I Heart Peanut Butter

Originally meant to be condos they realized quickly that renting was the only way. The area of Lowell has improved two fold and boost tons of store fronts, small coffee shops, restaurants and lots of classy cobblestone roads. Yes I said Lowell….. The area around Market and Central is filled with amazing brick buildings that one by one are being bought up and converted into living and working space. The character if the neighborhood still has a few bums and the normal downtown of a small city individuals. Overall, I was impressed.

What I was really impresses with was “Loft 27” a loft “apartment building. They just get it!
From Huge- Expansive apartment with large architectural windows. The ceiling heights are 12-18 feet high, the impressive 14 ft windows in the BIG 2 bedroom made me giddy.

Check out their site…. Indoor Half Basketball Court, Art Gallery that exhibits the art work of the residents and other local artist, a movie theater…..

Here are some Lowell pics:

I want to truly challenge myself. Maybe because desperate times call for desperate measures.

I started by cutting out my morning “drink” stop, at one point that was 2 Red Bulls at the price of $6.00 every morning and then it became my morning Starbucks run that cost me close on average $7.00-$8.00 a day. That over 20 work days in a month is around $150.00, just more or less pissing away. So I have started as of last Thursday taking $7.00 a day and transferring it to my savings account, 5 days and $35.00 richer on the savings track. This money will be used monthly to pay the ridiculous balance I have congered up on my credit cards.

But I need another challenge, what else can I go without each month? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I can’t get rid of my car, sorry about that one, even a couple months without a car would give me plenty of money to pay the credit cards off, but no such luck when I work 50 miles from home.

Yard Sale is this Sunday… 8:30 until 4pm…
@ University Park Lofts – 21 Illinois St Worcester Ma.

Will be in the parking lot, come on down…..

Things have been a bit rocky in the world of University Park Lofts as of late and as a courtesy I am not placing this on the UPL blog. But tonight threw me over the edge a bit, and since when am I reserved and quiet. I will not sit back and watch my life be controlled. Every reason we bought at UPL has been demolished and stomped on over the last couple years but we stuck strong even when I was not sure I could handle anymore. I have come close to leaving alone just in order to be free from the drama that looms over this massive amazing building. The building must be haunted by the workers of the Cromptom & Knowles Mill workers….

So this past month we have known about a developer/investor who has been trying to buy this building for the last year, since the auction. We knew that his other properties while trashy, overgrown with green, and unfinished were mixed use. So part of us dreamt that we could have a gym and art gallery and he would really be buying into the neighborhood, the building and moving forward with the dreams of the owners of this building, while small in numbers we sure have dreams for this neighborhood and our building. Over the last year we have all put our efforts into making the building beautiful. We have art work from an owner in the lobby,landscaping from Neil (and I might add he is real good too) cleaning and mini projects, what the building can afford to do with a cash flow of 7k a month. Neil and Julie have balanced the books and managed the building, made great connections with local contractors. We have had the city council in on some ideas for the neighborhoods. Julie makes it to neighborhood safety meetings because knowledge of the neighborhood is very important.

All this in the last couple years. But at the same time we shut down the last investor/developer who crossed us. While small in numbers we all speak loud, we were able to get the ear of the Telegram , Worcester Magazine, Worcester Business Journal and Banker and Tradesman. The owners of the this building backed the bank when they wanted to have automatic stay from the bankruptcy. We made it so not one person rented here from Brett, because even one renter would have let him keep the building. This one lawyer who was a criminal defense and personal injury specialist could not lie or put one past us, we shut him down, through websites, blog post, newspapers and signs while demonstrating our freedom of speech. We are not someone, just anyone wants to start messing with.

This man- Mr. Jim Levin owns a few hideous buildings in Westboro, Hopkinton and Dudley. They are shanty converted, touched up mills that lack any type of “professional” atmosphere. We know this not from his website of American Mills but because of an owners drive by, inspect and picture taking of the properties. I have seen the pictures and I am not impressed. One of them I know very well as it was a mill 2 towns away from where I grew up and I passed it frequently. It was a working mill until about 6 years ago. This man claims and brags about his HUGE amounts of money he has, please show me where this money was spent. The bragging to other owners and a renter in this building makes me want to hurl. We are young couples, empty nester’s and singles, we could care less about a self proclaiming “millionaire.” Upon conversations with people in this building he has claimed his dissatisfaction with the “rules” of the building, not understanding why were would not allow dogs, well because the only dogs that were going to move into here were pit bulls and out building insurance will not cover the building with pit bulls in the building.

So of course with his complaint about our rules and things he wants differently we started to suspect that he had bigger plans that were not including the few individual unit owners in this building. Today the truth came out, this man has decided to buy 5 units in individual names and not under the LLC, and call a special meeting on the day he closes on the 31st of this month. During this special meeting he will vote himself and 2-3 other individuals he tags to the units as trustees and will officially take over the building. He has plans for the garage, this sorry excuse for a man thinks that he know everything about this building, damn the bank who is selling him this building doesn’t even know, because they do not care about the issues with the building. The fact that the garage door has not been oiled is a flaw from the current trustees- give me a break, the trustees for this building have put more energy than this man ever will into something that is worth so little.

What he doesn’t understand is we all spent WAY too much money when we bought, our mortgage would cover five of his units. We can not just walk away, it will take a lot of work if we want to move. To have someone bully their way into our building is not sitting well with me right now, I am a mess because I know how much energy I will need to devote to this travesty of a new investor. He is shady and not professional.

What do we want: we want someone who for the first 6 months to a year comes, observers, worries about his individual units and then, during a normal election of trustees tries to be a trustee. That would be grand. Instead this stranger is all of a sudden going to have control over the bank account and the day to day happenings of this building. I will not have any of this and I will not take this without a fight.

Things Mr Levin wants to do with this building:

• he hates the idea that we have individual roof deck spaces, he wants to make ONE roof deck for all the units. Sorry Sir, we are not giving up our spot and if we move it will be deeded to someone else.
• Wants the “empty” garage parking spots converted to storage, because he doesn’t believe in garage parking. Are you serious? This is the prime selling feature.
• wants to allow dogs and make it self regulated
• Thinks that the garage flooding is a simple problem and fix that- We would be looking at 100k dollars worth of work, is he donating that to the building?
• Wants to allow college kids live in the building, good bye nice quiet building
• Wants to replace the Elevator motor to improve the sound so he can rent out 508. Who is paying for the new motor? Another Assessment that will end with leans on all the units.

And so many other things over the last couple weeks. The nightmare will begin, I am 100% his goal is to get all of us to let him buy us out. This makes me so sad, this was our first home, whether or not it was a pleasant experience. To have investors coming in and acting as if all we have done and all we hope for doesn’t mean anything. I am sure at the Meet-and-Greet on Monday he will show good face and be pleasant and try to fool us a bit. But I am a very good judge of character and I do not trust this man. I am not a trustee, I am just an owner and I have the right to feel as if my views are being heard. I am just sad that it is all coming to this, the dreams of a full building and cocktail parties and roof get together’s will never transpire. This meeting on Monday will sure to be like the time Brett meet with us to say he would deed the whole roof off to us, if we just corporate and help him keep the building.

I am sure I will have more to come……Off to look at some houses.

Things that tick me off….

• People claiming a city they do not live in… If you are from Worcester or Framingham you are not from Boston, start paying Boston rents and then you can claim the city. The same thing in Stamford or Greenwich CT- You are not from New York. You are not a Bostonian if you live in Worcester or anywhere in the surrounding 35 miles.
• Emails that are spam that start with Re:Crystal A. or Crystal A.?????
• The General public that does not do their own research about the Health Care Reform bill and yet takes every bit of information propagandist throw at them. You want to learn read the bill: Read Here. You do not need to read all of it, just read some of it. If you are concerned about end of life care areas check out section 1233. This is simply having the discussion with your PCP about what you want at end of life, I know here in the United States people hate to talk about death, unfortunately it is all of our fate. To be a proactive citizen where you decide what you want to occur at the end of life. Advance Directives- Living Wills- DNR’s- Health Care Proxy’s, all very important decisions. To be an informed citizen is part of our responsibility to all people. The US Government has been in health care for 44 years and not to many complaining about that. Medicare has had few changes in that time. The introduction of Part D a few years back brings more worry that the numbers that are being stated are not practical. When a patient has less than 4k a year to purchase prescriptions and the average senior in this country is on 5-6 medications you may see that amount used up in 4-5 months. I have a grandmother who ran out of her Part D monies a couple months ago and paying full price for prescriptions is not easy on a fixed income. So if we are so concerned with senior citizens then stop worrying about a public option insurance and focus on improving Medicare.

August 23rd 2009- Sunday
8am until 3pm

Bargains to be had. Home Decor, Children’s items, books, etc….. Many Used, Never Used Items

Hopefully others will want to join us and have a BIG yard sale. We have use of a BIG piece of the parking lot at the lofts….

If you want to set up with us let me know… If not hope to see you there….

So as of late Neil and I are about on the same page… We do not want to live in the lofts for much longer but doing all the research we can to be able to get out in the cleanest way possible. Clean being without havoc to credit, or leaving us more broke than we are right now.

I have been looking online at house and I have found a very cute home in Worcester that is a bargain at 174k. Small but has a finished basement which doubles the sq footage. Currently it looks like it is being used as a man cave. Has a decent sized yard, no deck but that is something Neil and I can figure out down the road. I just really want a place that I can have a garden, I must be getting old because all I want in the world is my very own garden, and with my green thumb boyfriend I am sure we could make any yard look amazing. I am not putting the house on here because I am not advertising it to others, I want it!!!!!! The only room that is not at all do-able is the bathroom but we can do a trip to Ikea and make it look better….

So I am keeping my fingers crossed that this crazy man who is buying the rest of the units would like to make us a nice deal and buy our unit too…. The thing is he is not getting ours for 50k, at least not with the roof deck and two parking spots……

Not looking forward to this man coming into our building he reminds me of another Brett Levy and I am not going to deal with that mess all over again. A know-it-all, knows better than the owners who have lived in the building 2+ years who has plans that somehow do not include those who own individual units. I hope this guy falls on his ass, and I will be laughing the whole time.

So for the last few years my dear friend Tasha and I lost contact, both had bullshit going on, busy lives, she had just started a family. Well this morning I look and I have a friend request from her on Facebook….
I couldn’t be more happy… We meet when we were 4 years old, she was my new shy neighbor and we went through many years of craziness together. About 4 years ago we lost touch, she was living on South Carolina, trying to adjust to her life there, I was ending a bad relationship and figuring out my things.
Well I will never loss contact with her again… May try out Direct Air out of Worcester to fly to South Carolina to see her soon…