Park Slopers are shouting triumph after a decrepit property on swank Garfield Place was sold last week — ending a decades-long battle to force its owner to stop letting the once-immaculate brownstone fall apart.
Neighbors don’t know why owner Peter Saltini gave up and sold the beleaguered building at 174 Garfield Pl. — which garnered plenty of attention from angry neighbors and councilmen due to its dozens of building code violations and safety hazards — but they don’t seem to care, now that Saltini’s realtor says that the new owner is “involved in the community” and wants to fix the place up.
“It’s definitely a victory,” said neighbor Barbara Conn, who spearheaded the campaign to get the building either repaired or sold.
Neighbors have been complaining about the three-story home for years, claiming that the gorgeous block between Sixth and Seventh avenues was tainted by the property with bricks strewn around its perimeter, garbage and overgrowth throughout the site, and scaffolding and cement that was falling into neighboring yards.
Saltini, who couldn’t be reached by our online deadline, had previously told us that he didn’t care about the complaints.
“Let them complain,” Saltini, an upstate resident, said in April. “I’ve been a big contribution to the quality of life on that block and all I get from the neighbors is grief. I’ve been here since 1969 and dealing with these people has made my skin thick.”
Saltini’s real-estate broker, John Mazurek, said that negotiations are ongoing over who will foot the bill for the 23 Department of Buildings violations and 20 Department of Sanitation violations. Either way, repairs are in the building’s future.
“[The new owner] is not quite sure what he’ll do with it yet — first he was going to turn it into apartments, but he also might try and sell it,” Mazurek said. “But he’s definitely going to fix it up.”
