Tense times at luxe-building kid spaces Parents cry foul 'play'
Spring can’t come soon enough for parents who live in the city’s upscale apartment buildings — and say that their posh communal playrooms have turned into circles of hell because it’s too cold to play outside.
The increasingly popular amenities have become the site of turf wars over broken toys, nannies bringing in too many guests and kiddos behaving badly.
“We have a number of amenity offerings, but management spends a disproportionate amount of time on the playroom,” said an anonymous father who sits on the board of his luxury condo building in Brooklyn Heights, where most units cost between $3 million and $5 million.
“Nannies feel entitled to use the space in any way they see fit,” he said. “They’re not concerned with protecting the owners’ investment.”
‘Not a public park’
The father said things can “quickly snowball out of control” with playdates on stormy days, noting that there might be 15 nannies who each care for a child who lives in the building. If they each invite just one outside child — and that child’s nanny — there are suddenly 60 people.
“It’s not a public park, it’s a private amenity space for children in the building,” he said.
An anonymous Upper West Side mom said one family recently sent their nanny and children to use the communal playroom — after they’d moved out of the building.
Rachel, a Cobble Hill mom who works in media, said it’s not the nannies who are behaving badly. She’s seen her neighbors inappropriately police other families’ caretakers — who, she notes, are typically of a different race than most residents.
In one “ugly” instance, a neighbor “really went after” a nanny who allowed a child to eat some chips in the playroom. He asked who the woman “belonged to” as if she were a piece of property, Rachel recalled, adding, “He’s kind of dead to me.”
Tussles between nannies and residents are hardly the only issue.
Pia Fouilloux, a Brooklyn Heights mother-of-two who works in communications, has been surprised by families who allow their preschoolage children to use the playroom wearing only their underwear. “It’s a public space,” she said. “You are trying to teach kids social norms.”
The Upper West Side mom recalled a family who would bring friends and completely “trash” the room. Their kids smashed a toy piano to bits and threw items off the roof of the playhouse.
“Total destruction,” she said. “And [the parents] were literally siting on the sofa and did not care at all.”
Another family in the building would leave their children — ages 1, 3 and 6 — unattended in the playroom. The board had to intervene, but the mom kept complaining that her kids needed independence.
“I was like, ‘How about you teach them independence by picking up their f--king toys?’ ” said the Upper West Sider.
Hot spots or ‘hot zones’?
Illness is another issue. “If anyone is sick, that place becomes a hot zone,” said Rachel, recalling one year when the playroom was the “epicenter” of a nasty stomach bug. “Within a week, everybody was barfing. The parents were like, ‘Oh my God, shut it down.’ ”
Fouilloux once even had a fellow playroom parent shamelessly declare, “My kid has RSV [respiratory syncytial virus], are you OK with that?” She very much was not.
Developers say play spaces have become a must-have for families.
“Children’s amenities are among the most requested throughout our portfolio,” said Lydia Rapillo, the Senior Vice President of Marketing at Albanese Organization, the developer of several Battery Park City buildings. When one property, The Solaire, recently converted from rentals to owneroccupied residences, expanding the playroom was key, she said.
Dana Levin-Robinson, a motherof-two who works in software, said some older residents in her pre-war co-op on the Upper West Side initially weren’t enthused about her creating a modest play area — until they realized it was a boon for property values.
“One of the board members who was not supportive of the project, you better believe that when she listed her apartment, she used like three different pictures of the playroom,” she said.