February 06, 2012
The New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) has issued a request for proposals to "Illuminate Lower Manhattan." The proposals must be submitted by March 13, 2012 and the winning plan will be awarded $1 million toward the cost of the project.
The EDC wants to make Lower Manhattan more attractive, exciting and interesting and therefore raise property values just as the High Line has made West Chelsea more desirable.
The proposed light show must be east of Broadway and south of Fulton and Ann streets, although the EDC is encouraging locations along South Street or near the New York Stock Exchange. Presumably such a geographic location might provide visibility for the project from Brooklyn, but not from New Jersey as Battery Park City has been excluded from the project. It is not clear why the EDC has set a geographic limitation for the project unless it wants to have it highlight the South Street Seaport, whose fate is not clear although the Museum of the City of New York has recently taken over its museum.
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January 23, 2012
The City Planning Commission today approved a rezoning of the shuttered St. Vincent's Hospital site in Greenwich Village that will permit Rudin Management to convert several of the former hospital buildings to luxury condos, and to demolish others and replace them with new high-rise luxury condo construction.
The proposed rezoning must now go to the City Council for public hearings and a vote; the rezoning only takes effect if approved by the Council.
"Thanks to today's actions by the City Planning Commission, the West Side of Manhattan is now one step away from seeing a significant revitalization of the St. Vincent's campus and its surrounding area," said William Rudin, CEO of Rudin Management, in a statement. He added that the project will create more than 1,600 construction and permanent jobs.
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January 17, 2012
The city is studying a rezoning of commercial properties in Midtown East to replace "aging" smaller stock.
Much larger new office buildings that might be developed under the plan, however, are likely to significantly obstruct many existing vistas from major residential properties in the area.
The city's plan appears to be based on somewhat dubious premises that all buildings in the area that should be landmarked have been and that all corporations desire very large floors.
New York's Department of City Planning said Thursday it plans to study whether the city's commercial office market in midtown east needs to be reinvigorated with new zoning, according to a January 13, 2012 article at
crainsnewyork.com by Amanda Fung.
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January 13, 2012
The median net effective rent (face rent less landlord concessions) rose 9.5 percent to $3,121 in the Fourth Quarter of 2011 from $2,950 in the same period the previous year in Manhattan, according to the latest Douglas Elliman Report on apartment rents.
The study indicated that there was "no apparent shift in apartment mix was responsible for the increases" that were consistent across all rental price indicators. The sharp decline in mortgage rates pulled some potential renters into the sales market, the report continued.
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January 12, 2012
The New York City Department of City Planning has proposed new retail zoning regulations for the retail avenues on the Upper West Side to try to keep small "mom and pop stores" in the area and discourage the continued invasion of large bank branches and drug stores.
The regulations would affect 73 blocks between 72nd and 110th streets on the west side of Broadway and 74th and 110th streets on the east side of Broadway, both sides of Columbus Avenue between 72nd and 87th Streets, and the west side of Amsterdam Avenue between 75th and 110th Street on the west side excluding the blocks between 100th and 101st streets and 102nd and 103rd streets, and, on the east side, between 73rd and 87th streets and 105th and 109th streets.
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January 12, 2012
One of the biggest regular agendas on community board calendars in the city is application for State Liquor Authority licenses, a reflection both of the popularity of consuming alcohol and the fickle survival rate of the restaurant business.
So it was big news yesterday when an article by Carl Campanile in The New York Post indicated that Mayor Bloomberg "wants to crack down on alcohol sales to curb excessive drinking, according to a provocative planning document....[from the city's Health Department's far-reaching Partnership for a Healthier New York City initiatives proposes to slash the number of establishments in the city that sell booze."
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January 05, 2012
In his State of the State speech yesterday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed the building of a new convention center near the Aqueduct Racetrack and a casino in the South Ozone section of Queens and the redevelopment of the existing Jacob K. Javits Conventional Center in West Midtown.
The new center he proposed would contain about 3.8 million square feet as opposed to the 840,000 square feet of exhibition space at the 25-year-old Javits Center, which is completing a $500 million renovation that is expected to be completed in about two years.
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January 05, 2012
New apartment development witnessed a 9 percent decline in median price in the Fourth Quarter of 2011 to $1 million compared to a year ago while average price per square foot increased 5 percent to $1,210 according to the Corcoran Report released this week.
The decline in median price, the report continued, was due to a drop in two- and three-bedroom market share and an increase in market share for Upper Manhattan. "These trends are a result of the limited amount of new product available, particularly in prime locations. Compared to a year ago, average price per square foot increased in every submarket except for the East Side," the report maintained.
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January 04, 2012
The fourth quarter of 2011 had the lowest number of sales of luxury apartments in Manhattan in six years, 2,011, and 12.4 percent less than in the prior year quarter, according to the Elliman Report, which suggested that the decline was "perhaps related to the unusual surge in sales in the prior quarter," noting that "pending sales were also below the prior year level."
The report indicated that there were 7,221 active listings at the end of the fourth quarter, "essentially unchanged from the same period last year, but 2.6 less than the ten-year quarterly average of 7,412."
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December 30, 2011
Extell Development has raised condominium apartment prices at One57, its 1,004-foot-tall mixed-use development at 157 West 57th Street that is under construction now and is already several stories higher than
Jumeriah Essex House and
Hampshire House on Central Park South just to the north across 58th Street.
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