26-Apr-13 – From four units to hundreds of units, condominiums are what 60 million people in the United States call “home.” According to the Community Associations Institute, a homeowner or condo association governs 305,000 communities. With power often in the hands of a small number of volunteers, condo boards, many agree, are ripe for conflict.

That is why real estate professionals often encourage owners to get involved and vote in their condo board elections. Brian Muir, a real estate broker at Marina City, says it is as important to an owner as knowing what is going on in their neighborhood and city. “Some people I’ve come across will have philosophical arguments for not being involved…for not voting,” says Muir (left). “I don’t want to call it a duty but you’re really doing the community a service by voicing your opinion.”

He says the more owners are involved, the more input a condo board gets, allowing the board to make more informed decisions.

“If you don’t vote, or you don’t get involved, then you’ve lost your voice in giving direction to the board on issues that may be of interest to you.”

Come for the architecture, stay for the condo board election

Muir moved to Chicago from Peoria in 1987 to study architecture. His first project as a student was to pick a shape, walk around the city, and document architectural use of the shape. He selected a circle and that led him to Marina City.

In 1991, while attending graduate school, he purchased a studio apartment at Marina City and lived there for three years. When an opportunity to live and work in Germany came up, Muir needed to rent out his apartment and went to a real estate office in his building for help.

That office, Marina Management Corporation, was once the management company for the entire mixed-use complex. Its president was Charles Swibel, who was chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority from 1963 to 1982. In January 1989 – long after Marina City had been split into commercial property with one owner and 896 individually owned condo units – Marina Management was sold to Shari Vass. (Right) Charles Swibel on the balcony of his apartment on the 52nd floor of Marina City’s east tower. United Insurance Building (now Kemper Building) and State Street at left. Photographed by Bob Kotalik on July 23, 1965.

In January 2009, after being a client of Marina Management for 14 years, Muir bought the company. He and a small office staff manage about 115 units at Marina City that are rented out by their owners. About 80 percent of the properties they sell are condo units at Marina City.

Condo board involvement tepid at first

In the beginning, Muir supported a condo board led by Donna Leonard, a lawyer and licensed real estate broker, but over the past four years he has done so, he says, “less and less enthusiastically.”

“I’ve been involved in three condo associations as an owner and the most critical thing, I believe, to my clients is, are the finances being well managed? I believed that they were. In retrospect, I may have been wrong about that.”

Overall, he was “fine” with the board’s decisions if not how the board was run. That changed in late December 2012, when about 250 unit owners at Marina City signed a petition for a special meeting of Marina Towers Condominium Association to discuss a lobby renovation project. Many believe the $258,599 project was not in the condo association’s budget and the lobby’s unpopular design was being forced onto residents. MTCA, however, rejected the petition, saying there were not enough signatures.

“You would think that someone who is open to input from ownership would say, regardless of whether this ‘I’ was dotted or that ‘T’ was crossed, there’s obviously something people want to talk about so we should have a meeting to discuss it.”

Muir says its handling of the petition changed his mind about the condo board and his need to remain neutral in board elections. “It was such an egregious act, that I didn’t think that I could say that it was in my clients’ best interests for me not to be involved in the election.”

There are not enough opportunities, Muir believes, for owners to get involved, such as committees that are required by the association’s bylaws. He has encouraged owners to run for the board, campaigned for them, and displayed campaign literature in the window of his real estate office. Of an estimated 690 unit owners at Marina City, Muir says he has contacted or at least tried to contact every one, with the possible exception of candidates running against the seven people on a slate of candidates that he supports.

(Left) Six of seven candidates running on “the clean slate” for condo board at Marina City, at an event on April 11 at Dick’s Last Resort. Left to right: Laura Holman, Pranav Seth, Brett Young, Nik Rokop, Ellen Chessick, and Nicol Chervenak. Not pictured is Dr. Michel Louvain.

At Marina City, it is estimated that about 30 percent of ownership votes in any condo board election – but in recent years, there have not been many choices. In the previous election, for example, all of the candidates ran unopposed.

“This is the first time in a long time that we’ve had two complete slates,” says Muir. “This election is not something to be taken for granted. I think that if we’re able to establish new leadership for the board, there will again be committees that owners can participate in to help inform and facilitate the best decision making for the community.”

Undoubtedly referring to Donna Leonard, who has been on the board since 2002 and its president since 2004, “I don’t think that one person can have all the knowledge necessary to make good decisions that impact owners of 896 units.”

Unit owners at Marina City have until Monday at 7 p.m. to vote.