Meeting 2022-05-25

New Business

[Certain comments have been omitted from the minutes due to their sensitive nature]

Steven: Official move out date jun 30th <omitted> Meg: We are expecting notice to vacate, no contact info yet Have legal resources ready Expect 30 days

• might be able to negotiate for things like paid moving expenses due to short timeline

Steven:

• Notice by Friday, from Danny's lawyer, notice will say 30 days
• <omitted>

Anna: Legal Services NYC can likely represent us, will be official point of contact w/ landlord lawyer

Meg:

See spaces slideshow, additional comments below:

119 Hester St

• listed as 1200 sqft, about 1000 sqft usable space
• okay with external signage
• landlord is very interested, likely willing to do work
• some structural beams around 6-7 ft
• no windows, back entrance to alley could be ventilation
• no central cooling
• what is mail situation?
• there are 3 upstairs units
• separate entrance down from street
• lockable half gate at top of steps
• no sprinklers

Jay: for all spaced need to also account for utility fees of $300-500+, and potentially increasing property taxes

217 E 116th St

• relatively cool
• has A/C
• offered to strip wall, perhaps incl paneling
• has a little entry area for bikes etc
• do not want any cooking despite kitchenette

831 3rd Ave

• needs guardrail for roof
• entire floor
• have not asked about subletting
• broker says machinery is fine
• 4 tall floors, no elevator access
• 24/7 access possible, front door code and add RFID to inside door
• bathroom half size of current

163 36th street

• 700 sqft listed, felt smaller
• $2500

135 W 29th st

• Next to Penn station in k-town
• 614 sqft measured
• 12 ft ceiling
• office building style
• $4k all included

Jay:

• current expected dues $3100 for 38 members avg $82
• historical averages 36 members
• $27k in bank

Steven:

• Expect to lose half dozen members from move

Anna:

• Large space would be good, recent open houses have been packed
• Survey respondents have said they're okay with moving uptown

Drew:

• Good opportunity to clean up a bit, cleanliness makes space much more inviting and helps with attendance

Meg:

• proposes an online vote on spaces

Peter:

• what are we voting on exactly?

Jay:

• negotiations take a while—last attempt took 4 weeks

Peter:

• let's collect a ranked list from all members and devote effort to candidate locations in the resulting ranked order
• please fill out the questionnaire about travel to HM

Meg:

• Do we keep looking for new places?

Anna:

• We need to prioritize some application efforts, but people can keep looking at places

Jay:

• With shared effort some people could keep looking at listings

Steven:

• No guarantee that any of the current options will work out

Meg:

• FatCat is a last choice option still

Shway:

• Point of contacts for negotiations?

Meg:

• open poll will inform which places we prioritize, will remain open as we progress, will have a member vote before

Anna:

• thank you to everyone who has been looking for new places

Sponsored Members Induction

Welcome Chaim, Robin, and Nick to HackManhattan!

Member Reports

Board Reports

President's Report

• New channel in discord #loosely-planned-gatherings

Treasurer's Report

• $15k in bank account, $8k in paypal. We need more money. Meg: we're looking into grants

Secretary's Report

• Docs are scanned and OCRed, finishing organizing & uploading to Google Drive
• Still need to get bank info updated.

Directors-at-Large's Report

• No report.

Meeting Meta

• Members in Attendance: Ashley, Shway, Meg, Peter M, Jay, Steven, Zach, Chaim, Robin, Drew, Brett
• Called to order at 7:05 by Meg.
• The meeting was adjourned at 8:48 by Meg.
• Minutes taken and submitted by Peter.