Trinity School presented a new plan to raise revenue from its apartment building, Trinity House, on the northwest corner of Columbus Avenue and 92nd Street, to the housing committee of Community Board 7 last night, according to an article by Leslie Albrecht at DNAinfo.com.

Tenants at Trinity House could see their rents increase by as much as 85 percent over the next few years if a new deal with the city goes through, the article said.

Officials from Trinity School, which was named the best prep school in America by Forbes magazine last year, argued that the plan will preserve affordable housing at the 199-unit complex while also helping Trinity School achieve its financial goals, the article said, adding that "the school has a $40.4 million endowment, but that's not sufficient to meet its future needs, according to the school's website."

"Under the deal, Trinity House would increase rents - which currently cost an average of $600 a month - for the first time since 1995, according to the school and the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The increase would come over the course of five years and would not affect all tenants equally, because residents have varying income levels, school officials said. The school owns 39 apartments in the building which it rents to teachers. The school would preserve the housing as affordable units for the next 15 years, school officials said. Trinity School has promised to subsidize the rent increase for tenants who can't afford it, and no one in the building will pay more than 30 percent of their income in rent, according to Chuck Brass, a consultant working with the school," the article said.

In exchange, the article continued, the school would siphon off the income from a parking garage in the Trinity House building - about $600,000 a year.

The private school created a controversy in 2007, the article said, when it tried to sell Trinity House to a Pembroke Properties, but the deal fell through: "Many feared developer Pembroke Properties would turn Trinity House, which is part of the Mitchell-Lama affordable housing program, into high-priced condos."

About five dozen Trinity House tenants attended the meeting and asked for six months "to come up with an offer to buy Trinity House and turn it into affordable housing forever," the article said, adding that the committee "backed that request with a unanimous vote Monday night" and that "the committee will send a letter to the city asking for a six-month halt to negotiations on Trinity House."

Trinity School, which occupies space on the lower floors of Trinity House in addition to its own properties on West 91st Street, built Trinity House in 1968, during a period of urban renewal on the Upper West Side when the city was trying to encourage development in the neighborhood, the article said.

In a December 10, 2007 article in The New York Times, Fernanda Santos wrote that Pembroke Properties sent a letter to Trinity House tenants that said "once the sale was complete, it would apply to withdraw the building from the Mitchell-Lama program and turn 161 of its 200 units into rent-stabilized apartments."

"In a separate letter to elected officials, Pembroke wrote that its ultimate goal was to convert the apartments at Trinity House into condominiums, which would be offered to current tenants at a below-market price. Tenants who could not afford to buy would be allowed to continue renting their apartments, the letter said, but once those units were vacated, the developer could renovate and sell them at market price.

Pembroke a few years previously had bought Leader House at 100 West 93rd Street, a former Mitchell-Lama rental building that it converted.

According to the article, "the school stands to make $24 million from the building's sale" then from Pembroke.