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NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 7, 1914
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THE REAL ESTATE BOARD'S NEW ACTIVITIES I
A Year of Notable Achievement to Be Celebrated Tonight — Enlarged
Membership and Extension of Influence Under President McGuire.
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THE eighteenth annual dinner of the
Real Estate Board of New York,
which is to be held this evening at the
Waldorf-Astoria, finds the board a much
stronger organization than it was a year
ago. During the intervening period it
has acquired no fewer than SOO associate
members, including a large proportion of
the biggest owners of real estate in the
city. Furthermore, its active member¬
ship, which is limited to 200, has been
filled up and a waiting list established.
The rapid progress made during the
year is partly the result of a new inter¬
pretation of its functions adopted by the
board and reflected in a change of name
which went into effect in January of last
year, when the old title of the Real Es¬
tate Board of Brokers was abandoned
in favor of the Real Estate Board of
New York.
Under its original plan of organization
the board was a strictly professional
body and devoted itself to matters of
special interest to the brokerage profes¬
sion. Under the new plan it takes a
broader view of its duties and under¬
takes to deal with matters of interest to
real estate owners as well. It has con¬
sequently taken up the work of following
legislation at Albany, of scrutinizing ap¬
propriations by the Board of Estimate,
of watching ordinances proposed in the
Board of Aldermen, and in general safe¬
guarding the interests of real estate own¬
ers in matters of State aiid municipal leg¬
islation and administration.
After Dinner Program.
A variety of committees under ener¬
getic leadership have been appointed and
important achievements have been ob¬
tained. The result is that the board has
rallied to itself support from all quar¬
ters and the new enthusiasm and friend¬
ships which it has created will be nota¬
bly apparent at tonight's numerous gath¬
ering. The full complement of tickets
for the dinner had been sold out by the
middle of the week, and even the boxes
on the mezzanine floor overlooking the
dining-room fill be filled to overflowing.
Nearly a thousand guests v^ill listen to
addresses by Governor Martin H. Glynn,
Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, Professor
E. R. A. Seligmann, Arthur Brisbane
and Frederick T. Murphy. Laurence
M. D. McGuire, president of the board,
will act as toastmaster.
Origin of the Board.
The board was established in Febru¬
ary, 1896, as an offshoot of the old Real
Estate Exchange, which had quarters in
the , building since displaced by the
Chapiber of Commerce. It was incor¬
porated in 19Q8. As already noted, the
change of rjame to the Real Estate^ Board
of New York, which took place in Jan¬
uary, 1913, was followed by an important
extension .of activities. A new infusion
of energy in carrying out these activi¬
ties and in extending the membership
took place upon the election in October,
last year, of Laurence M. D. McGuire
as president, and William J. Van Pelt as
vice-president.
Mr. McGuire, according to his friends,
must be given a great deal of credit for
LAURENCE M.
President Real
D. McGUIRE.
Estate Board.
the good showing that the board is able
to make at its eighteenth annual dinner.
He has applied himself with vigor to the
building up of the association, and his
presidency has also fallen in a period
when the state of public feeling was such
as to enable his work to count for most.
New Work Taken Up.
The general motive of the work re¬
cently taken up by the board is brought
out in the following interview with Mr.
McGuire:
"New laws are suddenly imposed on
owners, who are not given sufficient no¬
tice to make preparations and who con¬
sequently may be forced to disregard
existing leases and contracts. Nor are
they granted suflScient time in which to
readjust renting conditions, to make
changes in occupancy of buildings; they
are even being deprived of the option of
closing up buildings in which it is finan¬
cially impracticable to comply with the
new laws.
"These have been drafted and are be¬
ing enforced without regard to the cost
of compliance on the part of the build¬
ing owner. To make the changes de¬
manded will in many cases cost more
than the yalue of the structure, the
amount of the owner's equity or the ren¬
tal income from the building for a period
of years.
"The laws of the last few years rep¬
resent the ultimate climax in the over-
regulation and disjointed regulation of
buildings; they contain obvious errors,
the language is vague and uncertain, the
requirements are condemned as imprac¬
tical by engineering experts, there is
lack of co-ordination between depart-
rnents. Even the Labor Department offi¬
cials are in doubt as to the law's mean¬
ing, while as experienced men, they de¬
plore the necessity of enforcing hard and
fast rules which make no allowance for
the merits of individual cases. The de¬
fects are so numerous that all classes of
people are justified in challenging the
laws and demanding a revision before
irreparable loss and damage is caused.
"These laws have been demanded by
persons who, though well meaning, lack
the experience and ability to construct a
reasonable and efficient scheme of im¬
provement. It is conceded that many
factory buildings need increased safe¬
guards, but such safeguards should not
be enforced until they are properly de¬
signed and until there is some assurance
that, if installed, they will really provide
safety and will be permanently accepted
by the authorities.
"It is also conceded that sanitary im¬
provements are desirable, but they should
be deferred until safety against fire and
accident has been accomplished. There
is a limit to the amount of money that
can be extracted from a building owner
and it is often a financial imnossibility
to meet the current extraordinary de¬
mands for safety and sanitation.
Defective Laws.
'''The present enforcement of these
laws brings the owners of factory build¬
ings face to face with the necessity of
closing up such buildings or spending
more money than the structures are
worth, or the income they will produce
for a term of years. These laws take
no account of the operation of existing
leases, they ignore the questions of the
amount of rent paid, the present state
of the building as a rentable proposition
or the future of the building in the light
of_ changing business conditions.
"It is an absolute injustice that peo¬
ple who must pay for the improvements
are not permitted to say anything about
the spending of the money: they have
hardly been given time to study the
Labor Law or understand its require¬
ments, let alone plan for the financial
burdens. In enforcing such laws, both
the State and the city are requiring pri¬
vate owners to do what is a financial
impossibility in the case of public build¬
ings. The Legislature would absolutely
refuse to appropriate sufficient money to
rnake the State buildings as safe rela¬
tively as factory buildings are required
to be made; neither would the Board of
Estimate appropriate sufficient money to
make city buildings as safe as the Bureau
of Fire Prevention is requiring private
buildings to be made.
Reforms Are Expensive.
"The simple fact is that there is not
enough money available, either for pub¬
lic or private owners, to carry out such a
drastic and wholesale scheme of im¬
provement, as the new Labor law de¬
mand. It is not enough that these laws
demand extensive and confiscatory ex¬
penditures for safety purposes, but they
require simultaneously even larger ex¬
penditures and more haphazard improve¬
ments for sanitation purposes. Many
owners of buildings simply have not the
necessary monev to obey these laws and
even those owners who have the avail¬
able means object to spending money on
buildings that are vacant or being vaca¬
ted and .whose future from a rental stand¬
point no man can guess.