How Stefan Unger got "married to the project"

Stefan Unger works in the importing-exporting busi­ness, an occu­pa­tion that has him regu­larly trav­eling to coun­tries like Greece and Bulgaria. But recently, he was making trips of a different sort: up the scaf­folding surrounding 201 E. 79th St., his home of 20 years. 

He was up there, some­times three times a week, because he was the co-op board member in charge of the building’s recladding project. And he took the job very, very seriously. 

“I was married to this project,” he said. 

In some ways, Unger is married to the building itself. His aunt was an orig­inal tenant when 201 E. 79th St. was built decades ago, and she left her two-bedroom apart­ment to Unger and his wife when she passed in 2005. 

Because Unger grew up visiting family at the high rise, he knows the ins and outs of the building. ​“I know places… in the base­ment that I had to show the resi­dent manager and staff, that existed behind doors,” Unger said. 

He was on the co-op board when it began exploring ways to address the damage to the orig­inal glazed-brick façade. Unger and two others on the board formed a committee that met with various firms and experts to best under­stand how to tackle the problem. Once they found the contrac­tors they wanted to work with, they would present their proposal to the rest of the board for approval. 

An avid swimmer with seem­ingly bound­less energy, Unger threw himself into research. ​“There’s nothing I can’t do,” he said.

Ahead of the façade instal­la­tion, he flew to Crossville, Tennessee to check out the factory where the porce­lain cladding for the building was manu­fac­tured, wanting to famil­iarize himself with the produc­tion process. 

And he also took all those trips up and down the scaf­fold, often dedi­cating as many as 30 hours a week to the project. This level of involve­ment came in handy when prob­lems arose, because he was able to consult archi­tects and contrac­tors without delaying construction. 

“If there was an issue, I wanted to be able to decide on it imme­di­ately,” Unger said.

His involve­ment with the project also meant he was some­times on the receiving end of complaints about the noise the workers made when they began drilling off the bricks, starting at 7 in the morning.

“I got calls at five after seven, if they knew where to reach me,” he said.

Unger said that decar­boniza­tion purely for the sake of it was not top of mind when he began to oversee the reno­va­tion project — rather, meeting local regu­la­tions, lowering costs, and improving the building’s energy effi­ciency grade were his prior­i­ties. But he’s been able to put his expe­ri­ence to good use; since the project, he has begun consulting for another white-brick building under­taking façade work.

Unger’s term on the co-op board recently came to an end. To commem­o­rate his involve­ment with the façade project, Unger has kept a memento of the building’s past: the first two bricks that were removed. When asked what he would do with them, he laughed. 

“I don’t know,” Unger admitted, saying that he had collected souvenirs like volcanic rocks from trips to Italy. ​“I haven’t framed them yet or anything, but I will.”