New York by Gehry

Caution: poor management and $1000's in charges on move outBe very careful! The management will charge you 1000s of dollars for normal wear and tear of the cheap veneer floors! They charge almost every unit to replace the floor for minor scratches from normal wear. The management of this building has gone way downhill!! Doormen are great but the management company is slimy!

Very shady management. I lived here twice. The first time around, I had a good experience - the doormen and staff at the front desk are particularly nice, remember your name, etc.The second time around was an entirely different story, and as a result, I cannot recommend that anyone live in the building. I will certainly not return there.When I moved in, there were scratches on the hardwood floor in various places. I reported them in an email to management and didn't think much of it. When I was moving out the following year, the move-out inspector highlighted every single scratch he could find anywhere on the floor. The building management (led by Ed Johnson) then tried to charge me for it, taking nearly half my security deposit. They had absolutely no proof that I caused this damage; in fact, they had reports on the previous tenant's move-out inspection that there was substantial floor and wall damage.I have never had an issue with the state I have left any apartment in, and I have lived in many. At every other inspection I've had, the inspector has been amazed at how clean the apartment is. After reading many other reviews on here revealing the same scammy practice of getting tenants to pay for building repairs, I decided to fight this. I was prepared to take the building to small claims court. They ended up settling with me before we needed to get there, but consider yourself warned.

Kiss your deposit goodbye!! I forgot to write a review after moving out. Horrible experience. I am extremely clean and take care of every place I've ever lived in, I don't have dogs or anything else that would cause damage. Normal wear and tear in NYC is scratches and scuff marks etc. That is kinda what you pay for while renting. Well....Not in this place. Renter beware you will be charged for absolutely everything. The guy walked around with an iPad taking pictures of the most minuscule scratches and said "All these boards have to be replaced" The flooring was spotless except what was their from before. I thought he was joking, I own properties and rent them out. Sure enough most of my crazy large deposit was gone. You can live here, but prepare to never see your deposit again.

I have had the displeasure of living in the building for close to two years on two separate floors - 12th and 51st.Pros: The door staff and porters are pleasant and the views can be decentCons: Virtually all else!!! The elevators frequently have problems, the valet service is horribly slow and inefficient (they don't even accept large packages any longer and caused serious issues for me when they erroneously turned away a smaller shipment), the management staff - including the direct property Manager - Vitool Pradith - of FS Residential is grossly incompetent. Pace students smoke pot and cigarettes brazenly in the Plaza area that is of course "No smoking" and to add insult to injury you have to pay for every amenity - gym and even access to common areas.Do yourself a favor and get a better finished apartment and better managed property at another location in the FiDi or TriBeCa.

There is very little good to be said about living here, but I'll start with that:GOOD: The doormen are very nice. Living in an iconic building is a cool tidbit. The windows are really nice and provide a ton of natural light.

THE BAD:Management: Not a lot to be said that hasn't already been said here. They will really try to seduce you when you are thinking about living here but once you sign the lease they will screw you at every turn. TAKE PICTURES OF YOUR APARTMENT the moment you move in. You should do this in every apartment in NYC. We had large scratches in our floors when we moved in. Then when we moved out they charged us a ton out of our deposit for floor scratches (despite the fact that I had multiple photos of scratches). If they are taking money for "floor repairs" from tenants - why are there scratches when a tenant moves in? Again, maybe just the state of all NYC housing, but still. Not great.Neighborhood: Get ready to live in the most boring neighborhood in Manhattan. There is NOTHING happening in the neighborhood except Brooklyn Bridge tourists and Pace students. Both will become the bane of your existence. The restaurants are boring, the streets are ugly and devoid of culture. If your idea of "culture" is the Oculus, maybe this neighborhood is right for you.Dogs: I can love a dog, but every resident in this 70 story tower owns dogs, big and small. The portico and outdoor space outside the lobby are dog bathrooms. You will see dogs going to the bathroom more than anywhere else in the city. Nobody cleans up after them. The lobby smells of urine and walking out of the building is a mine-field.Amenities: As everyone else has noted - the amenities are such a scam. The quality is fine but there are several gratuitous amenities that don't help lower the cost (who needs a library full of books that they don't own? Also - they built a 70 story skyscraper and put the amenities on the seventh floor? Hope you enjoy that scenic view of the Pace building and the Brooklyn Bridge traffic. Package Center: It's convenient to have someone watching your package, yet four times they couldn't locate boxes for me. Each time, they said they were already picked up - when I said that wasn't possible, they made it seem as though I was trying to scam them. When it was a time-sensitive package, they told me they'd need their manager to review footage and it would take at least a week. Kathy from the package center was a particular nightmare. The worst attitude.TL;DR - you can find a lot better places for the outrageous prices this building is charging. You will be treated like dirt by almost everyone in their management, and they will attempt to take every nickel and dime from you until well after you've moved out. I have been in another new building for four months - everything is better. Stay away.

Physical building is nice (relatively new).

Management is abysmal. Incredibly difficult to deal with - it took weeks of haggling to get all the paperwork done so they would let us have someone deliver a rocking chair. Then when your lease is up they'll jack up your rent 10% because they know it's a pain for you to move, and that's what they think they can squeeze out of you. Elevators in the high rise bank are continually breaking. Tonight my wife (and a bunch of other people) got trapped in an elevator and it took management about an hour to find an elevator technician to let them out. According to the guys at the front desk this happens once every month or so.UPDATE: Apparently someone else trapped in the elevator with my wife says a friend got trapped in another 8 Spruce elevator earlier today. So this might be a weekly or daily occurrence.

incredibly overpriced, mediocre neighborhood, and rude management. the apartments are nice but the management office is difficult.the amenities are not included and the cost for membership seems to always increase with no noticeable improvement. this is a building where the management doesn't care if you're happy and seems only concerned with how much money they can get from you in the short term. zero attention given to long-term tenants. the building is basically just a flimsy advertisement for prospectives. during my tour, they didn't even mention that the amenities were extra. elevators are frequently out of service. get ready to wait for 10 minutes in a crowd of people to get home after a long day--not to mention the tedium of taking your dog out for a walk or checking your mailbox. and if you need to leave, good luck: if you decide to assign your lease, the building prohibits marketing of the apartment on streeteasy, which makes it next to impossible to get out of a very costly and unsatisfactory commitment.

Run far, far away from this building. It slowly sapped away my will to live. No wonder the windows don't open more than a tiny crack. APARTMENTS:Many of them have wonderful views, of course. Given the density of the neighborhood, though, you're just as likely to be looking into someone else's window.The units make the most of the space, but they are cramped for the price. The finishes and materials are fine, which fooled me into thinking that the construction quality was better than it actually is. The appliances are of poor quality. In less expensive apartments, they use shoddy Haier brand appliances. The fridges make a lot of noise, and the dishwasher in my unit never completed a cycle. Maintenance never fixed the dishwasher in two years.There is mold in the building's filthy ventilation system. Living there, I always felt fatigued and unwell. Despite frequent and thorough cleaning, when I moved into my new place, I had to clean off a layer of grime from all of my furniture and belongings. There are also smokers of tobacco, pot, and I'll assume otherwise, throughout the building and management doesn't do anything but send out periodic emails reminding people that it's against the rules. Thanks, guys.THE BUILDING:The best feature is the covered driveway. Birch Coffee downstairs is also perfectly nice.Otherwise, the amenities are flashy but impractical for daily use. They're cramped for a building of around 900 apartments and have an uneasy, disjointed layout. Management also pulled a switcheroo not long after I moved in and tacked on a hefty additional fee to use them. Then the opening hours were reduced and they now close at 10PM on weeknights.Maintenance is lousy. The carpets in the hallways are stained. On my floor, hallway lights were out for weeks at a time. The amenities, if you use them, are dirty. For example, the pool tables are clearly never cleaned and have hair and dust embedded in them.The dry cleaner is awful; they destroy clothes and accept no responsibility for it. See my other review. STAFF:The doormen are generally very nice, but they are the only good people who work there.Dealing with the leasing and management staff is inevitably a miserable experience. I really, really hate moving and had hoped to trade up to a larger unit, hopefully without the toxic ventilation problems and with functioning appliances. I was ready to grit my teeth and ignore the rest of the building's shortcomings. They made it impossible.When you move out, they will try to cheat you on the security deposit, as noted by the other reviewers. I had to repeatedly call to have it returned, which they didn't do until well after the 60 days specified in their own lease terms. To add insult to injury, over $300 was taken out for the notorious floor repairs which I'd been assured by the maintenance man upon move-out were not a problem.LOCATION:Transit is great and it's convenient to the Financial District. It doesn't really feel like a coherent neighborhood, though. The whole area is overrun with crowds coming off of the Brooklyn Bridge and ambling down to the Seaport or over to the WTC. Park Row is now a busy depot for tour buses. Nothing against tourists, but it's feeling like Times Square these days. One hotel after another has been opening in the area, so it's not really geared to long-term residents.UNEXPECTED BONUS:The incredibly pretentious emails from the building's "Luxury Attaché" eventually became a cherished hate-read. What's the latest hot restaurant that the Times wrote up? Where does Condé Nast Traveller think I should I stay in Gstaad this winter? I never tired of guessing if this was for real, a commentary on the pretensions of my former neighbors, or some kind of bizarre mental exercise.

Like many of the reviews here mention, the doormen really are the best part of this building. They are incredibly friendly and helpful. They even remember everyone's name.I loved living here

But after two great years it became impossible to renew my lease. The NYTimes, WSJ and countless other publications have written about falling rent prices in the area (the NYTimes article even referenced this building in their story). This building is rent stabilized and the city froze the rent increase this year. I really wasn't expecting much of an increase, especially not a 10% rent hike. I would have considered paying it until I had the unfortunate experience of having to deal with the leasing manager, Kelley Napolitano.I mentioned to Kelley that an apartment with the same floor plan, 21 floors higher, with unobstructed views of the State of Liberty and the bay was on the market for less than my renewal price. Her response was "it does have stunning views"... which wasn't very helpful.She asked me to submit a counter offer that she would present to the landlord, which I did, but I never got a response. I've called her several times and never heard back. Even if I wanted to renew with the increase, I don't think I'd be able to find her. The apartment will sit empty on the market like all others they list on street easy. It'll eventually rent for less than I currently pay.A lot of reviews mention problems with the leasing staff. If Forest City were interested in making money, they should replace Kelley with someone more professional.

I lived here 2.5 years. This is a premium rental building, and the building staff in general are great. Super friendly and they take the time to learn everybody's names, even in such a big building

However, the management company is like dealing with a cable company or a rental car company, no customer service mentality at all, they know they have you over a barrel. Basically they won't answer your questions or concerns via email or answer their phone -- unless it is about renewing your rental of course -- and you have to take time off your workday to actually show up at their office and try to corner them. We ended up buying a place elsewhere -- this building is all rentals -- and tried to sublet the unit for the remainder of the lease, however the building's requirements basically make it impossible to do a short term sublet. (I see others here have run into that problem as well.) Ended up taking a big hit there. The changes to the amenities that other people have written about were quite annoying, but I guess not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things. I had a relationship with a great trainer from Blake Shepherd, which is the company the building recommended in the first place, and after working with him every week for more than a year they just said, sorry he's no longer allowed in the gym under any circumstances, you have to pick a trainer from our new preferred company. And on top of that, the price increase was astronomical! The gym is nice but it's basically a luxury hotel gym, not worth price comparable to actual full service premium gyms.

I love my home!8 spruce street is beautiful and the doorman are so nice and kind . Not only are they nice, but they are helpful. I recommend living here!!the apartments have beautiful views and beautiful layouts!!!

Rents for renewal have increased 15%-20%. That is 25-30% increase with respect to their teaser rates. Simply ridiculous.

The best parts of this building by far are the guys at the front desk (not just nice, but also incredibly helpful) and the exterior architecture.

Unfortunately, the cons are:- the management company, Cooper Square, is simply impossible and make any interaction unnecessarily painful (we lived in another building managed by the same company and it was the same story)- the interior finishes in the apartments are noticeably less nice than in many other comparatively priced buildings in the neighborhood and the walls are thin (i could sit in the bathroom and hear my neighbor's conversation every morning, i felt like we were close friends without having ever met them)- the amenities cost extra and after our first year, Wright Fitness took over the management of the gym and upped the price to be comparable to an Equinox membership, which is completely ridiculous, so we stopped using the gym

I'm pleased to say that management was extremely helpful in assuring my husband and I that the deposit would be returned in full, and it indeed was.

I wish the experience with the move out inspection hadn't been so vague and infuriating with regards to the maintenance person marking up the floor with damages that had been from previous tenants (which we documented after move in.) If he had reviewed the apt history prior to the inspection, perhaps the stress of the situation could have been avoided. The way the whole thing was done was very suspicious, allowing for the possibility of someone arbitrarily making deductions from our deposit due to previous tenants' damages. I do hope that going forward, the issues surrounding security deposits and move out inspections get resolved and that the process becomes much more transparent. I loved living in the Gehry in spite of this issue. It is a great place to call home.

We have lived in the Gehry building for 4 years. It is truly the doormen and neighborhood that has kept us here this long. We love all of the guys at the front as well as the maintenance.

The management is horrible. I have repeatedly asked for no smoking signs in the courtyard. The management has said they ordered the signs but the parks department made them take them down. The communication is flippant and patronizing. I called the parks department and they said they have no jurisdiction over this area at all. The quality of life with all of the smoke and a toddler is not good. The new amenities company is too expensive and condescending.

BE WARNED. When you decide to sign a lease at New York by Gehry, add $110 ($220 if you are renting with a roommate) per month to the actual rent on your contract. We've been tenants for several years with the understanding that our rent was higher than comparable apartments downtown due to the included amenities (gym, 50-foot pool, etc.). That said, beginning 2015, the management company subcontracted all the amenities to a third-party company, which is now forcing each individual to pay $110 per month (PLUS A SIGN-UP FEE AND ONLY 6 GUEST PASSES PER YEAR) just to have access to the "amenities" that were originally included in everyone's lease. This is incredibly misleading and a misuse of the term "amenities." To be clear, this is just an apartment gym, which doesn't even have a squat rack or a bench press--yet they are charging Equinox prices. What's next? Charging per elevator ride up to your floor? By the way, half the treadmills (and 5 out of the 7 grills on the grill deck) are usually broken at any given point in time.

It is telling that the poor reviews are often from past tenants and the betters ones are from current residents. I would have rated the building a 4/5 while living there, despite the terrible service from the management office. The amenities are great and the building staff WONDERFUL

Alas, if you are contemplating moving here, be prepared for the **possibility** -- I can't say definitively since mine is but one experience -- that you'll lose a good portion of your security deposit to repair costs that you may not feel are deserved. Two examples: #1 our apartment was delivered to us with dented refrigerator doors, which we had to replace upon move-out. #2 Apple Cleaners (the building cleaning company) dented our counters, and we had to pay for repairs. Those two items alone were $1K. Just a word of warning.