Brief Real Estate Price History
Just a quick historical look at prices for one-bedroom apartments in Greenwich Village.
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BlueWater Grill and Republic Destined to Close
ByDonBecause the rent is to damned high….here are the details, courtesy of Eater.com:
After over 20 years in Union Square, noodle shop Republic and seafood restaurant Blue Water Grill will both close by the end of the year. The culprit is outrageously high rent, with Blue Water Grill facing $2 million-plus annually, Bloomberg reports.
It’s part of a larger issue that Bloomberg breaks down in greater detail: Restaurants, like Union Square Cafe, which faced this same issue in 2014, open in less desirable neighborhoods with affordable 10- to 25-year leases. Then, in that time period, those restaurants contribute to the neighborhood increasing in value, which in turn causes landlords to raise rents to unsustainable highs once a lease is up.
Specifically, at Republic, the 3,800-square-foot restaurant went for $220,000 a year in 1995. Now, owner Jonathan Morr will vacate the space three-and-a-half years early so he can split the difference between what [the landlord] gets from us and what he’ll get from the next tenant, and call it a day, Morr tells Bloomberg. Marty Feinberg, of Winner Communications, which owns Republic’s building, says that taxes on it have gone up from $90,000 to $476,000 since the mid-’90s. (It’s not clear in the wording whether the landlord pays the taxes or it’s the responsibility of Republic as part of the lease agreement.)
Even restaurants with a lot of firepower behind them feel the squeeze. Tilman Fertitta, the tycoon behind Landry’s restaurant group, now owns Blue Water Grill, but still the rent increase to over $2 million a year is an amount at which can’t be successful,according to a Landry’s spokesperson. (This is also the group that just closed Isabella’s after 30 years on the Upper West Side.) The restaurant is currently searching for a new space. Uber-successful restaurateur Danny Meyer’s flagship Union Square Café” named after the very area it can no longer afford” vacated in 2015 after its rent increased fivefold over a 30-year period.
“That area is going to have to become a food desert” says realtor Leslie Siben of LB Realty Services LLC, because] no normal restaurateur with any experience would touch that as it is now.
This doom and gloom is met with a depressing solution: more food halls. Optimal Spaces broker Stephen Sunderland tells Bloomberg that it’s an appealing scenario for restaurants for its limited risk and lower costs to open” or close if needed. On the landlord and developer side, Smorgasburg co-founder Jonathan Butler recently commented on an unrelated panel that every developer wants a food hall at the bottom of their building or to anchor their big project.
There is no set date yet for the closures of Republic and Blue Water Grill. Stay tuned for more.
Park Arrests Way Up
ByDonSomething has gone wrong in Union Square Park this summer. Complaints about illegal behavior, drug use, and vagrancy have led to a 320% increase in police citations. Now the police are patrolling much mor aggressively, as are hired security teams from the Union Square BID.
$20 Million Across the Street
ByDon
We now know that the 13th St. parking garage will be converted into eight multimillion-condos, the priciest of which will be $20 million.Mayor Declares 14th St. Busway to Be Permanent
ByDonFrom The Village Sun:
On Monday, coinciding with phase one of the city’s reopening, Mayor de Blasio, in a bold show of support for mass transit, declared that the new 14th St. busway is now permanent.
“The 14th St. busway, this has been a success by every measure,” de Blasio said. “I said, we’re going to do it, we’re going to see if it works, we’re going to see, do people ride the bus more? Does the bus go faster? Does it have any negative impact on the surrounding streets? And the jury is back. The answer is, it is a clear success. We are making the 14th St. busway permanent.”
Launched in early October, the 14th St. busway was initially pitched as an 18-month pilot project. The stated plan was that, after the year and a half, the project would be assessed and then a decision made on whether to continue it. Now, however, after only eight months — with more than two of those months falling during the low-traffic COVID-19 lockdown — the busway has been decreed a permanent fixture on 14th St.
The first-of-its-kind program bans cars from 14th St. between Third and Ninth Aves. between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. seven days a week. Only buses and trucks are allowed as through traffic during those hours. Cars and taxis can enter the crosstown boulevard, but must then take their first right-hand turn off of it.
The mayor also announced Monday that the city is now moving forward with creating five more busways around town.
“I don’t think a busway like 14th St. was successfully achieved previously in city history,” de Blasio said. “The fact that today we’re saying 14th St. is now permanent [as a busway], five more coming in; it is the beginning of something really positive, obviously, between the busways, the Select Bus Service, all of these approaches have been working. And that opens the door to a very positive future for New York City. And this is a great time to do it because we got to give people confidence to come back to mass transit.”
Streetsblog reported that the new busways will include Fifth Ave. between 57th and 34th Sts.; E. 181st St. from Amsterdam Ave. to Broadway; Main St. between Sanford St. and Northern Boulevard, in Flushing, Queens; Jamaica Ave. from Sutphin Boulevard to 168th St., in Jamaica, Queens; and Jay St. between Fulton and Tillary Sts., in Downtown Brooklyn.
Along with the new busways, dedicated bus lanes will be added on E. 14th St. between First Ave. and Avenue C, as well as three other locations, in the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island. The E. 14th St. dedicated bus lanes will be added this month, the mayor said.
Predictably, transit-advocacy groups were elated at the news that the 14th St. busway is not going anywhere.
“The 14th St. Busway has been a resounding success,” said Danny Harris, executive director of Transportation Alternatives. “We are pleased to see it made permanent, and that more busways will soon be coming online. New Yorkers deserve a bus commute without being stuck in endless car traffic. Our streets must be a tool toward the city’s recovery, and we look forward to working with the Department of Transportation to bring more bus-only corridors across the five boroughs.”
“As almost everybody knows, the busway is a historically great success,” said Danny Pearlstein, communications director for the Riders Alliance. “Riders are thrilled to see it made permanent and inspire imitations citywide.”
Instead of Thai Food, Jewelry
ByDonA jewelry store called The Missing Link will take half the space formerly occupied by Spice at University and 10th.
New Private Middle School to Open at 5th and 14th
ByDonA private middle school partially funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has released renderings of its planned interior — which is slated to open near Union Square this fall.
AltSchool, a private school that uses a technology-driven approach to design individualized lesson plans for students, has started building out its new school at 90 Fifth Ave. on the corner of 14th Street.
The school, which charges about $30,000 tuition per year, revolves around a Montessori-like curriculum and bills itself as a hybrid tech company and education startup. It’s the brainchild of a team of Silicon Valley types with a long history in companies like Google, where AltSchool CEO Max Ventilla worked for more than a decade.
The new space takes up an office-building floor previously occupied by The New School. It will be divided into two main areas — each of which have a classroom and group area space, as well as a larger communal area with a small kitchenette, a lunch area, and amphitheater-style seating.