Links

NYCHA targets Boerum Hill, Upper East Side for Development (Curbed)

The Bronx Hits (New) Tipping Point (The Real Deal)
New development marketing guru Nancy Packes said developers are willing to overlook the grittiness of the area when they see the low price for land, and the availability of development sites. 
“It is an industrial area,” she said. “When developers see industrial, their eyes light up.” 
... Brooklyn developers, for example, who are weighing how deep to push into Brooklyn, are considering the Bronx as an alternative, she said. “If we look at city transfer records, I’m going to bet you that someone is quietly amassing huge parcels under the radar,” she said.

And finally, something we've been eagerly awaiting all year.  It's time for ... The New York Times International Luxury Summit, meeting this November in Versailles!

Hosted and moderated by New York Times fashion director, Vanessa Friedman, and award-winning New York Times journalists, the International Luxury Conference addresses the most critical challenges — and unexpected opportunities — in today’s luxury battlefield. 
Rigorous analysis and lively cross-border debate among top C.E.O.s, prestigious economists, technology mavericks, entertainment and sports icons, and artists will provide crucial insights, fresh ideas and new strategies for winning the hearts and minds of luxury consumers. ​
To participate in this unprecedented event — where you will join interactive sessions led by global experts, dine in the spectacular Chateau de Versailles and connect with luxury influencers from around the world  

After Rain

Second & 11th

At the sanitation garage, a nice variety of seating options

Sidewalk Shed Going up at Eagle

Pathmark Updates

If you're interested in what's happening with the A&P bankruptcy situation, especially as it relates to the A&P-owned Pathmark store on 12th Street, it's worth checking in on the UFCW site for their regular updates.  You might want to glance, for example, at A&P's lamentable management bonus plan.  Last I'd heard the 12th Street store was unsold - that's to say, there were no bids on it from other supermarket chains.  Yesterday the union posted a chart that laid out the sequence of bankruptcy procedures.


Friday, September 11th 

• All qualifying bids on the stores are due into the Bankruptcy Court.The Bankruptcy Court will hear UFCW's objections to A&P’s KERP (corporate bonus plan).

 Monday, September 21st 

• The Bankruptcy Court will announce what Tier I stores have agreements to be sold and what stores will be sold at the auction on September 24rd or 25th. 

Wednesday, September 24rd and/or Thursday, September 25th 

• The auction for the remaining unsold stores will be held. All qualifying bids on the stores are due into the Bankruptcy Court. The Bankruptcy Court will hear UFCW's objections to A&P’s KERP (corporate bonus plan). 

Friday, October 2nd 

• Bidders can file objections to the sale of stores in the Bankruptcy Court. The UFCW can also file objections to bids made on the stores. 

Wednesday, October 7th 

• A hearing will be held regarding the objections to the sales filed to the Bankruptcy Court. At this stage, the UFCW will have a voice during the auction process to make recommendations on bidders. For instance, if two companies place a comparable bid on the same store and one is a union employer, while the other is non-union, the unionized store would have an advantage and they should likely win the bid. Thursday, October 15th The winning bids of the stores will be formally announced. 

I spoke to a Pathmark employee outside the store last week.  She'd worked there for over twenty years, and was collecting signatures to try and keep the supermarket open.  I mentioned that I'd read at the union site that Key Food (bidding on other A&P stores) was proposing to cut pay, benefits, & hours of current A&P employees. and she confirmed their bad reputation.  A passing shopper, gruff of voice, chimed in to the conversation. "Fuck that Key Food bullshit!"

Streetscape

The 13th Corner

Anders Goldfarb, 1978 - Brooklyn Visual Heritage

Here's the corner of Fifth and 13th in 1978, when the corner deli was Southbrook Farms. In an 80s tax photo you can see Alberto's there, and next to Alberto's the same Frank's Unisex sign that's up today.  Back in the 40s the corner store was Smitty's, which sold furniture, used radios & refrigerators, and in the 20s the Sunset Radio Company occupied the space.  The earliest references to 513 I could find were in NY Times & Eagle articles on a police raid at the building.  In 1900 John Nellis's saloon operated here, but the target of the police raid was a room above the saloon, where a gambling den known as the Prospect Club operated.

The hoodoo number had much to do with the raid.  The hotel of Nellis is at 513 Fifth Avenue, the raid was made at thirteen minutes past 1 o'clock, and thirteen packs of cards were listed with the loot that the captain and his men carried away from the place.  Nellis declares that he does not know what the room was used for.
(Captain) Reynolds had information before he was long in the precinct that there was a crap, roulette and card game running at the place and the proprietor was Ike Thompson, well known as a bookmaker.  (Brooklyn Eagle)

Changes Ahead at Fifth & 13th?

Action afoot at the corner of Fifth & 13th.  At 273 13th, the Brooklyn Voodoo Lounge, which opened in January and succeeded Lucky 13 Saloon (the same owner running both businesses), closed last month  and is currently listed for sale, at $80,000.  In actual fact it seems to have been on the market since April, with an original price of $175,000 back in April,  The voodoo concept never matched Lucky 13th's lively heavy metal scene.  And at the corner, 513 Fifth, which houses the 513 Deli, Frank's barbershop, and the well-loved 13th Street Laundromat, is on the market at five million dollars.

2013

2011


Prime Corner Mixed Use Property for Sale on Prime Fifth Avenue in Park Slope.  Three stores and Four apartments. Two apartments do not have leases and the other two have expiring leases. One store will be delivered vacant.

I spoke to people in the deli and the laundromat (the latter, I believe, run by the building's owner), who told me the businesses were staying put, but didn't get into Frank's, where hair-cutting was in progress.

Links

Living Alone In NYC Is Increasingly Out Of Reach (Gothamist
Not a single neighborhood on the map is feasible for workers who earn the city's current minimum wage of $8.75/hr, and only a sprinkling of them—Throgs Neck in the Bronx, New Dorp in Staten Island, Woodstock, Fordham, and Far Rockaway—offer median rents accessible for those earning within two dollars of $15/hr. 
A StreetEasy spokeswoman put it this way: "To combat this rent burden, getting roommates, another job, or moving out of the city are the most immediate options for lower wage workers."

This Listing Is Why You Should Never Trust Brokerbabble (Curbed)
Curbed examines the broker listing for Fort Greene's Carlton Mews, the same one we wondered at earlier in the month (Broker Bathos)

Brooklyn Borough President No Fan of Books on Library Shelves (Brooklyn Paper)
Adams said a unified, city-run library system could partner its branches with local schools and would be more forward-thinking than today’s paper-pushing institutions. He said he envisions book-free libraries and small outlets in storefronts where kids could access information they need for free digitally. 
“We no longer need shelves of books in libraries to look impressive,” he said. “We feel as though the more books we have, the smarter we are. No.”

Another S. Slope, Rent-Stabilized Multifamily in Contract (Cushman & Wakefield)
The subject property is a four-story, multi-family walk-up building located on the north side of 9th Street between 4th and 5th Avenues in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The property currently features eight spacious apartments. Currently, the eight units are rent stabilized, however, the average in-place rent for the building is approximately $32/SF, whereas the market rate is $50/SF.

Asking price $3,500,000.

Fourth & 14th

Re-openings

Dropped by Girasol today, and was told that it should be open again next week.   It's been almost a month since they closed - too long.  I also ran into Elia Adames & family on Fifth today, and she told me that Sandy's should be back next week too.  Good news all round.

Earlier:
New look for Girasol
Taking Time
Sandy's - Closing & Re-opening Soon

The Multifamily

In 2012, the apartment buildings at the southeast corner of 4th Avenue & 10th Street made no. 11 on then-Public Advocate Bill de Blasio's Worst Landlord list, with a whopping 224 violations, 34 more than it had when listed the previous year.  The owners at that time were Prime Properties of New York.  Sadly it didn't look like this public shaming had any impact on the state of the buildings or the quality of life for the tenants who lived there.  A cursory look at building permits shows little remedial work recorded during the 1990s, & none at all between 1998 and 2015, apart from the renovation of retail space in 2012.  It certainly didn't look any better from the exterior.  This summer, though, scaffolding went up at the buildings (453 - 459 Fourth, and 292 - 304 10th), which made me guess the building had been been sold, though I couldn't recall hearing anything about a change of ownership.  My hunch was right. The buildings were sold last June, for just under 18 million dollars, though the sale was not recorded until October.  I had a hard time finding much evidence of the building being listed for sale, and only found this Loopnet listing from around 2005, two years before Prime Properties took over the place ($7,950,000) from Leon Goldstein.


Two five story brick apartment buildings containing 52 apartments and 3 stores on the corner of 4th Avenue and 10th Street. Very low rents provide terrific upside. Close to 4th Avenue/9th Street R,F,G subway lines. Professional management has renovated all apartments when vacated, upgraded windows throughout, new oil heating system, trash compactor, & intercom system. Existing 7 year mortgage in the amount of $2,500,000 at 5.19% expiring 6/1/10 with a monthly principal & interest payment of $13,712.29. Significant future increases from low rent stabilized rent roll. 12 year tax abatement effective January 2006 of $5,633 for all new windows of 4th Avenue and 10th Street. 


Professional management hardly seems the right term given the building's recent history.

The newest owners are 300-304 10th Street FT LLC - address c/o Madison Realty Capital, a prime player in city development.  In Brooklyn alone Madison is behind plenty of big-ticket moves. Last week it was announced that the company is providing the financing for the LIC Hospital acquisition, and earlier in the month Madison purchased Sunset Park's Brooklyn Whale Building for eighty-two million dollars.

Permits have been filed this year for renovation of public hallways, individual apartments, boiler replacement & facade work.  While work is certainly ongoing, there are still open violations for gas work without a permit (2014), plumbing work without permit (8/15), failure to maintain exterior wall with severe masonry deterioration (2009) (2010), bathroom ceiling collapse (2010), failure to provide gas for cooking (2014), electric work without permits & apartments being gutted without permits (3/15, 5/15), accumulation of construction debris (8/15).  There is a mobile boiler on site, and reference to a gas leak in a (disapproved) job-on-file at 302 (8/15).

In the meantime, recent listings for apartment rentals in the buildings certainly don't look that low any more.  Rentals have appeared online for 2-4 bedroom apartments available from $2,750 to $4,700 per month.  These are net-rentals with 1 1/2 months free on an 18 month lease, which would make the actual rent (if renewed) between three and five thousand dollars per month.

I don't know any tenants in these buildings, though I've heard plenty of horror stories from long-term, rent-stabilized tenants living in other multi-families nearby, whose buildings have been recently acquired by investors.  Forced to live in construction chaos, misinformed of tenant-rights, offered paltry sums to vacate to vacate their apartments.  It's common stuff.  Upside for the few = disaster for the many.  I'd be interested to know how many of the family-size apartments here are now free-market (probably singles shares), and how many remain rent-stabilized.

There's only one note of levity in this all-too-familiar story of multifamily make-over.  In the rental listings, old-time Smith's Tavern, last blue-collar bar on Fifth, has somehow made it onto the list of nearby attractions for the today's would-be tenants.  Really?  Mention those rental prices to the patrons of Smith's and see their reaction.

Hamilton

On 9th

Percy Loomis Sperr - October 4, 1933 (NYPL Digital Collections)

It's fall on 9th Street.  To the right of the house in the photo, there are ads for the RKO Prospect. So what's playing? What Price Innocence? (later classed as an exploitation and "sex hygiene" film,) and a stage appearance by "sensational, gorgeous" fan dancer Peggy Heavens "in the dance that shocked battle-scarred Chicago!"

Here's 163 9th today.

Dream On

The house we dream of?  The one we've passed countless times, and imagined inhabiting?  The one that fills us with base envy?  Don't we all have one?

On foot or by train. from street or viaduct, I am wild for this place.  I've taken so many pictures of it over the years, and it appeared here first in the blog's early days. Today, by chance, I caught a glimpse inside, and oh, that made me want to live here all the more.

Antika Ceramica

Auto Shop

The auto shop's a disappearing breed round here, especially on the avenues, and with each one that vanishes go blue-collar jobs and street vitality.   Diversity of business makes for a vigorous neighborhood.   After the bigger lots are snapped up, it's the turn of the smaller ones.  These three have been on the market recently.

On Fourth

Things seem to be speeding along at 494 Fourth, formerly home to the restaurant/bar Cantina. A worker at the site told me an American-style bistro/bar is in the works.

A block north, at 470 Fourth, the Adam America building is now seven floors high. Five more No Sleep Till Brooklyn to go.

Romanian Tours

Night time on Astoria Boulevard.  Sent in by a Queens reader.

Plans Revealed on 21st

As Fourth Avenue’s construction boom stretches south of the Prospect Expressway in Brooklyn, condos are rising on the neighborhood’s less desirable blocks, closer to the traffic-clogged avenue and further from Green-Wood Cemetery. One such project is in the works at 186 21st Street between Fourth and Fifth Avenues in Greenwood Heights. (NY YIMBY)

Back in June we noted that Sterling Town Equities had bought 186-90 21st Street (two-storey building & adjacent lot) for six million dollars.  Now NY YIMBY reports that permits have been filed for a 26 unit, five storey-building at the site.  13 parking spaces will be included.  Also a part of the development site, apparently, is the small, pitched-roof house at 196, which has not yet closed.

You can read about 186 back in 1910 right here.