WSJ: T Minus Four Months Until Stuyvesant Town DefaultsSources tell the paper that, at maximum, the investment group headed by Tishman Speyer and BlackRock has until February before they run out of cash to service their debt on the massive property.
Is Schnabel’s Palazzo Chupi in Crisis? Schay It Isn’t Scho!Is Julian Schnabel’s big, pink Palazzo Chupi in the West Village so sleepy that the doormen are giving tours to any old passerby? That and more blasphemous rumors from Sunnyside Gardens, Dumbo, and Park Slope in today’s boroughs report.
ByTim Murphy
neighborhood watch
Ikea Buses for All — Even Recovering Heroin Addicts!Stuy Town laundry thieves are being surveilled, Carroll Gardens raccoon cheerleaders speak out, Ikea bus riders forego affordable design for methadone, and much more, in our ‘Ruby Tuesday’ boroughs roundup.
neighborhood watch
Someone Is Spending a Lot of Time Thinking About Stuyvesant TownIt’s Freaky Friday! What better day for a crazy Caribbean lady in Forest Hills, a goat-slaughtering market in St. Albans, and a $200,000 game-show win for a guy from Westerleigh? (That’s on Staten Island, people.)
neighborhood watch
The Maple-Syrup Smell Returns!Crown Heights unites against a homeless center, Snug Harbor gets ready to rock, and more in our week’s-end boroughs report.
Stuy Town Residents Finally Get to Have Puppies!Cuddly, scrumptious puppies! The people who live there must be so happy! Or not: “We will now have sidewalks like the rest of the city with puddles of urine and smears of dog poop,” grumbles one. All this and more in our daily roundup of neighborhood news.
neighborhood watch
Cobble Hill Is All Afflutter Over Alex McCordChelsea: Jack White stopped by the Chelsea Hotel the other day*, in full fur-coat regalia, to soak up some of Bob Dylan’s residual energy from the place in order to prepare for his upcoming album with the rock hero. [Living With Legends]
Cobble Hill: This neighborhood blog is all excited that Alex McCord is one of the crackpot stars of The Real Housewives of New York City. They’ve started an open-comments thread. But no one has an opinion yet. Chime in! [Cobble Hill Blog]
Gowanus: A new south Brooklyn neighborhood coalition, which includes residents of Red Hook, Gowanus, and Carroll Gardens, is preparing to fight for your right to gentrify! Or, you know, stop gentrification. As the case may be. [Gowanus Lounge]
21 questions
Charles Gasparino Is a Good TipperName: Charles Gasparino
Job: CNBC’s hunky on-air editor. Also, author of the recent bestseller, King of the Club: Richard Grasso and the Survival of the New York Stock Exchange.
Age: 40s. (How’s that for a hedge?)
Neighborhood: Stuyvesant Town
Who’s your favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional?
My dad. The last man I knew to have such a distinct, New York accent that he used to pronounce the words toilet “terlet” and oil “earl”
What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in New York?
Spaghetti with cherry tomatoes at San Pietro.
In one sentence, what do you actually do all day in your job?
Scream at sources to get stories, scream at producers to put them on CNBC, and then scream at editors to get more time for stories that I’m writing.
neighborhood watch
Okay, Now Who Leaves a Kitten on a Rooftop?Brooklyn Heights: Rumors are burbling that the hood’s symphonically hyped “Subway Cyrano” saga — where a guy reconnected with his subway crush after searching for her via an online vid — is a Lonelygirl-type hoax. Wouldn’t that be sad? [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
East Village: Sure, two low-paid young’uns can share a $3,000 Stuy Town one-bedroom. If they bring along their $1,000 pressurized wall. [Hunt Grunt]
Flatbush: Several cats have been abandoned on a rooftop! And they’re scared and hungry! [Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn]
neighborhood watch
Council Members Finally Wonder, Hey, What’s Up With the F Train?Coney Island: City Councilmen Simcha Felder of Borough Park and Dominic Recchia of Coney Island get behind an F Express plan, demanding the MTA to explain its foot-dragging. [Second Avenue Sagas]
Dumbo: There are only three days left to appreciate the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition’s outdoor art display at Empire-Fulton Ferry and Brooklyn Bridge Parks. It’s actually quite nice – and you haven’t done much appreciating lately. [DumboNYC]
Staten Island: Prosecutors have charged a handyman in a string of break-ins on the North Shore, but stop short of saying they’ve ended the notorious North Shore Burglar’s reign of terror. Man, Staten Island rules. [Staten Island Advance]
Stuyvesant Town: Stuy Town’s new ad campaign reads, “Live closer to Greenwich Village than Greenwich, CT.” Mm. We didn’t know Connecticut was so, um, dormy. [Stuyvesant Town]
West Bronx: Max Roach, the legendary jazz drummer, will be buried on Friday at Woodlawn Cemetery, near the tombs of Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. [West Bronx News]
West Village: The Jefferson Market Library on Sixth Avenue is finally going to get its makeover. Knowing you, you’re just going to start complaining about the scaffolding. [Curbed]
neighborhood watch
Enjoy Increased Public Space, for a Limited TimeBay Ridge: A construction dispute between two neighbors has escalated into an outer-borough version of the Hatfields and McCoys. [Brooklyn Eagle via McBrooklyn]
Carroll Gardens: Get ready for an eight-story building on Smith Street and 2nd Place. [Curbed]
Dumbo: The gritty Pearl Street Triangle will become a charming, Pratt Institute–conceived public plaza … for the summer at least. [Fort Greene/Clinton Hill Courier via Streetsblog]
Greenpoint: It takes more than generic Pine-Sol to make this place smell good. [Newyorkshitty]
Long Island City: A branch of Dumbo-based Recycle a Bicycle has come to 5th Street, and locals approve. [LICNYC]
Park Slope: Movie-shooting season makes parking even scarcer. [Gowanus Lounge]
Stuyvesant Town: The true mark of a city cyclist is getting “doored” for the first time. [Tommy Lane’s Web Log]
intel
Hands Across the East VillageProving that everything eighties is hot again, an estimated 7,000 New York City tenants and tenant activists formed a human chain around the massive, recently sold, increasingly rent-destabilized Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village apartment complex last night — it’s Hands Across the East Village! — to protest rising rents and demand state laws to protect affordable housing. But did they reallyreally ring that big old thing, which stretches from 14th to 23rd Streets and First Avenue to Avenue C?
the morning line
2,750
• The city’s medical examiner has, for the first time, directly tied a death to 9/11 dust, thus making Felicia Dunn-Jones the 2,750th victim of the attack. The decision’s potential impact is, obviously, enormous. [NYDN]
• Yesterday’s human chain around Stuy Town, apart from serving up a mini-flashback to Hands Across America, had a specific purpose: to repeal the law that allows landlords to deregulate apartments once the rent hits $2,000. [Metro NY]
• The city is closing its high schools for pregnant girls, sixties inventions now beset with “abysmal test scores [and] poor attendance” (in one hair-raising example, a quilting class was being passed off as geometry). [NYT]
• After facing suits for a few knee-jerk post-9/11 arrests, the city reached a deal with the New York Civil Liberties Union to stop pestering photographers and filmmakers operating handheld cameras on the street. No permit is now needed. [amNY]
• And an infamous distributor of pirated Web content has been sentenced to five years for a real-world crime of, well, blowing up a portable toilet. It’s like when they got Al Capone on tax charges, except not. [NYP]
neighborhood watch
Stuyvesant Town Gets UppityAstoria: After promising for eighteen months, Fresh Start is opening its back patio. [Joey in Astoria]
Clinton Hill: This weekend’s annual house tour was so popular that someone even stole tickets (for scalping?). [Brownstoner]
Greenwich Village: Ricky “Livin’ la Vida Loca” Martin just paid $7 mil for a three-bedroom at Ian Schrager’s new 40 Bond. [NYP]
Hell’s Kitchen: Vote now for your preferred redesign of traffic patterns on Ninth Avenue. [Streetsblog]
Park Slope: Look for eighteen new bike racks around the hood, including, of course, in front of Ozzie’s. [Gowanus Lounge]
Red Hook: Ikea denies that the extra square footage it acquired on the waterfront will become a Bed Bath & Beyond. [The Brooklyn Paper]
Stuyvesant Town: What does the complex’s new logo say about its occupants? And is that a putting green near the fountain? [Curbed]
Williamsburg: More crude bubbles up on the Roebling Oil Fields. [Gowanus Lounge]
neighborhood watch
Will Stuy Town Be Reborn As Luxury Condos?Carroll Gardens: Retired parents get bored with the suburbs and move here. There goes the neighborhood. [The Brooklyn Paper]
Downtown Brooklyn: Tillary Street might have a bike lane, but you can barely see it under all the cars. [McBrooklyn via Brooklyn Heights Blog]
Greenpoint: Horrifying new trend: tossing your smoke detector out back when it starts to beep, instead of just changing the batteries. [Newyorkshitty]
Harlem: An agent for a newish co-op was canned after his employers found out he was also using the place as HQ for a stripper and escort service. [Uptown Flavor]
Park Slope: Get ready for another tower on the corner of Carroll Street and Fourth Avenue. [Gowanus Lounge]
Stuyvesant Town: There’s a rumor going around that Tishman Speyer wants to tear down this middle-class enclave within five years and replace it with 150 luxury condos. [Curbed]
intel
Insult to Injury: Stuy Town to Lose Last Local Grocery Store?
Greek-born supermarket mogul and top Hillary fund-raiser John Catsimatidis is making noises about an ’09 mayoral run — but it’s a weird way to start a nascent campaign by depriving the middle-income seniors of northeast Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village with their last nearby affordable grocery.
intel
Three More Subsidized Complexes to Go Private?Starrett City may not be going the way of Stuy Town quite yet, but it looks like three other complexes are. Laurence Gluck, a Real Estate Board of New York muckety-muck who owns at least six subsidized-housing complexes throughout the city, is angling to control three more. Sources in and out of government say the developer has his eye on the General Sedgwick Homes in the Bronx, Castleton Park in Staten Island, and Meadow Manor in Queens. Amy Chan, of tenants-rights activist group Tenants and Neighbors, says residents of all three complexes have received notice that their owner intends to remove them from the Mitchell-Lama subsidy program, and sources see Gluck’s fingerprints on all three: He’s actively pursuing projects around the Bronx, his company manages Castleton Park, and Meadow Manor is the subject of litigation involving him.
in other news
New Stuy Town Owner Socks It to … the Rich
Last October, when the realty giant Tishman Speyer took Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village off MetLife’s hands for $5.4 billion, the concern was that the new owners would push for deregulation of its rent-stabilized apartments. That hasn’t happened yet, but new figures in the Times show the company taking a different tack: displacing the wealthy. Market-rate tenants, Stuy Town’s minority, are fleeing brutal rent increases. One two-bedroom went from $2,660 to $3,350 overnight; another two-bedroom jumped from $3,750 to $4,450, a raise of 18.7 percent. In yet another case, Times cites a 33 percent jack-up. In addition, Tishman is aggressively going after the stabilized tenants who own vacation properties elsewhere and thus face “nonprimary residence” suspicions. The company says it’s merely bringing rates up to date with the market realities, and that “roughly 80 percent” of the tenants are renewing their leases. Of course, that means 20 percent — that’s some 2,246 apartments — didn’t.
After Sale, Rent Increases Give Some Sticker Shock [NYT]
in other news
MTA Won’t Raise Fares, Thanks, Somehow, to Stuy TownThe benevolent overlords of MTA are now promising no fare hikes for 2007, honestly. For real. Not for subways, not for LIRR, not for Metro-North or bridge-and-tunnel tolls — not even for lightning-fast, camera-equipped Space Age ultrabuses. The news comes as a backtracking, after Peter Kalikow & Co. had already put a $240 million hike on the books, not to mention scared the bejesus out of everyone by floating a bizarre service-cut proposal. Now Kalikow says enough money has appeared to make that hike unnecessary, which raises the question: Where did the money come from all of the sudden, and who’s the secret Santa?
It comes from, says Kalikow, the city’s booming economy — and particularly its real-estate market. “The agency gets revenues from real estate transactions,” the News says, adding later that “it will get some assistance from the megasale of Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town.” All of which is well and good, if it keeps our subway fares down. But also: Huh? Is there a MTA tax on real-estate transfers? Is Tishman Speyer throwing a few MetroCards at Stuy Town residents to keep them happy? We don’t quite get this bit and would appreciate anyone who could explain.
On the other hand, it’s not like it so much matters. The MTA is predicting “huge deficits” for 2008.
MTA Plays Fare and Holds It for ‘07 [NYDN]
