Jul. 31, 2006 - Yes Virginia, there was a Thomas in English Muffins / an oven grows in Chelsea

Careful what renovation projects you undertake

Jul. 30, 2006 - More on lofts with views / Big Sky Country in the West 30s

As grist for a future blog post, a couple of these buildings have nearby development slated which will impact some of the views, but that is for another day….

Jul. 27, 2006 - What the [deleted] does this mean? CNNMoney report that NY & NJ housing 43% overpriced

Jul. 25, 2006 - Cobblestone wars – PR muscle moves in??

Jul. 18, 2006 - The strange case of the rent-free loft / the dicey math of illegal lofts

Jul. 18, 2006 - light more precious than views to an artist / more on losing views...

Jul. 17, 2006 - What makes a city a “city”? (hint: this is a blog about lofts)

Jul. 17, 2006 - Popularity contests / NYC just cracks list of best “big” cities [caution: parochial rant]

Jul. 12, 2006 - another new school for Tribeca?

Jul. 11, 2006 - Now you see it (and pay for it), now you don’t / what are views worth?

Jul. 10, 2006 - “I may not use it, but I really want it” / what Manhattan terraces and balconies are worth

 Who wants a terrace? (hint: everyone)

The Times is right:

 “The funny thing about private outdoor space in the city is that some people who have it use it, others don't, but most people seem to want it regardless and are willing to pay extra for it.”

“Everybody” wants it, yes, except for some families with small children and those of us afraid of heights (both of whom shy away from balconies). And nearly everyone who wants it is willing to pay for it.

But who uses it depends, in large part, on whether the outdoor space is a terrace (on top of a building setback) or a balcony (literally extending from the building exterior wall), on what floor they are on, and on whether there is a lot of vehicle traffic nearby.

Terraces are generally larger than balconies (often by a large degree), and generally feel more secure. Because they are only where the building has setbacks, there tend to be fewer of them than balconies, which can hang off a building in as many columns as a developer wants.

Expensive storage space

My personal observation is that if you could look across at a line of balconies, you are very likely to see many indications that they are used rarely, if at all. You will often see bicycles, dead plants, dirty plastic patio furniture, and rusty barbecue grills or hibachis. You will see more live plants, and more clean furniture, and fewer ‘storage’ items on higher floors, and on balconies that are (relatively) protected from traffic noise and soot.

The data that most surprised me in the Times article was to how common outdoor space is, although commentator and smart guy Jonathan Miller is quoted with data showing they are trading less often than they had been.

One in ten coops or condos has outdoor space? Really??

Only 10.9 percent of all residential sales in Manhattan last year included units with some type of private outdoor space, down from 14.4 percent in 2000 and 18.3 percent in 1995, according to the appraisal company Miller Samuel. "The drop suggests that the properties with outdoor space — more likely large space like terraces and gardens — have a longer holding period and do not turn over as often," said Jonathan J. Miller, the company's president.

Big value, no surprise there

Commentator (smart guy) Miller provided the first hard data I have seen about values, though the data is hidden behind the “typical” label.

Just how much of a premium buyers can expect to pay for a patch for earth (or concrete) will vary greatly. Typically, apartments with private outdoor space get an extra 25 to 50 cents on the dollar per square foot, Mr. Miller said. (So at $1,000 a square foot, the average price of all Manhattan apartments right now, a 400-square-foot terrace could add as much as $200,000 to the price tag.)

I do not believe that there is “typical” outdoor space, but the range given (25 to 50 cents per dollar per square foot) is wide enough to include a wide range of spaces. 

The Times provided one concrete example, a building I have not seen.

At the Atelier, a high-rise going up on West 42nd Street, a one-bedroom with a terrace starts at around $820,000, versus $770,000 for one without a terrace; a two-bedroom with a terrace starts at $1.305 million, versus $1.145 million without, according to Elad Dror, residential director for the Moinian Group, which is developing the 46-story, 478-unit condominium.

Jul. 7, 2006 - dynamic city / time runs out on a stripped Tiffany’s

Here is the second of two posts inspired by Sunday’s NY Times that got me thinking about how dynamic New York City is.

From champagne to jewels

Sunday’s Real Estate section carried a piece about an ugly building on Union Square West, six blocks due west along 15^th Street from the new Moet HQ.

Who knew that this spare white building began life in 1870 as the flagship of Tiffany & Company, jewelers and was a “monster [cast] iron building”?

The Times [in 1870] called the new building a "palace of jewels," with black-walnut counters and ebony cases holding watches, fans, opera glasses and other articles in wood, leather, silver, cloisonné, enamel, bronze and rosewood. The Times observed that one ornamental statue, " 'Zingerilla,' by the Spanish sculptor Klessinger, appears almost ready to speak to her admirers."

Tiffany’s stayed for only 35 years before moving uptown (to 37^th Street and Fifth Avenue) and the building became a home for garment companies. By 1925 the building was owned by Amalgamated Bank, which had been formed by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, one of many trade unions located (coincidentally?) around Union Square (the square was named for the federal union – The United States).

An accident and a careful architect

How did this “elaborate” cast-iron building turn into the “blocky white blob of a building” it has been?

It was an accident, literally.

A piece of iron fell from the façade in 1952, leading to the death of the unfortunate pedestrian it landed on. The Amalgamated Bank hired a thorough architect to “make sure” that such an accident never recurred. Which this careful architect did by stripping away every projecting piece of iron from the façade and encasing the shell in white brick.

Since then, the bank has been just one part of the polyglot assortment of Union Square's architecture, which mixes Romanesque, Queen Anne, Federal, postmodern and other styles

This polyglot of styles persisted through the decline of the Union Square area as the City’s fortunes waned across the Board in the 1970s, and the square was a place to avoid at night (and sometimes during the day). The coming of the greenmarket and restaurateur Danny Meyer in the 1980s began the upswing in fortunes. I believe Meyer deserves much of the credit for marshalling property owners around the square to pressure the City for better police and sanitation services. His Union Square Café became a big social and gustatory hit, which increased the attention paid to the area, and resulted in the last few years in major improvements to the square. (A personal note: I vividly recall the street reconstruction projects being well under way on September 11, 2001, as I walked through the square just before 9 AM that Tuesday, just after the first plane had flown low and loud over my head, heading south.)

(Bless Meyer also for similar work he did on marshalling corporate neighbors in cleaning up Madison Square a few years ago, where his 11 Madison and Tabla sit.)

But I digress….

A predictable but dynamic change

The next act for the boring white brick bank building that used to be an elaborate cast-iron jewelry firm is clear, at least for this structure. Given the zoning and the general market, when the bank sells the building (as it has begun to do) it is likely to be torn down to be replaced by a condominium tower.

From luxury jewelry to ladies underwear to a union bank to the inevitable condo, in four acts spanning about 140 years. Maybe that is not so dynamic a series of changes, after all....

Jul. 7, 2006 - dynamic city / champagne in a cookie building

Two pieces in Sunday’s NY Times got me thinking about how dynamic New York City is. I suppose that other cities are similarly dynamic, but the relative age, breadth and range of the City, and its sharp geographic boundaries, probably make NYC – and especially Manhattan – more dynamic.

Here’s the first one.

The business section ran an article about the new HQ of Moet Hennessy, on the second floor of a 1914 building that used to house the National Biscuit Company (better known as Nabisco) between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues (address is 85 Tenth Av, from 15th to 16^th Streets). Anyone who has driven down West Street in this area has probably noticed the “National Biscuit Company” sign on the west side of the building. I don’t know the history, but given the proximity to the Hudson River piers and access to that Holland and Lincoln Tunnels to New Jersey, it was probably a warehouse or distribution facility.

Like many such buildings in this far west corridor, it has almost certainly been significantly under-utilized of late. Back when the elevated Westside Highway ran above West Street (before it was closed in the 1970s because it was literally falling apart) this area was dark, noisy, dirty and dangerous. Back when the docks were in full commercial flower (until the early 1950s), this area was probably also filled with the ancillary businesses that catered to maritime commerce and sailors, including bars, flophouses and whore houses.

But the container cargo ships moved the commercial shipping hub across the river to New Jersey (the mob-controlled longshoreman and stevedoring unions didn’t help) in the 1950s and 1960s and the general decline of the city in the 1960s and 1970s left this far west side of Manhattan a bleak stretch between the genteel West Village and Chelsea.

Then the neighborhood just to the south, across 14^th Street, went from being a neighborhood of wholesale meat and provisioning companies in the early 1990s to “The Meatpacking District” (in which very little grocery meat is packed, but boutiques and condos thrive) at the turn of the century.

Which made it easier for creeping change to creep across 14^th Street, first to create the climate in which the Chelsea Market thrived, then to engulf the old National Biscuit Company building.

The Times article describes this building as “at the edge” of the Meatpacking District (though I would quibble that this District does not cross 14th Street; this should be part of Chelsea) and describes the nearby neighbors as including: Del Posto, CraftSteak and Morimoto restaurants; the Gansevoort Hotel; Soho House, a private club; and the Food Network (nearly all of which are above 14^th Street). For Moet Hennessy, this location is ideal because it allows the sales and marketing people for their champagne, spirits and cognac brands to walk to clients.

But it is the unidentified near neighbors that make this area dynamic: mid-block small-scale apartment buildings just to the east on up to 22nd Street, the venerable General Theological Seminary (whose bell tower charms passersby both visibly and aurally) between Ninth and Tenth at 20^th and 21^st Streets, the Maritime Hotel (in a building that housed Covenant House, a social services agency, most recently but whose porthole windows hint at its history as a longshoreman’s union headquarters) and the buildings managed by the NYC Housing Authority.

The fragile mix of low and moderate income housing in the corridor above 14^th Street west of Ninth Avenue now sits cheek by jowl to the creeping deluxe living represented by the Maritime Hotel and the new restaurants. Increasingly, bodegas, grocers and similar retail establishments struggle to afford the higher rents that the increasingly fashionable neighborhood can command.

The ongoing attempt by the Seminary to renovate and to raise money by building a tower have focused attention on the scale of this neighborhood, and its mix of low-income residents, "middle-class" (or its Manhattan equivalents) and high-end gentrifiers. According to The Villager, the Seminary and its business partners have scaled back to a 13 story condominium tower, which is still too tall to many residents: That fight in this dynamic neighborhood continues.

The Villager has run a series of articles about the Seminary plans, as well as this one “Chelsea 2025”, a brainstorming session about changes in Chelsea and its future.

Jul. 5, 2006 - You can’t make this stuff up / condo owners rue authentic TriBeCa cobblestones

This one will inaugurate a new category ‘Truth IS Stranger…”.

Maybe they didn’t get the memo

One would assume that people move to TriBeCa, in part, because they appreciate that the neighborhood looks different from most residential neighborhoods in Manhattan. One would also assume that the folks who bought loft condominiums at 44 Laight St noticed that about 75 feet of the street in front of their building is cobblestone.

One might be wrong.

44 Laight Street is an 18 unit condo converted in 2004 from a hundred year old warehouse. Half the lofts in the building are more than 3500 square feet and there seem to have been 4 sales this year from $3 million-plus to almost $5 million.

(photo from the Tribeca Trib on-line)

If this does not work. you’ll have to scroll down through the July 2006 on-line issue of The TriBeCa Trib for the story (http://www.tribecatrib.com/) of the petition to have cobblestones removed in the Tribeca North historic district presented to Community Board 1.

“CB1’s Landmarks Committee, whose members include many longtime residents who consider the north section of the neighborhood to be the last unspoiled territory in Tribeca. Here, the cobblestones are protected and enjoy near-sacred status”

On the one hand, there are not many cobblestone streets left, and the survivors reflect the area’s distinctive mercantile and (relatively) ancient heritage. . On the other hand, cobblestones can be hard to walk on (even in flat shoes, and worse when wet or icy), and are much harder to push a stroller on than other surfaces. The situation for 44 Laight Street residents is made worse by the fact that there is no curb and no sidewalk in front of the building.

But these relative newcomers picked on the wrong sacred cow.

No mace at meetings

Neither the author of the article nor the CB1 Committee was sympathetic to the petition. The condo petitioner “may well have suffered far worse abuse had all of the [Landmarks] committee members been in attendance”, says the author, who proves it by quoting one committee member that if another member had been there “[the absent member] would have sprayed mace in your face”.

No telling if the condo representative appreciated what he missed, but they may persist in their request. CB1 had only an advisory role on this issue, since the authority to approve a change in the street composition rests with Landmarks Preservation Commission. An LPC official was quoted as saying that the condo has been in communication with the condo owners about possible alternatives that could pass muster.

When is a cobblestone not a cobblestone?

But they are not likely to be holding their breath at 44 Laight Street about getting a more stroller-friendly, heel-friendly surface.

“They need to seek our guidance as to what it is going to look like,” [the LPC official] said. And what might an acceptable solution look like?
“Cobblestones,” she said, “made of concrete.”

I would not want to push a stroller on concrete cobblestones, or walk on icy cobblestones, no matter what they were made of. Nor would I want to consider what a “concrete cobblestone” should properly be called. Odds are that the folks at 44 Laight Street won't have to do any of these things, either.