NYC Officials Will Not Curtail Construction of Supertall Towers
The Department of City Planning has responded to the growing chorus of city dwellers who are decrying the proliferation of 1,000-foot towers in Midtown. In an August 12 letter cited by Crain's, City Planning chair Carl Weisbrod explains that the city has no plans to curtail as-of-right development in Midtown, despite concerns over the impact of shadows on Central Park. "Given the important role Midtown Manhattan plays in the city's economy, we have no immediate plans to reduce the current as-of-right density or bulk requirements," Weisbrod writes, noting that every tower along the southern border of Central Park was built "pursuant to existing bulkand density regulations."
Renovation Turns Sad Townhouse Into Charming Family Home
We're big fans of thoughtfully revamped spaces, evidenced most recently by our eight-part renovation diary series, which tracked every stage of a Brooklyn brownstone's rehabilitation. Here's another Brooklyn renovation we love: Ensemble Architecture/ Elizabeth Roberts Design whipped an ailing, water-damaged townhouse in Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighb' into shape, carving out light-filled living spaces over several stories. The interiors are nice without being too on trend: where possible, Ensemble kept some of the house's original details—like ceiling and baseboard molding—while adding new wood floors, rather nice blue floor tile in the restored master bathroom, and contemporary finishes like metal-frame windows that open outward, shutter-like, to overlook the restored backyard. The brand-new addition on the house, which at ground level contains a lovely garden-adjacent dining room, is capped with a private terrace for the master suite. It's all quite impressive.
DoBro Developer Trades Affordable Housing for Extra Height
Developer Savanna Partners purchased the three-story Institute of Design and Construction building at 141 Willoughby Street in ear;y 2014, paying $28 million with the intention of replacing that building with a a 30-story mixed-use tower. However, zoning would only allow a tower half that size, and in exchange for the city rezoning the site,Savanna has had to agree to set aside 81 of the building's 270 units—30 percent—for affordable housing. The building will include retail at the base and on the second floors, two floors of office space on the third and fourth floors, and apartments above that.
14 Things New York City Smells Like In the Summer
[Mmmm, summer in the city. Photo by Joel Raskin/Curbed Flickr pool]
It's common knowledge that New York City smells like one giant pile of hot garbage in the summer, but as the hard-hitting investigative piecechildren's book New York Phew York revealed, there are a lot more olfactory delights and horrors to be had. Now the Times has discoveredthat this city stinks, and they sent two professional sniffers out on the streets to determine exactly what disgusting things we're smelling every day. And these pros don't mess around: Céline Barel, a perfumer, "sprays seawater in her nostrils each morning to flush them out," and Pascaline Lepeltier, a sommelier, keeps her apartment "as fragrance-free as possible."
How Much For a Prim & Proper Studio on the Upper East Side?
PriceSpotter is Curbed's asking price guessing game. We provide you with some details and pictures from a listing, and you take a crack at the price in the comments. Tomorrow we reveal the answer. And hey, no cheating!
What/Where: Studio on the Upper East Side
Square footage: "500"
Maintenance/CC: $1,067
Square footage: "500"
Maintenance/CC: $1,067
As far as Upper East Side studios go, this one is pretty sweet with itsmillwork-camouflaged Murphy bed, wood burning fireplace, beamed ceilings, and decent amount of closet space. The studio is set on the backside of the building and overlooks the gardens of surrounding townhouses. While the apartment itself is not in a townhouse, it is in a prewar building designed by one of the most revered architects of the time. How much do you think it's asking?
This Map Shows You the Best Book Based in Each NYC 'Hood
The New York Public Library put together this map of the best books set in various New York City neighborhoods (most of Manhattan is covered, as well as a the trendier parts of Brooklyn). There aren't any big surprises—The Great Gatsby takes Midtown; The Catcher in the Rye, Central Park; Breakfast at Tiffany's, Fifth Avenue—though it does tend to skew towards more recent works. Ben Lerner's 10:04 (Brooklyn Heights), Teju Cole's Open City (Upper West Side), and Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers (Soho), all published within the last five years, all make the list. Can you think of any big snubs? Motherless Brooklyn and Paul Auster's New York Trilogy both get multiple mentions in the NYPL's comment section.
Go Inside Hudson Yards, NYC's In-Progress New Neighborhood
The city's bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics may have flopped, but the mad dash to convince the Olympic committee that New York City was a serious contender would have profound impacts on the shape of Manhattan to come. The city's bid helped speed up a 40 million square foot rezoning of Manhattan's far West Side—to put that into context, an area as large as downtown Boston—where the masterminds behind the bid imagined erecting a stadium central to the games. Although London was ultimately selected as the 2012 host city, the far West Side's rezoning—a process that may have taken decades without the bid—would set it up for something arguably greater:Hudson Yards.
Astoria Waterfront Should Brace for 700 New Apartments
[The development site, as seen on Google Streetview.]
As expected, a huge new residential development will rise on a waterfront development site on Vernon Boulevard between 30th Drive and 12th Street in Astoria. Shibber Kahn of Criterion Group bought the property last year, and plans filed with the Department of Buildings (h/t the Real Deal) indicate that there will be two new buildings. The bulk of the apartments will be located at 30-77 Vernon Boulevard, where a nine-story, 569-unit building is planned. A smaller six-story, 132-unit building will be built on an adjacent parcel at 11-12 30th Drive, for a total of 701 new apartments.
New Boaz Gilad Condos in Bushwick Start at $329,000
Name: 18th Ward
Address: 303-309 Cooper Street
Developer: Boaz Gilad
Architect: L & C Associates LLC
Size: four stories, seven units
Prices: $329,000 - $625,000
Sales & Marketing: aptsandlofts
Address: 303-309 Cooper Street
Developer: Boaz Gilad
Architect: L & C Associates LLC
Size: four stories, seven units
Prices: $329,000 - $625,000
Sales & Marketing: aptsandlofts
Yet another ground-up condo development from Boaz Gilad's Brookland Capital launched sales today. 303 Cooper Street in Bushwick, henceforth known as 18th Ward, contains seven apartments, four of which are currently on the market. L & C Associates LLC are the architects of record for the building, which a teaser site describes as being "On the cusp of Bushwick hip and Ridgewood cool."
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Tracking 24 Years of Manhattan Sales and Rental Prices
This week, real estate appraiser, Curbed graph guru, blogger, and newsletter writer Jonathan Miller looks at 24 years of Manhattan price data.
It's been a while since I dropped in on Curbed with a Three Cents Worth post but since I'm currently huddled next to an air conditioner, I really needed to take my mind off the heat and humidity. I thought I'd reach back into history and trend the year-over-year changes in theManhattan sales and rental markets. I presented the median rental price and median sales prices by quarter back to 1991 measuring their year over year percent change. I'm surprised I haven't done this before since there is so much discussion about the relationship between the two markets, and whether it's better to rent or buy.
Take in the View 56 Leonard, the Tallest Tower in Tribeca
At 821 feet, the recently-topped out 56 Leonard is the tallest building in Tribeca (at least for now), and while it may not be part of thesupertall club, the views from that height are still pretty fantastic. The development team at Alexico Group sent over a photo from the tippy top of the Jenga-like building looking north toward Midtown, with river to river views. A rep says that the "cocoon" is coming down over the next few weeks, and "the most thrilling segment of the building" will finally be revealed.
HAY Mini-Market Brings Irresistible Danish Design to NYC
[HAY Mini-Market will be open at the Soho location of MoMA Design Store through January 2016. Photo by Scott Rudd.]
In case you missed it, Scandinavian design< is having a moment (or, rather, a continuous repetition of a "moment" that's been pinging between the woodworking shops of Copenhagen, oil-funded civic architecture in Oslo, black-leather-clad fashion ateliers of Stockholm, and Pop-art-inspired studios in Helsinki for the better part of a century). In any case, the new generation of Danish design has proven to be a particularly worthy export: it's not aggressive, it's pleasing to the eye and to the hand, it's colorful but not raucous, and it imbues spaces with a sense of hygge—a sense of coziness only articulated by, well, Danes.
Leading the pack is HAY, which was founded 13 years ago by husband-and-wife duo Rolf and Mette Hay. The pair has exercised its vision of palatable, friendly, everyday design at every scale—from coat racks to stationery to sofas to bedding to rugs—with the help of collaborators famous (Scholten & Baijings, Inga Sempé, and Sebastian Wrong, who now heads up his own offshoot called Wrong for HAY) and emerging (a roster of young design talents including Line Depping, Sylvain Willenz, and Lex Pott). HAY has been available stateside through a select group of e-retailers, and from now through January 2016, shoppers can experience HAY in person at MoMA Design Store's bricks-and-mortar location in New York City.
Park Slope Theater Condo Conversion Needs 'Refinement'
The Landmarks Preservation Commission has sent Hidrock Realty's proposal for a five-story residential addition to the historic Pavilion Theater in Park Slope back to the drawing board. The decision followed public testimony by local residents who already disapproved the plan, which will bring 24 condos to the neighborhood, at a community board meeting this July. "Various aspects of the proposal are positive," said LPC Chair Meenakshi Srinivasan, praising the adaptive reuse of the theater building, which is part of the Park Slope Historic District and a distinctive building along Bartel-Pritchard Square. "But the comments from the community identify legitimate issues worth exploring."
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