Sunday, February 23, 2020
Mel Fogel was an exceptional person. I know this intimately as we worked closely together when I was President of the Bridgeport Garden Apartments and he was Vice President of the Bridgeport Garden Apartments.
He had a political savvy when it came to issues that were of concern to the co-operative complex and knew how to get these issues in front of the right people. He was fairly well connected with all manner of political people from the local level right up the ladder to the national level, and he knew how to get people involved. Having Mel as an adviser in all sorts of matters was essential to my own efforts and successes for the Bridgeport Gardens Apartments. We had our battles to fight and he had more than my back, we fought side by side. Whether it was the suit against us for discrimination, or our fight to lower taxes due to our wrongly being accessed as real property or the complex relationship with the other co-operatives with which we were involved with in the Mutual Management Corporation construct Mel was there and fully engaged and he knew how to participate.
I will miss my friend and the jokes he would tell me and my wife as we passed from the parking lot to the complex going past his back door. This was the area we deemed as the “Mel Zone”. We would always stop for conversation and jokes with him as he smoked his pipe.
So long good friend. Many will remember you here and have fond memories that you have left behind.
