How a dyed-in-the-wool cooperator led his building through controversial building change

When Hal Fuchsman joined the co-op board at Inwood Park Apartments, where he’s lived since 2015, he saw it as a rite of passage.

“I grew up in a self-managed small co-op in Downtown Manhattan, [where] all seven of the resi­dents were auto­mat­i­cally board members,” Fuchman shared. ​“So board partic­i­pa­tion is, as my father would put it, a genetic defect that I inherited.”

In fact, Fuchsman has served as board pres­i­dent for eight of the nine years that he has spent on his building’s board. Fuchsman was climate-minded in prin­ciple, prior to his lead­er­ship on the board, so when the building’s managing agents tipped himFuchsman off that they needed to become compliant with Local Law 97 (LL97), it spurred him into action on the board’s first big-ticket sustain­ability project. 

“Reducing wasted energy cuts costs, which helps keep share­holder expenses stable — but it also means fewer emis­sions, which is a fantastic side effect of lowering energy use,” he said. ​“The upgrades we’ve done have also made heat distri­b­u­tion much more even, which improves comfort for resi­dents. I see this work as part of being a respon­sible steward of the building — protecting its long-term value and keeping it compet­i­tive for share­holder resale values.”

Installing radi­ator Cozys was the route Inwood Park Apartments took to cutting energy costs and reaching LL97 compli­ance through 2030. While it was a successful first step in reducing carbon emis­sions, the building will have to do more in the future to keep up with increas­ingly strict emis­sions stan­dards. But their expe­ri­ence this time around has left Fuchsman more cautious.

“While we’ve seen clear fuel savings and better temper­a­ture consis­tency, there’s also been some frus­tra­tion, and we’re wary of being early adopters twice in a row,” Fuchsman explained. 

He says he now wants the building to pause, reflect, and let their new systems gather data about energy use that can inform deci­sions to take more gradual action on proven tech­nolo­gies — ​“when the time is right.” 

Fuchsman and the board are holding off on any addi­tional major invest­ments until they see how the policy and tech­nology land­scape develops over the next five years. He antic­i­pates lobbying and legal chal­lenges from large commer­cial real estate port­fo­lios that might affect the penal­ties for non-compli­ance with LL97, and that those changes could trickle down to Inwood Park Apartments. The building’s chief focus in the mean­time is to continue to make small-scale refine­ments through steam balancing and regular main­te­nance, and to keep collecting data from these efforts before 2030.

“Some of the proposed big ​‘next step’ solu­tions for pre-war build­ings like ours still feel unproven,” Fuchsman said. ​“Jumping into expen­sive, irre­versible upgrades [too early] would be risky for our shareholders.”

In the mean­time, Fuchsman sees it as a primary objec­tive of his lead­er­ship to help share­holders inte­grate LL97 compli­ance — and the accom­pa­nying fines — into their under­standing of their respon­si­bil­i­ties as home­owners in New York City. 

“If we can keep that cost as low as possible, and spread it across all share­holders as a manage­able budget line item, it may simply become part of our new reality — just as it may for many similar build­ings,” he said.