Results tagged “expansion”

Mayor Bloomberg really likes his space! The NY Times reports that the billionaire who lives in a 5-story "flawless Beaux-Arts limestone with 7,500 square feet of exquisite living space" at 17 East 79th Street, has been "been buying up space in the building next door, knocking down walls and combining two entire floors along the way."

After about a decade of delays, Kaufman Astoria Studios broke ground today on a $22 million expansion. The new building will be located diagonally across the street from Kaufman Astoria’s current building and will house an 18,000-square-foot sound stage, as well as an additional 22,000 square feet of offices, dressing rooms and carpentry shops, Crain's reports. Kaufman Astoria president Hal Rosenbluth had originally announced plans to expand in 1999, but put the project on hold after the 9/11 attacks. The studio is moving forward now with a $5 million grant from the city, at a time when the city is swarming with TV and movie productions, in part due to a recent increase in New York State tax breaks. Currently filming at Kaufman Astoria—which opened in 1920 as Famous Player Lasky—are Sesame Street, Life on Mars and Showtime’s new series, Nurse Jackie.

A group of residents in a massive building at 3333 Broadway (at 135th Street) are filing a class action lawsuit against the owner of the building, which until 2005 was in the state’s Mitchell-Lama program for moderate-income housing but is now charging market-rate rents. The residents say the owner had not properly notified them of the change to market-rate housing, and they say they're being systematically harassed to move out so higher-paying tenants can move in.

Vendors at the Hunts Point wholesale produce market, located on 125 acres of city-owned land in the South Bronx, have said they will consider leaving the site for points “north or west” because the city is not cooperating with their expansion needs. According to the AP, the market supplies 3.3 billion pounds of fruits and vegetables a year, mostly to restaurants and small grocers.

Preservationists and Greenwich Village community members are reporting that their efforts to stop NYU from demolishing the historic Provincetown Playhouse have paid off – to a certain extent. Andrew Berman, Executive Director of The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, tells us that NYU plans to preserve the facade and structural walls of the theater, but he says many issues remain unaddressed.

The historic – but not landmarked – Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village could be the next building to make way for NYU’s ongoing expansion, which will devour six million square feet of space in New York in the next 25 years, if all goes according to plan. The theater is widely regarded as the birthplace of 'Off Broadway.'

Governor Spitzer is facing opposition in his attempt to snuff out any Javits Center expansion by selling land surrounding the center to fill budget gaps. The administration still plans to renovate the convention center, but it will result in far less space than what was originally envisioned for the expansion, which would have cost between $1.8 billion and $3 billion. Senator Charles Schumer, Mayor Bloomberg and City Council speaker Christine C. Quinn oppose the land sale, which would effectively eliminate the possibility of any future expansion.