Cool or Not Cool: Asking Neighbors to Pay Your Back Taxes?

Photo via the Daily Slope

Remember when 2nd Street Cafe was pretty much the only affordable place to get a good frittata on 7th Avenue?  You'd leave, having created a masterpiece in crayon on your butcher paper tablecloth, and take a look at the building on the north-east corner of that intersection. God, you'd think.  If Miss Havisham decided to move into a Brooklyn storefront, I bet she'd choose that place.

That would have been years ago.  2nd Street Cafe is long gone, but the derelict building on that corner is still there, and it hasn't changed at all.  This is mostly because their 24 separate and distinct building code violations have still not been remedied.

The building is owned by an absentee landlord family --specifically sisters Rachel and Evelyn Nash-- and when CB6 tried to track them down to request they fix up the derelict shit-hole, the Nash Sisters were nowhere to be found. They own the building outright, but it seems they haven't been able to re-pay a loan taken out to pay the back taxes.  They are in now danger of losing the building entirely.  

They put it on the market for 5.5 Million in 2006, but couldn't find anyone who wanted to pay that kind of coin for an unpolished turd. Rather than trying to sell the crumbling pile of crap for less, the sisters are appealing to their neighbors to help raise funds to keep it. The Nash Sisters sauntered into a recent CB6 meeting and told everyone that they want the community to help them have a fundraiser so that they can turn it into “affordable artist housing” and open up a cafe that would have "poetry nights." They've already opened up a small gallery space in part of the building.

It sounds just awful, if you ask me. They've forced us to stare at this eyesore for so long, and now they want our money to maaaaaybe clean it up? It's like the Nash Sisters are trying to give birth to a dusty, snaggle-toothed baby with a misshapen head, and they're asking the local community to help them out by massaging the hideous baby's fontanelle until the bony plates grow together.  And really, shouldn't they just be selling their fugly baby on the black market?  Wouldn't that be a better solution?

I say "sell the baby for whatever you can get for it." What say you? 

[Via The Brooklyn Paper]