Residents at the Upper East Side mega-complex Normandie Court are fuming after learning Legionella DNA was detected at their building — not from management, but through other news sources.
Despite blasting out routine emails for weather updates, angry tenants allege management for the behemoth complex stayed mum for over a week after the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene collected samples on July 6.
“I first learned about the outbreak … through two different sources, neither of which was management, which is kinda annoying,” resident Pooja Shah, 33, claimed to The Post. “It’s disappointing that our building didn’t even send us an email to reassure us that our plumbing was safe, or best practices … I had no idea how airborne it is.”
Shah noted that clear communication is crucial given the high-risk population of elderly people and children in the four-building, 1,476-unit complex, which spans an entire city block between Second and Third avenues on East 95th Street.
Normandie Court was one of 31 buildings with cooling towers that tested positive for the presence of Legionella bacteria during an initial PCR (polymerase chain reaction) screening, DOH announced on July 10.
Management finally broke its silence on July 14 with a letter to tenants.
“As part of our regularly scheduled water testing protocol conducted by Metro Group, our certified water management company, the routine Legionella culture test performed on June 23 returned with no Legionella detected,” management wrote in a letter for residents and viewed by The Post. “However, we were notified today by the Department of Health that samples collected on July 6 as part of the enhanced testing initiative produced a preliminary positive PCR result.
“It is important to note that a PCR-positive result indicates the presence of Legionella DNA but does not necessarily confirm the presence of viable bacteria.”
For anxious renters, the notice was too little, too late.
Why did management wait to share about the July 6 collection until July 14, residents questioned.
“It makes me wonder,” Shah said, “if the test was negative would they have even told us at all?”
“An eight-day delay in getting a result seems a little long,” said a second resident, a lawyer who pays $5,200 to live with a roommate in a two-bedroom pad. “I think it would have been nice if they could say … these are the precautions we’re taking. Give me some information … I pay a lot of money to live there.”
And so do many others. Amenities at the complex, where rents begin at $3,940 for a 419-square-foot studio, include a glass-enclosed swimming pool, a penthouse-level health club that spans two stories and two outdoor decks for sunbathing.
Normandie’s management said in its July 14 note to residents Metro Group “performed a full hyperhalogenation and disinfection of the cooling tower today, and the tower will then be retested pursuant to Department of Health guidelines.”
However, unanswered questions have left residents feeling uneasy.
“The gist for me is that this disease, including how it spreads and how it is treated, is confusing and not clear, and I don’t think anyone is being communicative,” a third resident alleged on the condition of anonymity. “I personally feel like this is chaotic and not well managed. But I can’t get a sense of who is to blame.”
A spokesperson for the DOH confirmed to The Post that all 76 buildings that were “ordered to clean and disinfect their cooling towers have completed remediation,” though culture test results remain pending on whether the bacteria was live.
Legionella bacteria is not spread from person to person. The cooling towers dispense the bacteria into airborne water droplets that people accidentally inhale.
The Upper East Side scare is part of a broader outbreak across Carnegie Hill and Yorkville that has sickened 74 people, hospitalized 59 and left three dead. It is a deadly type of pneumonia that can be treated with antibiotics if caught early.
This year’s outbreak follows citations of over 250 cooling towers around the Big Apple or Legionella testing failures since last year — more than half of them in Manhattan alone.
New York City sees about 200 to 700 cases of Legionnaires’ disease every year, per the DOH.
In 2025, there was an outbreak of the disease in Harlem that sickened 114 and left five dead.
Normandie’s management didn’t respond to a request for comment.
