Design Firm Reimagines Neglected Space Under the BQE as a Food Court and Sports Center
May 26, 2016

Design Firm Reimagines Neglected Space Under the BQE as a Food Court and Sports Center

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NYC-based design firm Buro Koray Duman has come up with a series of plans to use the under-utilized space beneath the BQE in a site near Sunset Park's Industry City, the massive waterfront industrial complex which itself has recently experienced a renaissance as a hub for designers and local manufacturers. The elevated highway separates Industry City from the rest of the neighborhood, and the proposed uses would connect the space beneath with the creative and commercial energy of the complex. According to Dezeen, the firm saw an opportunity to put the empty sub-highway space to good use and add "more color and convenience to the city's daily life."
Find out more about the two ideas for the under-highway space
Colonial Meets Rock Star at Allman Brothers Guitarist’s Former Nyack Home, Asking $2M
May 26, 2016

Colonial Meets Rock Star at Allman Brothers Guitarist’s Former Nyack Home, Asking $2M

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Warren Haynes, guitarist for The Allman Brothers Band, may not live in this Upper Nyack home anymore, but it sure does look like it's inhabited by a musician. From the outside, the five-bedroom Colonial appears to be a standard suburban spread, but inside, the animal-print rugs (and actual animal sculptures), neon and furry accents, and massive shoe collection scream rock star. And it can all be yours for $2 million (h/t NYP).
Check it all out
Jamestown Will Spend up to $50M to Double Retail Space at Chelsea Market

Views of addition courtesy of Neoscape

May 26, 2016

Jamestown Will Spend up to $50M to Double Retail Space at Chelsea Market

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Back in March, 6sqft got a first look at renderings for Jamestown Properties' 240,000-square-foot addition to Chelsea Market. Known as BLDG 18, the nine-story topper designed by Studios Architecture will sit atop the westernmost building of the complex. In addition, the developer plans to spend $35 to $50 million doubling the size of the retail space. Though there's no new images to accompany the news, Crain's explains that the additional 80,000 square feet of retail will go in the building's now mostly unused lower level. Here, among other renovations, Jamestown will convert a boiler room into a restaurant and add a central corridor similar to the existing one on the ground level.
More details ahead
Apply for 55 Middle-Income Apartments in Prime Murray Hill
May 26, 2016

Apply for 55 Middle-Income Apartments in Prime Murray Hill

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A common complaint about the city's affordable housing lotteries is that they don't often pertain to middle-income New Yorkers who are struggling to pay market-rate rents just the same. But here's the chance for this often-overlooked group to get in on the action -- a lottery launches tomorrow for 55 middle-income apartments at 325 East 25th Street. Not only do the rents range from $1,715/month studios to $2,216/month two-bedrooms, but the building is located in a prime Murray Hill location just north of Gramercy and right in the mix of restaurants and bars (okay, maybe just bars) for which the 'hood is known.
Get the full breakdown here
Tribeca’s Iconic Pearl Paint Buildings Are Going Residential
May 25, 2016

Tribeca’s Iconic Pearl Paint Buildings Are Going Residential

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Back in 2014, New Yorkers lamented the shuttering of Pearl Paint, the legendary 80-year-old art retailer that had been located on the border of Tribeca and Chinatown since 1933. Any self-respecting artist, architect, or designer will surely remember trudging up the six flights of creaking floor boards and hunting down bargain-priced supplies, but this will soon become an even more distant memory as just yesterday, Trans World Equities filed permits to convert one of Pearl Paint's former buildings into eight residential units and build a two-story addition above the 150-year-old structure at 308 Canal Street.
All the details this way
$40 Million Overhaul Will Make 8 Parks More Neighborhood-Friendly

Image: Fort Greene Park Conservancy

May 25, 2016

$40 Million Overhaul Will Make 8 Parks More Neighborhood-Friendly

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The city has announced plans to make eight of the city's parks more welcoming and integrated into their surrounding neighborhoods, the New York Times reports. According to officials, the green-space face-lifts are part of a plan to improve city parks and part of the larger goal of having 85 percent of New Yorkers living within walking distance of a park. The parks, chosen by a nomination process that used feedback from residents, include Seward Park on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Faber Pool and Park on the North Shore of Staten Island, Jackie Robinson Park in northern Manhattan, Van Cortlandt Park and Hugh Grant Circle and Virginia Park in the Bronx, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, and Fort Greene and Prospect Parks in Brooklyn. According to parks commissioner Mitchell J. Silver, the many improvement suggestions the city received were "proof positive of how excited New Yorkers are to increase accessibility and openness in their favorite parks.”
Find out more about the park plans
Spend Summer on the Sun Porch in This $2.25M Craftsman-Style Windsor Terrace Home
May 25, 2016

Spend Summer on the Sun Porch in This $2.25M Craftsman-Style Windsor Terrace Home

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Not only does this super-cute brick townhouse promise plenty of space for the whole family without leaving the civilization of New York City, but it conjures up a totally different, laid-back and innocent time and place. This home at 207 Windsor Place mixes Arts and Crafts-style details with an old fashioned American house layout, with a big eat-in kitchen that opens into a formal dining room, a catnap-ready front sun porch, a basement ready for whatever you'd like to make it—and four bedrooms at the end of the day. All of this sits at the Park Slope/Windsor Terrace border two blocks from Prospect Park and a block from subways, shopping, dining, cafes and everything Brooklyn neighborhoods are loved for today.
Take a floor-by-floor tour
Colorful Flat-Pack Furniture Can Be Hung on the Wall Like Art
May 25, 2016

Colorful Flat-Pack Furniture Can Be Hung on the Wall Like Art

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The selection of furniture for those living in cramped apartments continues to evolve beyond the plastic folding chair. And this flat-pack seating collection by Jongha Choi is the latest ingenious design to emerge from the small space realm. De-dimension _ From 2D to 3D rethinks seating by adding an artistic bent to a functional product. As seen in the animation above, each seat easily unfolds when needed, and can just as easily be collapsed back into a "2D" form and hung on the wall like art.
see more here

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Historic Casement Windows Line This $1.3M Corner Loft in Greenwich Village
May 25, 2016

Historic Casement Windows Line This $1.3M Corner Loft in Greenwich Village

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The International Tailoring Company Building, located at 111 Fourth Avenue in Greenwich Village, is historic and stately from the outside, light and lofty from the inside. It's been converted into co-op apartments, and this one-bedroom duplex is now on the market for $1.3 million. Its attributes include 13-foot ceilings, six original industrial casement windows--two of which are 10 feet tall, the other four are eight feet tall--and views of sky and the city skyline. A recent renovation brought in some modern-day luxuries as well.
See the interior
Fleet Week Sails into NYC; Art Gallery Pops Up in An Abandoned Brooklyn Subway Station
May 25, 2016

Fleet Week Sails into NYC; Art Gallery Pops Up in An Abandoned Brooklyn Subway Station

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3 World Trade Center is getting its concrete core before its steel columns and beams, a construction technique rarely used in New York. [NYT] A new analysis of ticket sales shows that New York is now a Mets town. [Gothamist] Here’s your full Fleet Week schedule! [DNAinfo] A secret art gallery popped up in the abandoned platform of Brooklyn’s Nevins Street […]

POLL: Can New York’s Middle Class Stage a Comeback?
May 25, 2016

POLL: Can New York’s Middle Class Stage a Comeback?

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The lack of affordability in New York is typically, and justly, blamed on skyrocketing rents, but when it comes to the middle class it might be more closely tied to a lack of jobs. The Wall Street Journal shares a new report from the Center for an Urban Future, which finds that "while the city added a record number of jobs since 2011, middle-wage industries paying between $40,000 and $80,000 a year added the fewest positions, and a lot of those were temp jobs." Additionally, middle-wage jobs lost the most employees. Low-wage industries (paying under $40,000) such as restaurants and home health care services disproportionately added the most jobs. However, the report also points to a few factors that may indicate a comeback for the middle class. For one, middle-wage industries accounted for three of the eight sectors with a net gain of at least 10,000 jobs since 2011. These are employment services, building equipment contractors, and colleges/universities, respectively. In total, 23 middle-wage sectors added at least 1,000 jobs during this time, not far off from the low-wage sector's 24 and high-wage's 28. But are these figures enough to give the middle class staying power?
Cast your vote here!
Governor Cuomo Finally Approves MTA’s $27B Capital Plan
May 25, 2016

Governor Cuomo Finally Approves MTA’s $27B Capital Plan

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Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio, notorious for their icy relationship, have been squabbling for well over a year about the MTA's $27 billion, five-year capital plan. Last October, they reached an agreement where the state would contribute $8.3 billion and the city $2.5 billion, neither of which would come from increasing taxes. Seven months later, the Daily News reports that Albany has finally approved the plan, which covers track and station repairs, new train cars, new high-tech buses, a MetroCard replacement, the Long Island Rail Road's East Side Access project, and, of course, the beginning of the Second Avenue Subway's phase two into East Harlem.
More details ahead
Great Game Changers: One Worldwide Plaza, A Classy Attraction for Sleazy 1980s Midtown

Image of WWP via Macklowe Properties

May 24, 2016

Great Game Changers: One Worldwide Plaza, A Classy Attraction for Sleazy 1980s Midtown

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What does it take to jump-start an unglamorous neighborhood? A huge development? A mixed-use project? New transit facilities? When this full-block, mixed-use development project was conceived in the mid-1980s the area in and around Times Square was one of the city’s worst. It was riddled with crime and pornography and was run-down, especially along Eighth Avenue. The proposition to add a building that was the scale of the full-block One Worldwide Plaza development, therefore, was not only surprising, but shocking and downright unthinkable. The legendary Madison Square Garden designed by Thomas W. Lamb had occupied its site from 1925 to 1966, but its second incarnation here was rather ramshackle especially in comparison to its previous glorious building on Madison Avenue at 26th Street. When it moved south next to the “new” Penn Station 16 blocks to the south, this site became the city’s largest parking lot and it took about a decade and a half for it to find a new life. The site was finally developed and completed in 1989 by a syndicate headed by William Zeckendorf Jr. that included Arthur Cohen and Worldwide Realty partners Frank Stanton and Victor Elmaleh.
more on the rise of worldwide plaza and how it revived midtown manhattan
Parker Posey Models in Listing Photos for Her $1.45M Greenwich Village Co-op
May 24, 2016

Parker Posey Models in Listing Photos for Her $1.45M Greenwich Village Co-op

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After the recent debacle when Ta-Nehisi Coates' purchase of a Prospect-Lefferts Garden townhouse went public, and he subsequently penned an essay on why he wouldn't be moving in after all, there's been a debate surrounding how much privacy celeb real estate buyers are entitled to. But quirky Indie actress Parker Posey is clearly not concerned, considering she's posing in the listing photos for her Greenwich Village co-op. The $1.45 million listing at 30 Fifth Avenue hasn't gone public yet, but Curbed has obtained the photos, which show the now-blonde Posey lounging in her bedroom, reading Mary Louise Parker's "Dear Mr. You" along with her Bichon Frise Gracie.
More glamour shots ahead
15 Central Park West Takes Back the Title of Most Expensive Manhattan Condo
May 24, 2016

15 Central Park West Takes Back the Title of Most Expensive Manhattan Condo

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Six months ago when CityRealty released its last CR100 report -- an index comprised of the top 100 condominium buildings in Manhattan -- One57 surpassed long-time frontrunner 15 Central Park West as the most expensive condo, coming in at $6,010 per square foot, compared to 15 CPW's $5,726. But this time around, 15 CPW has retaken the crown with an average sales price of $6,039 per square foot over the last 12 months. Coming in second is the Residences at the Mandarin Oriental at $5,956, and One57 falls to third at $5,175, a 13 percent drop over the last year. CityRealty notes, however, that the Robert A.M. Stern-designed condo may have difficulty maintaining its top spot, as big-time new developments 432 Park Avenue, The Greenwich Lane, and 10 Madison Square West have now made their debut on the CR100.
More trends and data
Glass Walls and Skylights Let Light Flood Into This Vinegar Hill Rental Apartment
May 24, 2016

Glass Walls and Skylights Let Light Flood Into This Vinegar Hill Rental Apartment

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There's never been an apartment so ideal for summertime. This three-bedroom rental comes from 87 Hudson Avenue, a development in the quaint Brooklyn neighborhood of Vinegar Hill, situated just north of DUMBO. Over an upper and lower floor there are multiple skylights, two outdoors spaces, even interior glass walls to let the light flood through. You'll need sunglasses before renting this pad, which is now on the market asking $6,000 a month.
Go through the space
Landmarks Rejects Skinny Fort Greene House Because It ‘Looks Like Sing Sing Prison’
May 24, 2016

Landmarks Rejects Skinny Fort Greene House Because It ‘Looks Like Sing Sing Prison’

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When talking townhouses, width matters. Aside from location and condition, width is usually the salient factor determining a home's desirability and pricing. While a 20-foot wide house is the coveted standard, the adored building type comes in an assortment of sizes, ranging from this narrow 12-foot wide townhouse in Park Slope upwards to the enviable 30-foot wide homes dotting Brooklyn Heights. On the tighter end of the spectrum, along a tree- and brownstone-lined block in the Fort Greene Historic District, R.A.Max Studio is seeking to secure the Landmarks Preservation Commission's approval to build a 12-foot wide, environmentally-conscious, two-family house at 39 South Elliott Place. Hemmed in on a vacant lot measuring just 1,200 square feet in area, the developer, Fort Greene Properties LLC, envisions building a four-story, 3,200-square-foot structure similar in scale to a previous house that stood at the site some sixty years ago, but with a more modern exterior. But this scheme did not go over so well at today's LPC hearing.
The full story, right this way
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Your Daily Commute Never Looked So Good As It Does in This Colorful Data Visualization
May 24, 2016

Your Daily Commute Never Looked So Good As It Does in This Colorful Data Visualization

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The daily commute to work and back might be the last thing you want to see more of, but sometimes it helps to see things in a new light: Here's your daily traffic torment, subway sardine-fest or bus-stop hustle, represented in candy-colored motion. Michigan-based data wrangler Mark Evans shows us the workday migrations of American commuters using census data so that they resemble a jubilant gathering of rainbow dots, expanding and contracting from each county with the day's open and close (h/t Citylab).
Check out your colorful commute
This Lamp Only Turns On If You Turn Your Phone Off
May 24, 2016

This Lamp Only Turns On If You Turn Your Phone Off

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If you don't posses the willpower to put your smart phone down once and for all, this lamp will give you that extra nudge -- that is, if you don't want to walk around in the dark. Tranquillo, created by industrial designer Avid Kadam, is "an interactive piece of lighting where the user’s phone acts like a switch." Basically, if you want to see, you'll need to put your phone on the dock, where it'll go into do-not-disturb mode.
READ MORE
Triplex Penthouse at the Late Zaha Hadid’s High Line Condos Lists for $50M
May 24, 2016

Triplex Penthouse at the Late Zaha Hadid’s High Line Condos Lists for $50M

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The 6,853-square-foot triplex penthouse atop the 11-story 520 West 28th Street condominium on the High Line, designed by the late Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid, has arrived on the market for the first time for the as-promised ask of $50 million. The architecturally unique 39-unit building, Hadid’s first–and, sadly, only–ground-up structure in New York City, has interiors also overseen and designed by the architect. Related Companies, the building's developer, speaks of the honor of collaborating with "one of the world’s most visionary architects, Dame Zaha Hadid, on the design for 520 West 28th. The design is being realized as she envisioned–each residence is a work of art unto itself–and the penthouse in particular is a spectacular example of this, including various unique elements such as a sculptural three-story staircase, designed by Hadid, which unites all levels of the triplex residence.”
Find out about this one-of-a-kind penthouse
Empire State Gateway Plan Stretches Twin Suspension Bridges from NJ to Queens
May 23, 2016

Empire State Gateway Plan Stretches Twin Suspension Bridges from NJ to Queens

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Just two months ago, the state allocated $70 million for early engineering work on a new Hudson River tunnel, part of the larger $20 billion Gateway project to fix the crumbling, century-old tunnels that currently carry New Jersey Transit and Amtrak trains under the Hudson River. Despite the move forward, a traffic consultant from Delaware thinks he has a better idea. NJ.com shared Scott R. Spencer's proposal for twin suspension bridges that would stretch 3.5 miles from New Jersey, across Manhattan at 38th and 39th Streets, and in to Queens. He believes the plan, aptly titled the Empire State Gateway, would be a much quicker solution to the current transportation woes, with one bridge taking about five years to complete versus 20+ years for the tunnels. Spencer's idea, however, would also cost $20 billion, and as Untapped points out, would cast quite the shadow over Midtown (not to mention the countless approvals and variances it would require).
Get all the details this way
Developers Used a Four-Foot-Wide Lot to Build a Taller Upper East Side Tower
May 23, 2016

Developers Used a Four-Foot-Wide Lot to Build a Taller Upper East Side Tower

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The go-to move for building taller than zoning allows is snatching up some air rights, but at 180 East 88th Street in Yorkville, developer DDG Partners found an obscure loophole to increase their building's height. Back in 2014, as the Times explains, DDG received approvals to slice off a four-foot-wide lot from the 30-foot-deep site. This became an official taxable lot, but because it provided a buffer between the building and the street, it allowed the building to avoid typical zoning for structures touching the street, rising to its 521-foot height (60 feet taller than would have been permitted otherwise) and having its entrance on Third Avenue. Now that the motive has become clear, local residents and elected officials are not happy, and adding fuel to the fire is the fact that DDG contributed at least $19,900 to Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The full story ahead
Alexander Wang Lists Luxuriously Moody Tribeca Loft for $3.75M
May 23, 2016

Alexander Wang Lists Luxuriously Moody Tribeca Loft for $3.75M

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After six years in residence, the in-demand downtown designer is selling the loft he purchased from fellow fashionista, former New York Times Style writer Holly Brubach (h/t Curbed). With the help of maverick decorator Ryan Korban, Wang renovated the classic warehouse-turned-co-op at 39 Worth Street with opulent-chic accents like black fur, zebra rugs and mirrored wall panels, and opened up walled spaces to return the loft its open-space roots. The result, as far as lofts go, is a pretty well laid-out example, with creature comforts a busy design professional needs–plus luxurious finishes. Yet it doesn’t lose any of the open and adventurous character that defines a historic Tribeca loft space. The Parsons-grad-made-good purchased the unit for $2 million in 2010 and hopes to sell it for a $3.75 million.
See more of the loft

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