It's a four-letter word that no one ever wants to hear—fire! High-rise and apartment-building fires are, mercifully, a rare occurrence, but they do happen and they can be a real-life nightmare, similar to what's depicted in the 1970s-era…
New Jersey and New York are famous (perhaps infamous) for their residents' philosophy of minding their own business—dress as a giant chicken, sport a revolutionary haircut…nobody minds. This attitude is great if you're a young person exp…
The fires this past October in southern California were a sharp reminder of the power and ferocity of this deadly element. Fire can spread quickly and without warning, often catching the people near it off-guard and vulnerable. Sometimes…
One of the most important things for an urban or suburban dweller to know about his or her condo, co-op or HOA is often the one thing that everyone forgets about—that is, what to do in the event of an emergency. While it's true that the …
For more than 60 years, the Greenbrook Sanctuary has served as an unparalleled refuge of natural beauty and wonder for city dwellers and suburbanites in search of a landscape without cars, without noise and without the flat grayness of c…
Any time a brand-new building or development is proposed in any given New Jersey community, there will be objectors. Residents might voice concerns about urban sprawl or the impact on their neighborhood's character, or they might just be co…
You can't walk around in any community these days without spying a new construction project—rows upon rows of condos seem to go up overnight and there's no shortage of people looking to get while the getting is good on brand new bui…
Ask a veteran building manager about his scariest horror story and he may recount a freezing winter night when the heating system went kaput, leaving a 400-unit building ice cold, or the time the sprinklers decided to kick on for no reas…
In a multifamily building with families who are cooking, cleaning, dusting and breathing, it's no surprise that airways, chutes and garbage rooms can get clogged and dirty over time. Garbage, debris and allergens build up in a building's…
Apartment buildings, whether cooperatives or condos, are inherently fragile. When that many units share the same plot of land, and the same walls, the same floors, the same elevators and stairways, standpipes and boilers, lobbies and roo…