Daily News from New York, New York • 267

DilCoJUOD3 (3 OTA The story of a renters' revolt by DOUG GARR he lobby has a dignified, ancient smell. The elevator walls are -wooden, and the gentleman who brings you to your floor hasn't yet been replaced afford one buy a co-op? It's a question that "real-estate -entrepreneur David Walentas, 42, the owner of Ahvyn Court, can't answer. He has co-opped several buildings in the past, and he's clearly lost his patience with this one. He doesn't understand why only 11 of 15 apartments were purchased. "Tenants -were being offered apartments for 540,000, and on the open market they're worth much "he says.

was a bonanza. They could have made a hundred grand right away." For a moment, Walentas "kinetic enthusiasm lapses into visible annoyance as he rails about the building's tenant association "jerking me around. Then he begins selling again, behind a cordial smile: not just another crappy East Side building. When 1 had three vacant one-bedroom apartments go on the open market, put the first up for sale for 5100,000. It sold in one day.

1 figured it must be too cheap. I'm selling the third for 5175,000. We've had SO people call and say they want to live in the Ahvyn at any price." Those anxious speculators may have a long wait, for Walentas seriously underestimated the spirit, power and tenacity of the opposition. The head of the 60-member tenant association (80 of the building joined) is Diana Hartley, who has lived in the Ahvyn 17 years. She organized the anti-co-op movement immediately after the plan was first announced in February 1979.

"I'm sort of a nut about this thing," she says. Indeed, she has almost total recall about the building's little battles, exact dates and names of various judges, liven the landlord admits that she has been most responsible for rallying the tenants. Bartley begins by explaining Al-wyn's tenant complexion. Half the with buttons. Ahvyn Court is -a city landmark, and back in 1909, when it was first built, there were only two apartments on each "floor and the sub-basement was the wine cellar.

The clientele was monied, quietly aristocratic If you lived in Ahvyn Court, you really lived uptown. The clientele isn't quiet anymore. Management is trying to turn the place into a co-op, and the tenants many of them long-time residents who would be forced to move are fighting back. It is a nasty conflict, full of the kind of petty battles that are being waged in buildings throughout the city. For example, a recent meeting of the Ahvyn Court Tenants Association was held in somebody's apartment.

The early meetings were in the basement, until people began to suspect that the landlord was going to put in bugs. "You want to know what the landlord thinks?" says one tenant "He told me once: 'For me, life is war. Every morning I get up and go to For the middle class of this country, home ownership has been the epitome of the American Dream. Owning a co-op is something akin to that, without the worry about mowing your lawn on Sunday. There's the added potential of making a killing on a bull market.

Who hasn't heard a story about the guy in the building next door who bought his apartment for 575,000 in April and sold it for $150,000 in May? So why doesn't everyone who can Doug Garr is a New York writer who does not live in a co-op. tenants are senior citizens, including three in their 90s, and one who Is 100 years old. Occupations "vary from author to doctor, musician to lawyer, ad man to insurance salesman. There are well-known names, too, like Louis Nizer, the lawyer, and Darren McGav-in, the TV star. Incomes range from six figures down to Social Security, and two-thirds of the apartments still under rent controL- -Most Tents are 5450-5550, fantastic bargains when you consider -what landlords are-asking for one and 2-bedroom apartments -these days.

(Under city Taw, rent-controlled tenants can keep their apartments indefinitely, without a lease, paying only 13 a year and fuel pass-along hikes.) Obviously, the turnover at Ahvyn lias been minuscule. In most cases, vacancies occur only when tenants die. "Rent-controlled tenants, especially the elderly, have little incentive to boy their apartments," Bartley says, point ing out that the monthly maintenance cost can easily exceed their old rent. The plan might have made sense to rent-stabilized tenants, Uke Bartley, who were paying slightly higher rents. "Had Mr.

Walentas been content with a 2 or 3 rnillion-dollar profit, we would have gone along," she says. The co-op plan reveals that Walentas paid only. 523 million for Ahvyn Court; Ins original offering listed the total co-op shares for sale at more than 58.6 minion. Walentas insists his profits are none of the tenants' concern. Under New York law, a coop sponsor must get cornmitments to buy from 35 of the tenants for apian to become effective.

"Walentas also filed an eviction plan, meaning if he rihtanwi the necessary minimum tenant sales, lie could take action to legally remove people from their apartments. When it became obvious that only one rent-controlled tenant out of 47 would buy, he altered the plan to SUtffiAY EWS MAGAZINE NEW YORK JAN. 11. 198i ft.