Corcoran Open House Roundup

CURBED COMPARISONS

What $5,200/Month Can Rent You in New York City

BIRTHDAY CARDS

Best New Yorker Covers Capture a Changing City Over 90 Years

LINKAGE

Is NYC Becoming a "Gated Community?"; Tribeca, Explained

[Via Joel Raskin/Curbed Photo Pool]

· Opinion: NYC is becoming "a gated community" [TRD]
· Midtown's La Parisienne coffee shop shutters [JVNY]
· An interview with developer Jed Walentas [NYT]
· Don't leave notes on Taylor Swift's door [Gothamist]
· A salary of over $100K could get you an affordable Harlem unit [BU]
· UWS private school expansion proposal angers neighbors [WSR]
· How did Tribeca become so desirable? [NYO]

COMMENTS

8 HOURS AGO

SUNNYSIDE UP

City to Study Feasibility of Sunnyside Yards, Amid Concerns

[Photos by Nathan Kensinger/Curbed]

Despite the endless complications of building over Sunnyside Yards, the New York City Economic Development Corporation will soon embark on a formal feasibility study of Mayor De Blasio's proposed affordable housing megaproject.

According to the EDC—which issued an RFP on Friday—the study will assess the practicalities of building a massive rail platform over the train tracks and developing 11,250 affordable units. The study will encompass a large variety of specific factors, including possible changes in the configuration of the rail yards, requirements to maintain rail operations, geotechnical conditions of the site, the infrastructural requirements of the proposed platforms, and the financial costs of the project.

Couple Buys a Fixer-Upper in Kensington

Welcome to It Happened One Weekend, our weekly roundup of The New York Times real estate section...

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Every "The Hunt" column begins with the Hunters describing the apartment they want, and ends with them rationalizing whatever they came away with. This is The Hunt: Dreams vs. Reality
The Hunters: a couple looking to buy
Price
Dream: $900,000
Reality: $850,000
Neighborhood
Dream: Windsor Terrace
Reality: Kensington
Amenities
Dream: House, rental income
Reality: House, rental income, fixer-upper
Summary
This week's Hunters are a couple looking to buy in Brooklyn. They had a budget of $900,00 and sought a house with a rental unit, rather than paying common charges in a condo. They started looking in Windsor Terrace and came up empty, getting outbid at every turn. So they started looking across the border in Kensington, where they had a bit more luck, eventually finding a two-family in lousy shape, with cracked pipes and rotted floors. They bought it for $850,000 and have spent a few months fixing it up, moving in last summer. [The Hunt/"A House in Brooklyn, Mint Condition Not Required"; photo via Ian T West/Curbed Photo Pool]

1 COMMENT

10 HOURS AGO

CURBED MIAMI

Billy Joel's $40M Compound; LeBron's House Still Available

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[Images via Google Maps/Anthony Correia / Shutterstock.com]

1) Manalapan: 'Margaritaville' crooner Billy Joel may soon have enough oceanfront property to build his own private whatever the hell he wants. Joel has assembled 8 acres of ocean-to-lake property worth a whopping $40 million.

2) Palm Beach: This "designer renovated" two-bedroom condo in the heart of Palm Beach is absolutely charming. It's listed for $675,000furnished, although you may want to let the designer have another go at those bathrooms.

3) Brickell: Brickell City Centre, one of the (multiple) large megaprojects happening in Miami right now, has transformed its neighborhood, and construction isn't even slated for completion until later this year. Check out the progression of Brickell City Centre in these ten photos.

4) Coconut Grove: Here's a little update about Miami-defector LeBron James' house, which is listed for $17 million: it's still available. Oh and LeBron seems to be coming down for the weekend every chance he gets.
· Curbed Miami [miami.curbed]

1 COMMENT

11 HOURS AGO

OPEN HOUSE WEEKEND WARRIORS

Weekend Open House Tour: Upper East Side

This weekend on the Open House Tour, we're checking out the Upper East Side. Lots of different listings this week, including some relatively affordable apartments scattered all over the neighborhood. There's a convertible two-bedroom on East 71st asking $919,000, a one-bedroom on East 87th asking $1 million, a three-bedroom on East 72nd asking $3.45 million (above), and more.

12 HOURS AGO

The Worst Ad on Craigslist; A Glimpse at Sunnyside Yards

7 IMAGES

Let's All Just Hope This Craigslist Sublet Ad Is Not Real, What $5,200/Month Can Rent You in New York City, Modern Family's Jesse Tyler Ferguson Buys in Gramercy, Finally, A Glimpse Inside Jean Nouvel's Supertall MoMA Tower, Best New Yorker Covers Capture a Changing City Over 90 Years, The Plaza's Stubborn 'Attic' Penthouse Is Back, Still Asks $59M, 12 Warren Street Is Supposed to Look Like A Stack of Rocks, 61 Fifth Avenue Cuts Prices, Launches Sales for a Third Time, Future New York City Will Be Hotter, Partially Underwater, Inside Sunnyside Yards, New York City's Next Megaproject

COMMENTS

13 HOURS AGO

CURBEDWIRE

Eran Chen on Architecture; 500 Sterling 100 Percent Leased

NEW YORK CITY—Here's a fun promotional video of ODA's Eran Chen talking about Architecture while slow motion walking, Birdman-style, through various buildings the firm has designed. "Like the space between a tree and the ground whre light comes through the leaves and captures our imagination, so should our buildings compose our urban landscape." [Vimeo; previously]

CROWN HEIGHTS—Six months after leasing started, Halstead Property Development Marketing has announced that 500 Sterling Place, the 77-unit building from Adam America, is 100 percent leased. Prices in the building started at $1,999/month for a studio. [CurbedWire Inbox; previously]

CROWN HEIGHTS

1 COMMENT

A DAY AGO

LINKAGE

Gansevoort Plaza to Close; One Vanderbilt Observation Deck?

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[Curbed Flickr Pool / Aebex]

· Inside the 150 y/o Bed-Stuy church slated for demolition ['Stoner]
· Meatpacking's Gansevoort Plaza will be closed for 2 years [DNA]
· See the colorful and whimsical pad of designer Fawn Galli [NYP]
· High Line can be owed to dangerous past of grade-level tracks [NYT]
· 1,514-foot-tall One Vanderbilt may have observation deck [6sqft]
· Brace, Seaport: food will return to SmorgasBar this summer [DNA]
· Five-story apartment building to rise on Broadway in Astoria [YIMBY]
· Wealthy Russian Oleg Baibakov offloads apartment for $19.5M [NYO]
· Newtown Creek aeration project lacks public access to creek [QL]
· According to Twitter, the perils of this winter are hilarious [WNYC]

COMMENTS

A DAY AGO

COMMENT OF THE DAY

"The angled crisscrossing skeleton of MoMA Tower is very reminiscent of the 100-story John Hancock Center in Chicago designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Same exposed angled skeleton on the inside of the condominiums units too."—Clay Bloodworth [Finally, A Glimpse Inside Jean Nouvel's Supertall MoMA Tower]

COMMENTS

POPULAR

UH-OH

The Economist Just Said 'Gentrification Is Good For The Poor'

[Image from a listing for 577 New Lots Avenue, featured in Curbed's July 30, 2014 post Do These Rentals Mean East New York Gentrification Is Real?]

The Economist put on its fiscally minded hat today and published a piecedefending gentrification. The rather simplistic argument is as follows: the 50-year-old term gentrification has become a dirty word because of its rep for pushing (and pricing) out existing poor and minority residents. But "there is little evidence that gentrification is responsible for displacing the poor or minorities." Beyond that, the gentrifiers do things like pay taxes, and use their clout to push for better schools and other neighborhood niceties.

However annoying they may be, hipsters help the poor. Their vintage shops and craft-beer bars generate jobs and taxes. So if you see a bearded intruder on a fixed-gear bike in your neighbourhood, welcome him.

When pigs fly—right, residents of East New York? And East Harlem? And the Bronx?
· Bring on the hipsters [Economist via Gothamist]
· Gentrification Watch archive [Curbed]

12 COMMENTS

A DAY AGO

DUDE, WHERE'S MY VIEW?

One of the Pierhouse Buildings Will Get Just a Tiny Bit Shorter

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Brooklyn Heights locals have, as you may have heard, been making a huge stink about the height of the Toll Brothers/Starwood Capital-developed Brooklyn Bridge Park hotel/condo project the Pierhouse, the northern section of which has apparently exceeded 100 feet in supposed violation of an agreement from 2005. Recently, the Department of Buildings issued a Stop Work Order for the shorter portion of the project at 130 Furman Street in order to examine its height (which was supposed to be 55 feet—less than half of 90 Furman Street, the buidling that the Save the View campaign was created to protest), and NY YIMBY has just learned that two parapet walls on the roof will be removed, lowering the height (of the shorter building) by 1.5 feet. So, that ought to satisfy no one.
· Work Set to Resume at Brooklyn Bridge Park's Pier 1 Building After Minor Height Adjustment [NY YIMBY]
· Brooklyn Bridge Park coverage [Curbed]

PIERHOUSE

130 Furman Street, Brooklyn, NY

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS

5 COMMENTS

A DAY AGO

HOSTEL ENVIRONMENTS

Important Ruling Evicts Stabilized Tenant Acting As Airbnb Host

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[Image via Airbnb.]

A Manhattan Housing Court judge has ruled that rent-stabilized tenants cannot, under their lease agreement, turn a profit by peddling their apartments on short-term stay sites like Airbnb. The ruling, reported by the Post, comes after the hearing of Henry Ikezi, a tenant in Related Companies' MiMa development on West 42nd Street, who was renting out his subsidized 46th-floor two-bedroom penthouse on Airbnb for $649 a night. Because the apartment was rent stabilized, Ikezi only paid about two-thirds of its market-rate rent, or $6,670 per month. Building residents claimed that, against state and city laws, Ikezi only used the apartment as a hotel, and that he and his family live full-time in Jamaica. In a small defeat for the un-stabilized bitter city-wide, Ikezi has been ordered to vacate the apartment by the end of the month; but his Airbnb listing is still live. The ruling is the first of its kind to evict a tenant under rental controls outright.

What does this case mean for Airbnbers? >>

MIMA

450 West 42nd Street New York, NY

MIDTOWN WEST

21 COMMENTS

A DAY AGO

CURBED NY FLICKR POOL

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BETTER BUILDINGS

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The city released a slew of proposed changes to the zoning code, including resolutions that would change the laws that govern building shapes to give developers and architects more flexibility with the facade and layouts, in some cases allowing buildings to go taller, as long as the square footage remained the same. If affordable housing was included, heights could go even taller. The aim is to "return to higher ceiling heights and varied building shapes common in prewar buildings." NIMBYs won't be into taller buildings, but anything that discourages buildings like this works for us. [Crain's]

5 COMMENTS

A HOPPY HOME

Rheingold Brewery Complex Will Start to Take Shape This Year

Construction on one of the ten buildings coming to the former Rheingold Brewery site in Bushwick will begin this summer, with demolition of an existing warehouse set to start next month, DNAinfo reports. When complete towards late 2016, the 385-apartment building at 123 Melrose Street and Evergreen Avenue will have the nice amenity of an eighth-floor outdoor pool, 71 attended parking spaces, ground-floor retail and, curiously, 12 cellar-level apartments. Twenty percent of the units in the Read Property Group-developed building will be priced below market rate; looking at permits, its hard not to jump to conclusions over where in the building those apartments will be. S9 Architecture, a Perkins Eastman affiliate also behind the Staten Island Observation Wheel, is the project architect.

When complete, the 10-building complex will bring 1,000 apartments, about 300 of which will be priced below market rate, to the area.
· Affordable Units at Rheingold Brewery Site to Start Being Built This Summer [DNAinfo]
· All Rheingold Brewery coverage [Curbed]

123 MELROSE STREET

123 Melrose Street Brooklyn, NY

BUSHWICK

3 COMMENTS

A DAY AGO

TOWER UPDATE-O-RAMA

Finally, A Glimpse Inside Jean Nouvel's Supertall MoMA Tower

Jean Nouvel's supertall tower at 53 West 53rd Street is really, truly becoming a reality, after many years of waiting, and today the Timeshas the first look inside the building. The interior rendering shows a pretty grand (but familiar) view of Central Park, but it also highlights the building's unusual diagonal structural system, known as a "diagrid." This gives the tower its signature zig-zagging pattern on the facade, but inside, it causes a lot of design headaches, including tilting windows and slanted columns. For interior designer Thierry W. Despont to work out all of the kinks, developer Hines opted to build a full-scale model unit—likened to a "playground," "a lab" or one big "toy"—in a warehouse in Sunset Park. The prototype cost $500,000 to $1 million to build, but that's barely a drop in the bucket considering the 140 condos will list for $3 million to more than $50 million.

A look at the facade + design details >>