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Pratt Retracts Eviction Notice for Engineer Who's Lived on Campus Since '67

By Ben Fractenberg | November 10, 2015 7:28am
 Pratt Institute Chief Engineer Conrad Milster will be allowed to stay in his campus-owned townhouse after receiving an eviction letter in September. 
Conrad Milster
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CLINTON HILL — Pratt Institute's chief engineer, Conrad Milster, who was scheduled to be evicted from campus housing in January, will be allowed to stay indefinitely, a school spokeswoman said Monday.

Milster, who is 79 and has lived in campus-owned housing since 1967, received an eviction notice along with four other faculty and staff members, to vacate a historic townhouse owned by the institute along Willoughby Avenue by Jan. 31 2016, according to the letter dated Sept. 11.

But the school told Milster on Friday he could stay because he needs to be available on a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week basis to make sure the campus heating system runs smoothly, Milster and the spokeswoman said.

“I was sort of happy, but I was sad for the other people,” Milster told DNAinfo New York during an interview on campus Monday afternoon. “Human nature is 'me first,' I suppose, so I was glad that I came out of it, but then in thinking about it, 'Hey, I’m all right, but what about the other four?'”

The other affected staffers will meet individually with school officials to decide their housing fate.

“The Institute is meeting separately with each of the four residents to develop customized transition plans that will address their individual needs," Pratt spokeswoman Jolene Travis said in an email.

Milster lived in housing on Emerson Place but was moved to the townhouse three years ago because the other space was being converted into dorms.

The engineer said he was originally told he would be allowed to stay in his current home for five years, through early 2017.

“The people next to me have been there for 15 years,” Milster said. “You accumulate furniture, artifacts. Now all of a sudden, wait a minute, you’d better find a place to move all of this stuff in less than four months in Brooklyn with sky high rents. It becomes a major problem.”

The school said in the letter it needed to convert the 10 townhouses to accommodate about 60 undergraduate students.

“We trust you can appreciate the importance this project has to the continued success of Pratt,” the letter read.

Milster said he thought the decision was “shortsighted” and based primarily on economic considerations.

“You have people in these houses who have been there years,” he said. “I think there’s a certain loyalty factor that should be involved here and it’s not like we’re just people off the street. We’re people that are working for you. We’re the people that are help creating Pratt Institute as it is today.”

He said he was especially upset about the decision since he donated a quarter of a million dollars from his life savings to Pratt two years ago. 

"Over the years the school was good to us, and so I felt when I had reached a point where I was able to do something in return. I thought, 'Hey, you were nice to me, I’m going to be nice to you,'" Milster said. 

"I’ve come out of this smelling like a rose, but a week ago I would have said I’ll never give them another penny, because a week ago I didn’t know whether I was gong to leave or not."

The engineer, who also has taken in and cared for dozens of stray cats on campus over the years, said support from the school community has been integral to his life, especially since his wife, Phyllis, died several years ago with dementia.

“Terrible thing when you see someone just deteriorate,” Milster said about his wife, whom he married in 1967. “We had some great years and we had a lot of fun and I look at it from that point of view.”

One member of the school community described Milster as “the nicest man I’ve ever met.”

Freshman Casey Anderson, 18, said she came to the engineer when she found a sick, stray cat on campus.

He nursed the cat back to health and it now spends time hanging out around his office.

Conrad and The Steamplant from Dustin Cohen on Vimeo.

“I’m glad,” Anderson said about Milster being able to stay. “I was furious. There is something horribly immoral about kicking people out of their home.”

Milster said he was surprised and elated by the comments students made about him in an online petition with more than 3,000 signatures to keep the families in the townhouses.

“And reading the comments on it I was thrilled by all the kind things that people were saying about me, which I never expected,” he said.

“I found it really wonderful, that, my God, people actually care. You go along through life and you just assume, well does anybody know I’m here? Well that certainly was quite wonderful from the petition.”