Deal of the Year contender missing; loft owner, too.

The mysterious disappearances of a couple and the owner of their Downtown loft building continued to haunt their families, friends and authorities late last week.

Loft dweller Camden A. Sylvia is a highly respected luxury rental broker with Joseph Gregory, Inc. who was a contender for the Real Estate Board of New York's Deal of the Year Award last October, winning second prize for the Rental Deal of the Year.

She and her boyfriend, Michael Sullivan, an actor, disappeared on November 7th. The owner of their loft building at 76 Pearl Street, Robert Rodriguez, disappeared when he drove away from his Slate Hill, Orange County home on November 16th, telling his family he was going to meet the police at the building to help them open doors in the hopes of locating the missing couple.

Sylvia's co-workers at Joseph Gregory became concerned when the broker, who specializes in luxury rentals for relocating executives, never picked up her phone messages or came into work.

They contacted her family, who enlisted the aid of the police in finding their missing daughter and her friend.

Joseph J. Barbaccia, president of Joseph Gregory, which has its expertise in corporate relocation and luxury sales and rentals, said everyone is praying for her safe return.

"She's been a long-time colleague and a terrific person and is highly regarded by everyone," he said. "She's a valued colleague and we are all shocked by what has happened in the last two weeks."

Rodriguez, a locksmith, apparently purchased the five-story walk-up left building in July of 1993, paying a widower $205,000 for the property, which had been the subject of contentious court actions by the handful of left dwellers seeking running water, heat and other improvements.

He apparently purchased the Pearl Street building with the proceeds of an insurance policy after a suspicious fire burned down a previous home on his seven-acre property in Orange County.

Rodriguez moved his own Downtown locksmith operation, under the name Royalson, Inc., into a portion of the 3,466 square feet of retail space, renting the remainder to a barber shop.

Sullivan had resided in the top floor of the Article 7C left property for 21 years, paying for most of the time about $228 a month in rent. The couple was paying Rodriguez a reported $304 at the time of their disappearance and there are news reports alleging that Sullivan had warned Rodriguez the rent would be withheld if more heat was not provided.

After Rodriguez purchased the building, constructed in 1920, according to other reports, he took out two mortgages totalling $230,000, with an interest payment of 11 percent.

The city's Department of Finance currently carries the building as a Class 2a with a fair market value of $650,000, and an assessment of $237,600.

Sources say that had recently been reduced to about $220,000, but had not yet been reflected in the property tax bills that would be due January 1, 1998.

As a Class 2a property, the assessments are "protected" and cannot rise more than 8 percent per year or 30 percent in any five-year period, but like all city property, are adjusted up and down each year by the city and fought through tax certiorari actions.

The real estate taxes for this 1998 fiscal year would amount to about $26,245, and Rodriguez would have just received his bill for taxes due January 1st the week the couple disappeared. According to Finance Department records, that bill was for $13,110.78.

But in October, many property owners also received bills for back taxes owed. In the case of 76 Pearl Street, taxes and interest due back to July 1st amounted to $14,142.90 as of last week.

Rodriguez last made a payment to Finance in April in the amount of $13,278.26, which would have brought his charges up to date until the July 1, 1997 bill was due.

According to Department of Finance public records, for the latest years available, Rodriguez filed income and expense statements that are public through Tax Commission tax certiorari filings that list income in 1994 for the 8,665 square-foot property as $1.08 per foot, and in 1995 of $2.84 per foot, for a total income that year of $24,608.

Much of that money probably came from the barber shop to which Rodriguez rented about a third of the downstairs retail as his rental tenants.

The 76 Pearl Street building comes under the purview of the State Loft Laws, which were enacted in the early 1980's to protect illegal tenants who had begun occupying former commercial and manufacturing spaces when rents "skyrocketed" in the 1970's.

The current city Loft Board has roughly 850 buildings under its jurisdiction. The Loft Board will help set and mediate rents as owners renovate in order to bring the buildings up to residential code as the law requires, and turn them into higher paying rent stabilized units.

According to one attorney who asked not to be quoted by name, these Article 7C left rents are difficult to raise without doing extensive renovations and changing the certificate of occupancy.

"The Loft Board is such a maze of regulations, getting a new certificate of occupancy can go on for years," the attorney said.

While requiring annual registrations, the Loft Board does not require a filing of the rents, says its executive director, Howard Friedman.

This building, he said, was in the process of being regulated. To obtain a residential certificate of occupancy, the owner has to file alteration plans with the Buildings Department, which issues an objection sheet that along with the usual changes, requires the owner to obtain Loft Board Certification.

The owner will also serve the tenants with a narrative statement as to what work is expected to be done. The tenants can raise their own objections and the Loft Board provides a mediation service to ensure what needs to be done is provided. Those plans are finally approved by the nine member Loft Board.

In May of this year, Rodriguez obtained Loft Board Certification, which was then to be filed with the Buildings Department in order to obtain permits for the alteration work.

"He was legalizing it, and to close this out he needs to pull the permits," explained Ilyse Fink, a Buildings Department spokesperson. "He may not have understood the process and while he filed the legalization, he may not have realized he needed to pull the permits to complete it."

Fink said Rodriguez was merely legalizing work he had already done, which included partition and plumbing jobs.

To pull the permits, Rodriguez has to pay a fee of $791, which is 50 percent of the total permit cost and is due at the end of the process.

Once the permits are pulled and provided to the Loft Board, they would mediate a setting of the first stabilized rent and the building would become registered with the State Division of Housing and Community Renewal.

A call to the architect, Arthur Atlas Architects, who filed for the work at the building, was not returned by deadline.

Other reports indicated that Rodriguez owed state officials over $32,000 for income taxes.

Rodriguez, like many other building and business owners, is also a legal gun owner, and has had state permits since 1974, according to the Goshen County Clerk. He would not have to register any titles, shotguns or assault weapons with the County Clerk.

While Rodriguez, as a private owner, did not have to obtain a salesperson's license or any other license to operate the residential property, two Robert Rodriguez' do hold brokerage licenses from the Department of State.

One Robert Rodriguez with a Flushing address was unable to be traced, the other, a Staten Island broker with Luv Homes, as well as his eponymous realty company, said many people, including his own customers, had called to see if he was the missing property owner, and hoped his now notorious namesake and tenants would be found healthy and safe.

That was what friends and family were hoping last week, praying that the couple would be found happily floating in Bermuda, and not in Brooklyn's bays.