A Dark Day For Affordable Housing

"Jerry I. Speyer, who controls some of the city's most prominent landmarks, from Rockefeller Center to the Chrysler Building, yesterday signed the largest American real estate deal ever, agreeing to pay $5.4 billion for Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, a vast corridor of 110 apartment buildings along the East River.

Mr. Speyer, the chief executive of Tishman Speyer Properties, and his partner, the BlackRock investment bank, outmaneuvered more than a half-dozen other bidders, including a group aligned with tenants who had hoped to preserve the two adjoining complexes on First Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets as enclaves of middle-class housing.

But these are not typical real estate trophies. Built by Metropolitan Life for returning veterans in 1947, with the help of tax breaks and the government's powers of eminent domain, Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village have served as an affordable redoubt for generations of police officers, teachers, nurses and other middle-class New Yorkers."