In This Together, For Better or Worse (But Hopefully Mostly Better)

Brooks Tower is a vertical neighborhood, with 566 units, and usually around 800 people in residence.  It’s a wonderful, thriving community, where we all share space, resources and the love of living downtown. But like every neighborhood, we have our challenges. It’s up to us to decide whether to work toward addressing those challenges or to make them worse.

Take your neighbor who partied all night last night, when you needed to get up at 6 am to go to work, or the neighbor who smokes continually, filling the halls with cigarette smoke.  On the other hand, there’s also probably a neighbor that complains about the slightest noise, and has you tip-toeing down the hallway to avoid another run-in. You can choose to let it make you feel angry and resentful of your neighbor – or you can try a more productive approach to figuring out how to live together in harmony.

A densely packed neighborhood such as this requires courtesy toward your neighbors to avoid awkward situations, and to help us all live in harmony.  At the same time, there are rules – both informal rules of etiquette and official building rules –intended to align everyone with the same set of expectations. Engaging in community affairs in the building is an important way you can work to make sure your voice is heard in deciding what those rules are.

Ultimately, Brooks is a democracy, and the Board (all of whom are volunteers, donating time out of their busy lives to work toward the betterment of our community) tries to ensure that the majority of our residents’ needs are served.  Of course, there is no way to make EVERYONE happy all the time – because we are all very different people – but we do try to strike the right balances and find the best middle ground.

But – and this is super important – the Board can only be aware of your thoughts and needs if you tell us.  Board meetings are held every third Thursday, January through October, and there are usually about 30 people in attendance (both in person and virtually) – and they are generally the same people every month.  Everyone who comes to the meeting has a chance to speak, and we do our best to address the issues that are presented. But with only a small group of people attending the meetings, this means the Board is always hearing from the same people, and we don’t necessarily get a broader picture of what is happening in the building.

The annual owners’ meeting will be held at 6pm in the Sewall Ballroom on November 6th.  It is a great opportunity to meet the people who are running for the open board seats, hear a recap of what has taken place over the last year, and to make your voices heard.  (You might even find out that your neighbor who smokes like a chimney or plays loud music all night long is really a nice person who is open to changing their habits once they learn how they’re affecting you.)

I would also encourage everyone to start attending Board meetings when you can. There are formal aspects, but in general it’s just neighbors gathering to talk about how to make Brooks better – and to learn about all the amazing things our management team already has in the works (including, yes, the laundry room, which will one day be a wonderful asset to our building – once we finally get the city to let us open it).