Results tagged “westendavenue”

Right now is crunch time for the city's Landmark Preservation Committee with proposals of a dozen new districts potentially coming up for a vote by the end of the month. The Post talks to preservation experts who say that the recent building boom helped spur demand for landmarks. Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council, tells them, "Communities woke up to losing what they really valued and said we want to become a landmark." Included in the upcoming proposal include a stretch of an entire thirty-seven blocks along West End Avenue between 70th and 107th an area of Prospect Heights that includes 860 buildings, the largest potential preservation area in the last twenty years. But will all of this preservation turn the city into "a mausoleum?" One lawyer who has fought against landmark status before told the paper, "The more those things grow, the less dynamic of a city you have. You want to have a city where development is possible; otherwise you get stagnation."

What have you done for your intimate New York living space lately? 32-year-old Kevin Patterson just took home Apartment Therapy's first place prize for the smallest, coolest apartment ("teeny tiny" division). His 210-square-foot space on the upper West Side costs him $1,550/month in rent, according to the Daily News. He told the paper, "I moved here from a place that was four or five times this big."

At West End Avenue and West 59th Street, a water main broke, flooding the Amtrak tracks. The FDNY is pumping out the water and a number of other city agencies, including the Office of Emergency Management and Department of Environmental Protection are on the scene. According to other reports, a new building (an expansion of John Jay Collage) at the intersection is also flooded.

Move over Crazy Cat Ladies of New York, a West End Avenue tenant may just have you beat. The Post reports that court papers have been filed by a building owner against 71-year-old tenant Jacqueline Bartone, calling her apartment a "zoo" and listing the pets that reside with her -- including three dogs, several reptiles and cats, "and as many as a dozen birds, including an African Grey parrot and a macaw parrot."

The Post reports that a woman running on the West Side managed to escape from a man who tried to rape her this past Saturday morning. According to the police, Jason Washington grabbed the 24-year-old woman from behind around 7AM. He then "fondled her and dragged her to an empty doorway near 12th Avenue and 58th Street."

Rappers Ja Rule and Lil Wayne both found themselves ending their weekend with arrests last night. The separate incidents both took place in the city.

Real estate sales data showed that co-ops seemed to be losing favor since condos are much more flexible with buyers. Well, there's yet another story about how co-op boards wield a lot of power. The board at 320 West End Avenue is reportedly trying to kick out a family because the 19-year-old son has allegedly harassed residents, employees and pedestrians. The family is striking back, asking a judge for an injunction to prevent the board from voting to evict them.

. Along the way she’s had a divorce and a daughter (Ruby, now 13), married the man who proposed to her back in her pre-Luka days, and been dubbed "The Mother of the Mp3" when her song Tom’s Diner was used as the model for the algorithm that compresses the Mp3!

Yesterday, it was announced Tishman-Speyer, the real estate firm that bought Stuyvesant Town for $5.4 billion, along with Lehman Brothers would buy real estate investment trust Archstone Smith in a $22.2 billion deal; the Observer calls it the "largest public-to-private acquisition ever among apartment REIT’s." Archstone Smith has over over 85,000 rentals nationally and almost 3,800 in NYC, which would given Tishman-Speyer over 15,000 apartments for its portfolio.

Yesterday at the Time Warner Center, Chef Marc Murphy somewhat stealthily opened the doors to the uptown outpost of Landmarc, his 3 year-old, well-regarded Tribeca restaurant. Murphy began to look northward last year when he opened Ditch Plains in the West Village. With Landmarc firmly established as a neighborhood bright spot with serious food (like the $12 roasted marrow bones with onion marmalade and grilled bread, pictured), and with Ditch Plains going strong with its clam bar/set count aesthetic (the only thing better than its all-day breakfast is its bric-a-brac seafood add-on options- you can order Anson Mills grits with oysters and lobster if you want), many have wondered if the new version of Landmarc can possibly retain the charm of the original inside the glass and steel canyons of a giant mall. With the same Brasserie/New American menu and a big emphasis on straightforward kids' meals (from carrot sticks & peanut butter to orecchiette with plain butter sauce, and toothache-inducing cotton candy), as well as a thoughtful wine list, the new Landmarc stands to remedy the fine dining fatigue suffered by diners who aren’t really feeling another array of microscopic quail egg custards, or truffled whatever du jour (you know who you are). Additionally, Chef Murphy and crew seem to have a fully formed battle plan that includes delivery from Fifth to West End Avenue, from 55th to 66th, and 300 seats to work their magic.

Untitled, by Keith on Overshadowed.

Wow. The Transport Workers Union's headquarters on West End Avenue was sold for $60 million. Back in April, it was reported that the headquarters were worth $39 million, but that there was a $60 million offer. And clearly, the TWU decided the cash out. One source tells the Post, "This amounts to yet another miscalculation on the part of the MTA and Governor Pataki. They thought they could bust this union, but we are now stronger than ever and we're ready to fight." It'll be interesting to see how the money is used, after paying the fine and getting new headquarters.

The hearings to determine the Transport Workers' Union fine from the three day transit strike is just full of (weird) new tidbits. The TWU has been arguing that paying a $3 million fine, plus not receiving its union members' dues automatically each paycheck, would ruin them. The MTA says that the TWU's 80 West End Avenue headquarters are worth $39 million - and TWU treasurer Ed Watt said that there was an offer on it for $60 million! The MTA's lawyer also suggested that union members pay their dues by PayPal, but TWU President and soon-to-be jailbird (lest he appeals) Roger Toussaint says that it's unlikely all of the union's members would voluntarily pay dues. Yeah, no one really likes dues. The judge is expect to rule on Monday.

After yesterday's massive freaking downer of a mashup, we thought today's map should be on the lighter side-- so here's The Geography of Seinfeld. Most of the action predictably takes place around the Upper West Side, but there are some outlier points in the Bronx (Yankee Stadium), Queens (the scene of the Kramer late-pickup episode), and Coney Island (Nathan's). Amusingly, the map was obviously programmed by someone who has never been to NYC: at least a third of the points are wildly off (West End Avenue located in Coney Island, the Plaza Hotel in Red Hook, etc.) It's actually sort of fun to spot the mistakes.

2:04 AM - The media is being told they have to wait a while before the TWU will talk. So with that, Gothamist is going to bed to get ready in case there is a strike - we're going attempt to check out the Brooklyn Bridge in the morning, which is supposed to be really cold tomorrow morning. Dress warm and dream of the strike being resolved by the time you wake up. Thanks for waiting with us - we'll be all over this in a few hours as well!

- And a reader sent us this graphic to mark the end of all-Softee-jingle, all-the time

The Times has a nice piece today on a now-gone mystery wall on 59th and West End Avenue. Found by construction workers digging foundation for a new apartment building, the 30 foot deep and 100 foot long wall with it's two rows of small openings offered romantic ideas of a lost New York City fort. Further inspection by archeologists however led to the real story, provided by an art history professor who specializes in pre-Prohibition breweries (Gothamist politely wonders how we could specialize in such a field). And the scoop? The wall had been part of a Clausen & Price brewery on the site and the small windows that looked so mysterious and possibly foreboding were there to allow easy ice-access from the nearby waterfront.

Yesterday's Puerto Rican Day Parade shimmered along Fifth Avenue, although there were some problems. In a nutshell, a police officer was slashed, gang members tried to crash the parade, three people were stabbed - 175 arrests all told. Oh, and two on-duty police officers were accused of groping women! The Daily News says that many men "wearing black-and-gold Latin Kings shirts" wanted to march, but the police claimed they found a gun and knives on them; a "self-proclaimed gang member" told the Daily News, "We just come over here to enjoy our day." And the police are investigating the groping incidents. While some people worry about Puerto Ricans being more "destructive" than other paraders the city sees over the year, Gothamist just thinks there's something about a parade with a lot of people in the sultry, steamy heat that must make people crazy - imagine if the St. Patrick's Day Parade were during the summer. Still, there's something pretty cool about seeing a flatbed truck, decorated with Puerto Rican flags and people, zooming down West End Avenue at 6PM.

We knew that 80s icon Cyndi Lauper lived on the Upper West Side, but Gothamist didn't realize she was trying to only pay $508 in her rent! Lauper, who sublets an apartment at the Apthorp, the apartment building that takes up Broadway to West End Avenue, 78th to 79th Streets, is suing the owners of the building because they had been paying $3,250 a month for many years, while the previous owner had paid only $508. Lauper's "landlord," Shlomo Baron, agreed to pay $2,400 a month for the apartment because it was not his primary residence. Lauper sued Baron in 1996 for overcharging her, and after much legal mishegas, a court said that using a real estate formula, Lauper should pay $989. Of course, Lauper and her husband are arguing that they should only pay $508, because it seems those music royalties aren't what they used to be, and now they are taking it all the way to courts in Albany. If Lauper does get her rent lowered to $508, or even to $989, Gothamist expects Lauper to generously tip every service person she comes into contact with, waiters, cabbies, doormen, you name it, plus give nice gifts to her personal assistants and the like, because rent of $508 sounds more like what you pay when you share an apartment with four other people in a Greenpoint loft. NY Magazine even lists rental prices at around $10,000!

Post snow coverage: The Daily News proclaims Dig We Must, and all I have to say is luckily many people had President's Day and that lots of kids were already on their mid-winter break. The New York Times features the messy travel part of the blizzard, as well as how the snow muffles a bit of the terrorist jitters. Of course, the Post says that basically the clean up will be pricey at about $1million per inch of fallen snow. Hopefully, we'll be measuring with the techniques mentioned in Slate's Explainer.