Next week (September 16 to September 20), material and equipment deliveries and installation work will continue on the academic floors inside the building.
The following week (September 23 to September 27), material and equipment deliveries and installation work will continue on academic floors. This weekend the site will be open on Saturday, September 14th for interior activities between the work hours of 7AM and 5PM as permitted by the City.
From the NY Times:
Barry Benepe, an urban planner who in 1976 conceived of inviting farmers to truck their ripe tomatoes, peppery arugula and fresh corn to forlorn patches of New York City, delivering bustling markets and excitement to the city along with flavorful and healthy food, died on Wednesday at his home in Saugerties, N.Y., in the Hudson Valley. He was 96.
New York’s popular Greenmarkets, the largest farmers’ market network in the country, helped start a national farm-to-table culinary movement. They are credited with saving thousands of acres of farmland in the region from development and reviving urban neighborhoods. Renowned chefs who discovered the bounties of fresh strawberries and zucchini blossoms were soon buying much of their seasonal produce from Greenmarket stalls.
Mr. Benepe (pronounced BEN-eh-pea) raised grant money and worked the city bureaucracy to organize the first market with a colleague, Robert A. Lewis, whose role was to recruit wary farmers. During a decade of high crime and urban decay in New York, farmers feared that whatever money they made would be boosted before they escaped the city.
Instead, the first Greenmarket — which kicked off in Manhattan in the summer of 1976 at East 59th Street and Second Avenue with a handful of upstate growers offering an open-air cornucopia — was an immediate success.
“It could not have been a better location,” between two popular department stores, Mr. Benepe recalled in a 2022 interview with On Hand, a foodie newsletter. “We were halfway between Bloomingdale’s and Alexander’s. We were in the passage between the two, so you had to stop.”
By contrast, the Union Square market — today the rock star of Greenmarkets — did not have a promising start. It opened later that year, but for weeks nobody came to visit the farmers who had set up in a park strewn with litter and known for drug sales. Mr. Benepe personally watered crab apple trees on the site.
The market went on to anchor a neighborhood rebirth that included Danny Meyer’s Union Square Café and a multiyear improvement plan by the Parks Department.
“We both loved the idea of the city benefiting from the revival of a European kind of lifestyle,” Mr. Lewis, whom Mr. Benepe hired in 1975 for his one-man planning firm, said in an interview. “He’d spent so much time in France and England. The daily shopping at the market. The fresh bread — this is Barry, a romantic.”
Karaoke Boho, on 13th past University, is hosting an open house from 1 to 7 on Saturday June 4. Free food provided. Stop by to see how they’ve transformed the former Crunch gym into a karaoke palace.
Sounds like the long-vacant restaurant space on the west side of University between 11th and 12th (next to Grey Dog) will soon become a 66-seat Thai restaurant.
“Next week (August 1 to August 5), Contractors will continue to excavate earth and rock, and load out material. Installation of bracing rakers, line drilling, lagging and sheeting around the perimeter will progress as well. Concrete foundation walls will continue along the perimeter of the site. Final adjustments to the access ramp within the site are ongoing. As early as Thursday, July 28th, the construction fence along the North end Fifth Avenue will be relocated to the curb line with pedestrians diverted to a walkway in the street as approved by the Department of Transportation. The following week (August 8 to August 12 ), we will continue with concrete foundation walls, line drilling, rock excavation, and loading out, as well as lagging and sheeting. DEP will continue to work on the water main along 13th Street. The site will be open on Saturday, July 30th. Work hours are between 9AM and 5PM as permitted by the City. To control noise levels, work activities will be limited to the placement of formwork and rebar for concrete placement, wood lagging, and installation of walers and braces. There will be no rock excavation, rock chopping, or hauling on Saturday.”
The New York Times has the details on copper thieves who are systematically stripping the facade of the old Zen Palate on Union Sq. West, which has been vacant for over a year. Is this the beginning of the end?
Looking east from across 5th Avenue down 13th St. All those lovely buildings are now the gaping pit of the New School construction site.