StuyTown, Liu meet

Tenants of downtown apartment complex Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village have reached out to the city’s $37.5 billion retirement fund for help in buying the troubled 80-acre apartment complex.

New York City Councilman Dan Garodnick, a lifelong StuyTown resident, said he and a group representing the tenants met with city Comptroller John Liu this week to discuss a financial partnership using funding from the city’s public pension funds.

Liu agreed to consider the plan — which would tap the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, or NYCERS, the nation’s largest pension for municipal employees, Garodnick said.

The group plans to present Liu with its final buyout plan in the next few months, Gardonick said.

The tenants have spent months crafting a plan to buy the complex as it winds its way through foreclosure.

The previous buyers, a group led by developer Tishman Speyer, bought the apartment complex for a record $5.4 billion in 2006 — at the height of the real estate market — only to walk away from their $3 billion mortgage late last year after a court ruled it had been illegally raising rents.

Garodnick said the tenants have reached out to some 40 to 50 potential backers so far, including the nation’s largest pension fund, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, which lost $500 million in the Tishman-led deal. CalPers has yet to respond.

NYCERS wasn’t an investor in the collapsed deal led by Tishman Speyer.