This archive report was first published on 15 May 2020.
Lobby Heroes of the Lockdown ¶
When Genc Rrahmani arrived in Manhattan two years ago, he had big dreams of starting a business and building a beautiful future with his family. But little did he know that the pandemic would test his resolve and force him to rise above his situation.
As the city quarantines, door attendants, supers, porters, and handymen have quietly kept thousands of buildings full of penned-in New Yorkers humming. From white-glove Fifth Avenue high-rises to middle-income coops in Queens to sprawling public housing complexes, large residential buildings seem to need them more than ever.
Take Donald Tampubolon, the resident manager of 1280 Fifth Avenue, and also a former martial arts champion. Mr. Tampubolon's building is just north of Mount Sinai Hospital, with clear views of the white tents in Central Park and the refrigerated mobile morgues that lined the street at the height of the crisis. In response to the pandemic, Mr. Tampubolon instituted a lockdown (no more guests; no delivery guys past reception), long before there was a citywide quarantine.
When a neighbor two doors down from Mr. Tampubolon tested positive, he sent his wife and two young children to Long Island. In recent weeks, a fellow super at a nearby building died of the virus. The stress is enough to make most New Yorkers crawl under their bed covers the first free minute they get. But Mr. Tampubolon is using his downtime to crawl on the floor and growl like a tiger, instead. The exercise, streamed through a laptop and mimicked by those watching him, is part of his free, biweekly martial arts class for fellow supers and their children.
“I want to be able to give something to the world, and I can’t give money,” said Mr. Tampubolon, who is from Indonesia and was a seven-time national martial arts champion there. The classes had six families when he started them in March, but now nearly 20 families are participating.
According to SEIU 32BJ, the labor union that represents most residential building employees in the city, as of May 12, over 230 of its 35,000-member residential division had tested positive; 39 are confirmed to have died of Covid-19.
John Faldetta, the resident manager of a building on East 54th Street in Manhattan, has also been using his background as an inventor to design and implement safety changes. A tinkerer with two patents to his name, including a safety device that prevents falling ice from hitting pedestrians, Mr. Faldetta created what he calls a “fogging station” to sanitize everyone entering the building.
Not every building has such resources to offer. While there have been 6,000 layoffs among office tower staffers since the city issued its stay-at-home order in March, there have been just 30 layoffs in residential buildings over the same period, according to SEIU. And yet there is plenty of fear about the future.
