought the place they had their work cut out for them. Valery’s company, which is based in Baltimore, joined with a Brooklyn-based company to buy Parkside Commons for $26 million last month. The complex on East Fayette Street has 14 buildings and 393 apartments. Security has been a problem at the 15-acre campus for decades. The former owner, a partnership connected to billionaire real estate developer Stephen Ross, hired pairs of city police on overtime to patrol the grounds and prevent trouble. Even so, police receive nearly two emergency calls a day, on average, from Parkside Commons.

Through Nov. 11 of this year, police were called to the complex 608 times, according to department data. A third of the calls were noise complaints. More than one-quarter were domestic disputes. Other calls ran the gamut from assaults and burglaries to stabbings and shots fired. City cops have already answered 27% more calls this year than last, with nearly two months to go. In the last six months, two homicides have occurred on streets facing Parkside Commons. A third victim was shot on the property. Onondaga County prosecutors have cited gang activity at the complex. The new owners of Parkside Commons have years of experience with affordable housing, including long-troubled properties, Valery said. They are reviewing the options for paid security. And they are committed to making Parkside Commons a safe and pleasant place to live. But it’s going to take time, he said. Fixing Parkside Commons also will require millions in state subsidies.

“We’re very optimistic about what can happen there,’’ Valery said. “We’re not taking it lightly. And we know to get it done, we really have to have buy in. We have to have partners at the state, at the city level, and then ultimately the tenants.’’

Joyce Graves, 70, has lived at Parkside Commons for more than half her life. When she moved in, the complex was called Hilltop East and West. Then it changed to Rolling Green Estates and Sunset Terrace. Since about 2009, it’s been Parkside Commons. One of the top priorities for the new owners should be to limit building access, Graves said. It’s far too easy for homeless people, drug users and other intruders to push in the doors and roam the buildings. “Way too easy,’’ said a second tenant, Domingo Anaya, who lives in a different building. “All are so very welcome here.”

Graves returned to her building around noon Friday to find water dripping down the walls and down the hallway. She called the fire department, then grabbed a mop and bucket. The new management company, Corvus Property Intelligence, founded by Valery, quickly had the building’s water and electricity shut off. Corvus personnel scrambled to find hotel rooms to house the tenants for a week, Valery said. Ivy League degrees, a failed mall Valery immigrated from Haiti as a child and grew up in New York City. He later attended Cornell University, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in urban planning and a master’s in public administration. He got a second master’s in real estate development from Columbia University. He started a real estate firm, Ernst Valery Investments, in 2001 and began by developing market-rate row houses in Philadelphia. He soon expanded to focus on affordable housing. In 2010, his company joined forces with another affordable housing developer to become SAA | EVI.

Graves returned to her building around noon Friday to find water dripping down the walls and down the hallway. She called the fire department, then grabbed a mop and bucket. The new management company, Corvus Property Intelligence, founded by Valery, quickly had the building’s water and electricity shut off. Corvus personnel scrambled to find hotel rooms to house the tenants for a week, Valery said. Ivy League degrees, a failed mall Valery immigrated from Haiti as a child and grew up in New York City. He later attended Cornell University, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in urban planning and a master’s in public administration. He got a second master’s in real estate development from Columbia University. He started a real estate firm, Ernst Valery Investments, in 2001 and began by developing market-rate row houses in Philadelphia. He soon expanded to focus on affordable housing. In 2010, his company joined forces with another affordable housing developer to become SAA | EVI.

Donald Capoccia, the managing principal of BFC, grew up in Rome, N.Y. He chairs the Battery Park City Authority, a public benefit corporation that oversees development of a 92-acre neighborhood on Manhattan’s lower west side. Capoccia contributes heavily to politicians. He donated $25,000 in 2022 to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s campaign and gave more than $95,000 to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo over a decade. His partners also contribute. Parkside Commons is the first Syracuse investment for either BPC or Valery’s firm, said Michael Collins, Syracuse’s commissioner of neighborhood and business development. Valery said his company has turned around properties in difficult areas of cities like Baltimore and Chicago. They can do the same in Syracuse, he said.

“I’ve had these problems and we’ve been able to work through them,’’ he said.

He offered as a recent example Pilgrim Village, a new complex the company developed to replace run-down housing in a depressed neighborhood of Buffalo. Two all-electric buildings – a five-story structure for families and a four-story structure for seniors – contain 237 apartments for people who earn no more than 60% of median income. Valery said it’s too soon to talk about what a rehabilitation of Parkside Commons will look like. In the near term, the new owners will try to improve security at the buildings, Valery said. Longer term, they are talking to state housing officials about a significant rehabilitation project. A history of promises Graves said she has heard promises that her apartment complex would improve “ever since I’ve been here.” Ross’ management company, Related Management Co., had promised to make improvements. But conditions at the federally subsidized complex got worse in recent years. Inspectors for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development who evaluate the property gave Parkside Commons a barely passing grade of 66 this year, and a failing grade of 49 in 2023, after rating the complex 97 out of 100 in 2019. It could be a year or two before the new owners undertake renovations, said Collins, the city commissioner. But the sale of the property has already triggered some modest improvements, he said. To sell the property, The Related Cos. had to renew the certificate of compliance. That required a unit-by-unit inspection and a correction of every code violation, Collins said. Related cleared 24 violations before the sale closed in October, he said.

“We’ve gone through and inspected everything, and they closed out all the code violations,’’ Collins said. Parkside Commons stretches along three blocks of East Fayette Street. The 14 buildings were built between 1948 and 1965. The complex, which includes many family-sized apartments that are hard to find elsewhere, is a project-based Section 8 property. That means each apartment is subsidized by the federal government. The low-income tenants pay 30% of their wages toward the rent and HUD pays the rest. If tenants move out, the subsidy stays with the apartment. That makes the 393 units extremely valuable affordable housing, despite Parkside’s troubles. As long ago as 1990, then-Mayor Tom Young said the best solution might be to demolish the complex. But if that happened, the subsidized units would disappear. Thus far, no owner has cured the property’s reputation for crime and neglect. City officials said they are working with the new owners to change that. “We’ve had some conversations with them,’’ said Collins, the city commissioner. “We’ve been clear with them that, whatever renovations they undertake, they really need to have an eye towards the place being secure and feeling safe.”