For the elderly artists who’ve lived for decades on the upper floors of a 19th century cast-iron SoHo loft building on Mercer Street, the last six years have been a physical and emotional nightmare with a singular cause: their landlord banned them from the building’s sole elevator in 2019.
But getting the city to do something about this has turned into a separate odyssey, with delay after delay — including a 16-month pause caused, in part, by a backlog at the city Loft Board — to finally get the landlord to agree to restore access.
For visual artist Donald Lewallen, 89, and his photographer wife, Myrel Chernick, 74, the trek down to the street from their fourth floor loft is arduous and, for Lewallen, treacherous.
“The main motive is to get us to leave. I mean how much can we stand to live here in a fourth floor walkup at our age?” Chernick said. “At this point going up and down the stairs is really hard. If I have to go out more than once a day it’s really tiring. It really curtails your activity.”
‘It’s So Hard’
Lewallen suffered a stroke that severely limited his mobility, so he must descend one step at a time with a home health care aide walking next to him, holding on to his belt to ensure he doesn’t fall. It takes a very long time to get all the way down, and by the time he arrives at street level, he’s exhausted.
“I go out twice a week because it’s so hard to go up and down those stairs,” he said. “My goal is to walk down on my own.”
And so it goes for Lewallen and Chernick and a half-dozen other pioneering artist tenants in their 70s and 80s who’ve lived in the Mercer Street loft building since the 1970s, when artists first moved into SoHo and triggered the formation of New York City’s one-of-a-kind Loft Law that allows working artists to live in buildings zoned for commercial use.
The delay at Mercer Street, officials concede, was due in part to understaffing at the Loft Board, the city agency that oversees enforcement of that law, where only two attorneys were handling a growing number of complaints from tenants across the city.
Late last week, after inquiries from Councilmember Christopher Marte, D-Manhattan, and The City Reporter, the building’s owner, Square Churchill Mercer LLC, finally agreed to fix the problem, informing the board that they expect service will be restored within four weeks.
Chernick — while grateful for the promised cure — isn’t holding her breath.
“Let’s see what happens,” she said, “before we get too excited.”
Her reluctance to celebrate is born of a long history of frustration trying to get the Loft Board — an oversight agency currently made up of eight mayoral appointees — to make the landlord follow the law.
A Unique Law
The Mercer Street building is like many formerly empty factory spaces that artists, seeking inexpensive space to do their work, commandeered in the 1970s. The rent was cheap but they spent their own money to transform what were open loft spaces into livable apartments, installing plumbing and electrical systems, putting up drywall to create bedrooms and building out workable kitchens. They created their own living spaces, despite the fact that the properties were not zoned for residential use.
“Don’s going to be 90 this year. You can see he has a walker. For him to have to go up and down the stairs is really, really difficult.”
Myrel Chernick
In 1982 the state enacted a special exception that allowed “Artists In Residence” to continue living in these spaces at rent-stabilized rates, with building owners required to bring buildings up to code and obtain a certificate of occupancy from the Buildings Department. The Loft Board was created to regulate this process.
Elevator Games
At first, the original owner of the Mercer Street building, Friedman Real Estate, allowed residents free use of a freight elevator that serviced five stories of apartments from the basement to the top floor. In 2007 the building was sold to a second owner, Centurion, who continued to allow tenants access to the lift but required that they give building managers 48 hours notice to use it.
Then in 2016 a new owner took charge — Square Churchill Mercer LLC.
In 2019, three years into ownership, Churchill suddenly announced the elevator was now off-limits.
Tenants say sometimes the building manager would tell them the elevator was broken, other times they were simply told they couldn’t use it.
Records show the elevator last passed inspection in December 2022, but after that the owner appears to have stopped filing inspection reports as required. Since 2023 the Buildings Department has issued six violations and $18,000 in fines.
During that time, Chernick notes with a hint of incredulity, the lack of lift had a devastating effect on the lives of artists who pay their rent on time and were trying in vain to get city bureaucrats to make the landlord — an international real estate firm — do the right thing.
“It greatly affects us,” she said. “Don’s going to be 90 this year. You can see he has a walker. For him to have to go up and down the stairs is really really difficult. He does it. But he hardly ever goes out.”
Chernick acknowledges that the couple pay de minimis rent — $683 a month — but alleges the landlord never fixes anything and the building still has no certificate of occupancy. The elevator shutdown, she believes, was designed to drive them out so the landlord can replace them with tenants willing to pay market rate rents.
In March 2019. Chernick, Lewallen and five other tenants hired a lawyer and filed a complaint with the Loft Board. Subpoenas were issued.
Delay After Delay
Then came the pandemic in March 2020, pushing the trial first to June 2021, then to January 2022. The parties soon after stated they’d reached a settlement “in principle,” but no official document was signed. In March 2022, the owner’s lawyers announced they were withdrawing from the case, pushing the conflict into 2023, then 2024.
Then Susan Pogoda, the administrative law judge in the city’s Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings handling the dispute, took another year to issue her ruling. In May 2025, she recommended that the Loft Board order the owner to “restore petitioners’ unlimited 24/7 access to the elevator for passenger and freight purposes.”
And still it took the Loft Board yet another year to issue a May 14, 2026, order requiring the owner to fix the problem within 30 days. Those 30 days came and went, with the elevator off-limits for the tenants — and the Loft Board did nothing.
“We couldn’t believe that,” Chernick said. “We called our lawyer and he said there’s nothing you can do.”
Last week after inquiries from Councilmember Marte and The City Reporter, the Loft Board finally took action, hitting the owner with two violations, including one for ignoring the May order. For the first time, the owner agreed to restore access to the lift. (Representatives for the owner did not respond to multiple requests for comment).
On Monday, Marte criticized the board for taking a year to respond to the administrative judge’s ruling, noting that the board was already aware of problems at the Mercer Street building due to lots of 311 complaints about the elevator and a host of other problems there going back years.
“This is a pattern with the Loft Board. They really drag their feet to support tenants,” he said. “We know that there’s a backlog for every agency. But when you’re talking about vulnerable seniors who literally can’t get out of their homes…I think there’s a level of urgency there that should require a speedy response.”
Andrew Rudansky, spokesperson for the Department of Buildings, which oversees the Loft Board, noted that in May 2025, when the administrative judge issued her finding, the Loft Board had a staff of seven, only two of whom were lawyers. Since then, he said, the staff has been increased to 11, including four lawyers and two paralegals.
On Friday, Rudansky said that, going forward, the Loft Board will carefully monitor the owner’s actions. The building, meanwhile, has yet to obtain a certificate of occupancy as it was supposed to decades ago.
“Landlords are legally required to ensure that any elevators in their building are kept in safe operable service,” he said. “We will continue to push the owners to live up to their legal responsibilities, and urge all the parties to work together towards the full legalization of this Loft Law building.”
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