New condo board elects officers, unchains laundry room chair

(Above) In a laundry room on the 20th floor of Marina City’s west tower, a metal folding chair had been chained to a table since December 2009. (Click on image to view larger version.)

May 8, 2013 – Freshly elected condo board members at Marina City took over all of the official positions at their first board meeting on Monday.

Ellen Chessick (left) moved up from secretary of Marina Towers Condominium Association, a position she had held since 2007, to its president, replacing Donna Leonard, who had been MTCA’s president for nine years.

Chessick, an owner of three combined units at Marina City, has been on the condo board since 2005. In 2008, she helped organize an unsuccessful effort to get official landmark status for Marina City. Although the effort had the support of 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly, Marina City never made it onto any agenda of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks.

Elected vice president was Nik Rokop, managing director of the Knapp Entrepreneurship Center at Illinois Institute of Technology. Dr. Michel Louvain, a retired psychiatrist who has served on the board since 2001 and ran for re-election on the same slate of candidates as Chessick and Rokop, will continue as treasurer. Laura Holman, a technical director at SmithGroupJJR, an architecture and engineering firm, will serve as secretary.

The new board made a point of encouraging unit owners to get involved with committees. Eight committees will focus on particular areas of condo management such as attorney and management review, building and grounds, finance, security and safety, and social.

A special committee was formed to review recent lobby renovation projects that some fear have gone significantly over budget.

“Quite a mess,” is how board member Pranav Seth described the projects. “I have never seen projects handled in such an unprofessional and sloppy manner. It’s no surprise that we’ve constantly been over budget. It’s like taking the process someone would use for a disorganized bathroom remodel and applying it at a much larger scale.”

The mood of the 30-minute meeting, which included a question-and-answer session almost unheard of at MTCA meetings, was “cheerful,” according to Seth.

“Someone said that they hoped we can keep the momentum going,” recalled Seth (right) on Tuesday. “My response was that it’s up to the residents to do that through active participation. They opened up the platform for it by voting for change. I’m looking forward to all the positive changes we will see around here.”

One of the first official acts of the new board was to unchain a chair in a nearby laundry room that had been a source of amusement and frustration for residents. Shortly after each laundry room was renovated, beginning in September 2009, a single metal folding chair was offered to residents but for reasons never fully explained it was chained to a table.