INSIGHTS
Favorite recreation:
“For years my favorite recreation was reading and driving, but I have macular degeneration now and that’s gone. So my recreation is probably watching TV and visiting friends…and sometimes since they’re my age too, we visit by telephone.”

Favorite book:
“I think my favorite book is one I read in college, Kristen Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset.”

Favorite Bronx moment:
“I think the one that I remember most is some years ago we put up memorials to the Korean and Vietnam Vets in the oval to complement the World War II memorial. And the Vietnam War was very unpopular and the veterans suffered really by having been obliged to fight in it. I met a woman whose grandson had been killed in Vietnam and she was crying with joy to see that someone in the condominium had given some honor to the dead Vietnam Vets.”

What inspires you:
“I keep going because I think this is a worthy work. In other words I apparently have had done something to help build a spirit of community. And I can work with people of all races, and religions and ideas, if necessary, and I’ve got a good staff and I value them and they know it.

Bronx Times Honors Margaret Walsh As One Of 25 Bronx Influential Women

Reprinted with permission from the Bronx Times, January 14, 2010 edition
© Bronx Times Reporter, Inc., John Collazzi, Publisher, (Community Newspaper Group)

Margaret Walsh
Leading Parkchester South Condominium’s Restoration

BY DONNA DECHIARO

Whether she accepts the credit for it or not Margaret Walsh’s influence on the successful restoration of the Parkchester South Condominium has been tremendous.

For her part as the not-for-profit organization’s first president or first vice president or the chair of the strategic committees she’s overseen during the past 23 years, Walsh’s contributions will most assuredly be chronicled in the story of its revival.

The first impression you get from speaking to this genteel lady is that her memory is long and she’s a very sensible type. But she’s also outspoken, thorough, constant and feisty.

With a firm recollection of the events that shaped Parkchester, Walsh described them fluently from the time her family first settled there in 1943, through its conversion to a condominium, the monumental effort to resurrect it from physical deterioration, and present day life in Parkchester.

As a resident “old-timer” of the complex as she calls herself, she should know. Walsh’s family was living in Brentwood, Long Island during World War II before moving to Parkchester to the same apartment she owns now. At one time, her family had five apartments there.

Walsh graduated from Aquinas High School and attended Fordham University. Her work as a school teacher included teaching history at the old Bedford Park Academy, the Dominican Academy in Manhattan and some years at the college level.

Parkchester was a “good place to live,” according to Walsh. Originally built by Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Parkchester was a moderate income rental establishment constructed as a planned community. Most of the things that people needed in order to live a decent life were in place: a theatre, Macy’s, mom and pop stationery stores, grocery stores, and more.

Helmsley Enterprises purchased Parkchester in 1968 and four years later started a condominium conversion of the north quadrant. Walsh initially got involved because she purchased her apartment and had a desire to keep occupied.

In 1982, conversion of the south condominium commenced. Walsh was elected
president at the first board election held in November and served a five-year term. She also served several years as first vice-president and was again elected president by the board.

With 8,286 residential apartments in the south condominium, 88 commercial units and a resident population estimated somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000, the former teacher jumped into condominium affairs. “I’m a fighter, and I particularly wanted the condominium to grow as an organism of its own and not be an appendage to the sponsor which owned such a large share of it,” she reasoned. “And you know my job in the first years as I saw it was to give the condominium a life of its own, that it wasn’t Helmsley, or even now, any other sponsor.”

In the mid-’90s, the physical problems of the condominium were more and more pressing, and the buildings rundown. In 1998, Helmsley sold its interest to Parkchester Preservation Company. As part of the deal, Parkchester Preservation Company arranged
for the condominium to take a large loan for major renovations.

Walsh was the chairman of the committee which negotiated the loan of almost $130 million. She also chaired the oversight committee during the renovation, which included installing all double pane windows, new electricity, plumbing systems, and repairs to the buildings damaged by a pipe break. “I’m not a technical person,” she admitted, “but I kept poking my nose in, reporting to the board, checking the bills and things such as that so that the board would have confidence that the work was being done right and done at a sensible price.”

Walsh said they saved tremendous amounts of money by agreeing to the plan of repairs and accepting the extra payments the large loan generated. They didn’t have those pipe breaks, devoted the time to better services, and brought a number of the buildings up to snuff hi terms of decoration. And with management having a great deal of construction knowledge they no longer hired contractors, saving time and money by utilizing their own labor force.

Walsh is satisfied the value of the apartments have gone up, noting that the same apartment selling for $12,000 to $15,000 in the ‘90s would sell for over $100,000 in today’s market. “That’s a big jump,” she emphasized. “Well, of course, I didn’t do it all by myself. I think that goes to the fact that the boards which we have had over the years have been cognizant of the importance of keeping this a viable community.”

Walsh describes today’s Parkchester as an “amalgam” of people from Bangladesh, a high percentage of Spanish speaking people and a dozen other languages, as well as large Muslim population, compared to the predominant influx of Irish, German, Jewish, Catholics and Protestants at its beginning. “Parkchester is changing, but it’s really changing as a microcosm of the changes that immigration brought to America itself,” she noticed. “As a history teacher, I find it fascinating to see the stages at which new immigrants change, and change the society in which they live.”