May 24, 1992

THREE years after sponsor defaults began undermining the financial health of hundreds of New York City's converted co-ops and condominiums, the pace of new defaults has slowed considerably and many troubled buildings are working their way back to stability. Last June, the New York State Attorney General's office said that sponsors had defaulted on maintenance payments and carrying charges in about 400 co-ops and condominiums, or about 10 percent of the 4,000 buildings converted since 1980. A year later, the number of troubled buildings remains at 400.

For decades, Fifth Avenue was the location of choice for airline ticket offices. But the number has declined in recent years as some air carriers, like Pan Am, went out of business, and others, like Finnair and KLM, moved their ticket offices to other midtown spaces. Air France, the latest defector, will move its Manhattan ticket office next month from 666 Fifth Avenue at 52d Street, to space in the building at 125 West 56th Street, near Seventh Avenue. A spokesman for Air France said the move was prompted, in part, by the need for more space. The airline's options may have been limited by a 1971 zoning rule, designed to preserve the retail character of Fifth Avenue, that limited space leased to airlines, banks and travel agencies -- no more than 15 percent of the ground-floor space.

An apartment building for low-income families and the homeless sponsored by three Roman Catholic parishes opened in East Harlem on Thursday. The parishes behind the project, which took 14 months to complete and is at 111-117 East 100th Street, are St. Francis de Sales, St. Cecilia and the Church of Holy Agony. As part of a state housing program, they received a no-interest, 99-year, $4.3 million loan to rehabilitate four four-story tenements into a single 51-unit building.

LESS than a year after gaining state approval to raise sales taxes one-half percent, Nassau and Suffolk Counties may soon return to Albany with new requests for permission to sell bonds to raise tens of millions of dollars for closing budget deficits. As the legislative session winds down, the counties will have to act quickly, perhaps before the end of the month, to assure state action before adjournment and to set the wheels in motion for borrowing. With deficits growing and sales-tax revenues disappointing at rates that are among the highest in the nation, officials in both counties are looking more and more to borrowing as, perhaps, the favored way out of their financial problems.

To understand how Rick Mears, defending champion in the Indianapolis 500, has held up during a May that has been one of the less-inspiring ones for Penske Racing, you need only hear his own summation of the month. "The checkered flag hasn't fallen yet," Mears replies.