Police, tenants push football legend Tim Green’s firm to fix nightmare apartments

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – Tenants at a 12-story apartment building owned by local football legend Tim Green are fed up with its deteriorating condition and say that on Green’s watch it’s become a haven of drug use, violence and other criminal activity.

Now, they’re organizing to demand management make their homes safer and more livable. And they have help.

Syracuse code inspectors have cited the building and city lawyers took the owner to court. Tenants’ rights advocates have stepped up pressure on Green’s management firm. Police met with management to find ways to reduce the high volume of calls to the building. For North Side cops, the property is a nuisance and a danger.

In the last four years, Green has amassed a small real estate empire. He’s bought 13 apartment complexes in Central New York, worth $26 million, plus buildings in Vernon, Utica and Plattsburgh. The apartments are managed by a company he owns with his son, Troy Green, 25.

Tenants in the Greens’ largest building, the Skyline Apartments, are enraged by the lack of security, an influx of drug rehab patients, nickel-and-dime fees and how it takes months to fix broken elevators or water heaters.

Police are called to the building for everything from property damage to assaults to drug overdoses. Last year, a 74-year-old woman was raped in her apartment by a man who entered the building through the front door.

A syracuse.com reporter visited the building several times over three days last week. In that time, a man punched and broke the plate glass window on the main entrance and a tenant working the front desk was beaten so bad he spent a day in the hospital.

Building managers say they know about the concerns and are taking steps to improve security. But tenants – many of whom are disabled or elderly – say not enough is being done.

Tim Green is one of Central New York’s most celebrated citizens. After a storied career as a defensive end at Syracuse University and in the National Football League, he became a TV broadcaster, a lawyer and a best-selling author. Next month, SU will retire Green’s No. 72 jersey during a game against Clemson.

In an emotional piece on CBS’s “60 Minutes” last year, Green announced he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a fatal neurological disease, possibly caused by his years as a football player. His son Troy, who manages the Greens’ real estate, is helping care for his ailing father.

Green lives in a $2.3 million waterfront mansion overlooking Skaneateles Lake. Neither Tim nor Troy Green responded to multiple requests for comment for this story.

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Tim Green bought the 364-unit building at 753 James St. from Longley Jones, a real estate company, on Dec. 6, 2016. Green signed for a mortgage for $3.4 million to Green Skyline, a limited liability company for which he is the manager. Green’s Skaneateles home is listed as the address for that company.

Since then, tenants say, the building has become a hub of activity for drug users and petty criminals.

The Greens lease some of the units to various social service agencies, including 63 units to Helio Health, an agency that assists people with substance abuse problems and mental health issues. Helio pays the rent and uses the apartments as housing for clients.

One tenant, Anthony Fasolo, said drug dealers have taken advantage of that customer base and use the lobby, parking lot and hallways to sell drugs.

Jeremy Klemanski, executive director of Helio, said not all of Helio’s clients in the building are recovering addicts.

“Not all of the people in these apartments have a substance use disorder,” he said.

Jackie Coyne, the on-site building manager for the Greens, said Helio is always quick to respond to issues with its clients there. Coyne took over building management six weeks ago and said she’s working to make improvements to meet concerns.

“The city of Syracuse is different now, different poverty line, different clientele,” she said. “We’re re-evaluating things we’re doing and seeing if there are better options for [security]. Residents will see things changing, it just takes time.”

Derek D’Onofrio is regional manager for Greenland Property Services, which is owned by the Greens. D’Onofrio oversees nine of their apartment complexes, including the Skyline. He’s been with the company just more than two years.

D’Onofrio said management has increased security in response to complaints.

Off-duty sheriff’s deputies are hired to patrol the building several days a week, according to Coyne and D’Onofrio. Also, an employee is stationed at the front desk from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m. and office staff are in the building from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“We try to limit people off the street from getting in the building,” D’Onofrio said.

The building’s first floor has several commercial tenants, including a Korean restaurant, a deli and a pharmacy. There’s a public foyer where anyone can access those businesses.

In that foyer is a locked door that leads to the lobby of the residential building. You need a key fob to get in.

Most days, people linger in the foyer, waiting until someone opens the door to sneak in.

A syracuse.com reporter visited the building three times last week during daytime hours. There was no one at the front desk on each visit. On two of the visits, the main office was empty. A reporter and photographer were able to easily walk in the building by trailing a tenant.

D’Onofrio said tenants shouldn’t be letting strangers into the building.

“We have a fob system,” he said. “If they don’t have a fob, they shouldn’t get in.”

Tenants, however, say that’s a heavy burden on them, since people are constantly congregating at entrances, waiting. Those people are sometimes violent.

Last Tuesday, for example, a man tried to enter the building on a tenant’s coattails. When the tenant refused, the man punched the plate glass door so hard it splintered like a spider web. Two police officers arrived while maintenance workers covered the glass in cardboard.

In the evenings, tenants are sometimes paid to sit at the front desk as security, though they have no training or license.

Early Wednesday morning, one of those tenants was beaten so bad he ended up in the hospital overnight.

A 37-year-old man named Maurice Pam came into the lobby at 1:30 a.m. and wanted to go upstairs, according to police. A tenant named Ross Levey, 33, was manning the desk and told Pam to leave.

According to police, Pam spit on Levey during an argument. Levey pulled out a collapsible baton and a fight began. Pam knocked Levey to the ground and punched and kicked him.

Cops arrested both men. Pam was charged with assault and criminal mischief. Levey was charged with harassment and criminal weapon possession for the baton.

D’Onofrio said he couldn’t talk about the assault since he didn’t have all the details.

Syracuse police have met at least once with management to discuss security improvements. They’re called to the building constantly, sometimes more than once a day.

In an email to a tenants’ rights advocate in May, Lt. Don Schultz outlined issues he raised with management, including inattentive security, unlocked or propped-open doors, insufficient video surveillance and non-tenants wandering the building.

Schultz recommended management provide professional security, repair doors, redesign the lobby to force visitors to pass the front desk, and demand better supervision from the social agencies that place recovering addicts and people with mental health issues in the building.

Schultz also said police would put officers in the parking lots during problem hours.

Management agreed to make some changes, but said redesigning the lobby to route people by the desk could create a fire hazard.

Calls for police have decreased since that meeting, Schultz said in his email.

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City officials have cited lax maintenance at the building following calls from tenants to the mayor’s office. Inspectors flagged uncertified elevators and a water heater that was broken for months.

A code inspector cited the building May 17 for a broken water heater and gave management a week to fix it. On July 2, the city requested a $3,900 judgment against Green Skyline for ignoring that violation.

D’Onofrio said the water heater was replaced in the last few weeks and the code violation was satisfied.

Fasolo, 52, lives on the fifth floor. He’s been there just more than a year. He said his water is either scalding hot or tap cold. Some people on the top floor often have no hot water, he said, so he counts himself lucky.

Cynthia Steiner, 63, is on the seventh floor. She said she went four days with no hot water last Thanksgiving. For most of the winter, she had the same problem as Fasolo: The water was scalding or frigid.

In March, city lawyers won a default judgment of $4,937 against Green Skyline for ignoring an elevator citation.

D’Onofrio said the elevators sometimes break down because it’s a 70-year-old building. But the three elevators are all working now. If one breaks, he said, the other two can handle traffic.

Both Fasolo and Steiner said one of the building’s three elevators was closed much of the winter. Fasolo said at busy times of day a line of 15-20 people used to form in the lobby while people in wheelchairs waited to get upstairs.

Last Monday, one elevator was taken out of service for part of the day to be cleaned. A man with a severe headwound had shed blood all over it. Police showed up to talk to the man, but he refused to cooperate.

Fasolo and Steiner are among a group of increasingly frustrated tenants who are uniting to demand action from the owners. They formed a committee that has met three times to discuss grievances and how to approach them with management. About 25 residents attended each meeting. Syracuse Code Enforcement Director Ken Towsley has also attended.

The burgeoning group is working with Sharon Sherman, executive director of the Greater Syracuse Tenants Network.

Sherman said the biggest problems are security and accessibility.

The building’s entrances aren’t compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act and many of the tenants are senior citizens or people with disabilities. Tenants in wheelchairs often struggle to open the building’s doors.

“It’s a disaster,” Sherman said. “It’s 70 years old. When they bought it, they should have put into the mortgage $500,000 for doing the elevators, doing the water, creating an intercom and anything else that came up.”

After a man broke the glass door last week, management sent a letter to members of the new tenants association saying they were getting quotes to replace it with an automatic, handicapped-accessible door.

Coyne said she’s working to get those new doors installed soon.

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Steiner has lived at Skyline for about 15 months. She has multiple sclerosis and uses a walker.

She pays $780 a month for a one-bedroom corner apartment. She said the problems at the building are fueled by greed. Management has whacked tenants with new charges while refusing to invest money for needed repairs, she said.

Her rent increased $15 when she renewed her lease this year. Greenland also added a $7 monthly surcharge for water and a $50 charge to remove and store a window air conditioner for the winter.

Steiner said she has the means to move but chooses to stay because she wants to “make problems” for the owners by helping tenants organize to demand better living conditions.

“I’m not going to be chased out of my home,” she said.

For much of her career Steiner was a representative for the Service Employees International Union Local 1199 at Crouse Hospital and also worked for St. Joseph’s Hospital. She said her background in union organizing makes her an asset to her neighbors and a problem for management.

Steiner joined the tenants’ network at Skyline last month. She’s one of four people spearheading the group.

Steiner said people buy drugs in the building from a dealer on the second floor. Sometimes dealers sell drugs right out of the windows, she said. In the 15 months she’s lived there, she said, three people have died of overdoses.

Steiner believes the deal with nearby Helio Health has led to many of the problems, since chronically homeless people and recovering addicts have taken up residence in the building. Often, Helio’s clients invite friends to come live with them, she said, putting multiple people in one bedroom apartments.

“It’s become a nest of danger,” Steiner said.

Fasolo moved to Syracuse from Rochester about three years ago. He has a neurological disease that makes it difficult for him to talk and to see. He walks with a large cane. He’s put on weight, which makes it tough to get around. He shakes when he talks.

Fasolo lives in an immaculate fifth-floor corner apartment meticulously decorated with plants and upholstered chairs and art. His rent is $780 a month (it also recently increased by $15 a month). Arise, a non-profit that assists people with disabilities, pays a little more than half the rent.

Since he’s lived there, Fasolo said, he’s seen people urinating or defecating in stairwells and once in an elevator.

Fasolo is frustrated by his health issues and said he used to be a fit, athletic person. What’s worse, though, is he feels he’s easy to cast aside because he is disabled.

“Most often, people don’t take this lower stratum of society seriously,” he said. “There seems to be this dislike of the poor or the handicapped. I wasn’t always like this.”

Fasolo was afraid to speak up for a while for fear of losing his apartment. He likes his unit. He simply wants management to pay better attention to the building.

Patricia Folnsbee is 64 and gets around in a powered wheelchair. She echoed complaints about poorly regulated water, broken elevators, a surprise water surcharge and the unsecured entrances.

Folnsbee said she once missed a doctor’s appointment after waiting 45 minutes for an elevator. Two of the three elevators were broken and the third was full every time it stopped on her floor.

She’s also had to wait often in the foyer for someone to open the door for her, since there are no handicapped-accessible doors.

“A lot of times thankfully there’s somebody there to let me in, but I don’t know if the people who help me open the door are residents,” she said. “People are getting in on my coattails.”

Folnsbee’s daughter visits almost daily to take care of her mom. She said she came in through the basement entrance last week and saw two men smoking crack cocaine in a hallway. Just a few days ago, she witnessed an elderly man being beat by two younger men in a hallway.

“Do these people understand there’s actually human beings living here?” Folnsbee asked.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comments from Helio Health.

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Do you have a story to share about the Skyline apartments or its management? Contact reporter Chris Baker at 315-766-8329 or by email at cbaker@syracuse.com.