Blossom du Jour Has Wilted

From the press release:

Soon New Yorkers, known for their culinary palettes, will be able to enjoy the taste of Nutella® in a variety of unique dishes tailored especially for them. Ferrero, a global confectionery company and the maker of Nutella® The Original Hazelnut Spread®, today announced it will be opening a Nutella Cafe at 13th Street and University Place, near Union Square, by the end of the year. Nutella Cafe New York will feature a Nutella-inspired cafe menu and specialty espresso beverages. The first Nutella Cafe opened on May 31, 2017 in Chicago.

“There truly is nothing like the taste of Nutella® hazelnut spread, and with the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Nutella Cafe Chicago, we know our fans feel the same way. It’s their excitement that propelled us to open another Nutella Cafe and continue to showcase the uniqueness and versatility of this beloved product,” said Rick Fossali, vice president of operations, Nutella Cafe.

“Nutella is global power brand and the popularity of the spread is built on Ferrero’s uncompromising focus on quality ingredients. As a multicultural epi-center, New York gives us the opportunity to explore and offer new ways for our local fans to enjoy Nutella, while reaching millions of tourists visiting the city,” added Fossali.

For more information and updates on the Nutella Cafe New York, please check out the Nutella USA Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages.

Some fun history about 65 5th Ave.

“The New School has been a presence at 65 Fifth Avenue, the site of the University Center, since 1967, when the university converted a Lane’s department store building for student use. But long before the address became associated with educational innovation, it was renown for innovation of another kind. In 1881, inventor Thomas Edison installed at the address (which was then occupied by a handsome brownstone) a permanent exhibition of his electrical discoveries. The biography Edison: His Life and Inventions reports that “the house was thrown open to the public until late at night, never closing before ten o’clock, so as to give everybody who wished an opportunity to see that great novelty of the time—the incandescent light—whose fame had meanwhile been spreading all over the globe.” It is a fitting legacy for the University Center, which upon opening in Fall 2013 will itself serve as a living teaching tool, with exposed energy and water management systems to provide working demonstrations of sustainable design.”

The original location of New York mini-chain Heartland Brewery is slated to close on January 1.  The Post reports that the building at 35 Union Square West has a new owner who is asking for more than the Heartland team can afford to pay.  Owner Jon Bloostein says that when he opened the pub in 1994, the rent was $150,000 a year, but now the new landlord is asking for about $2 million a year.

Shoo Loong Kan, a Chinese hot pot restaurant will soon arrive on 13th St. in the space that old timers will fondly remember as Borgo Antico. (The name means little dragon ridge.) The chain already has locations in Chicago, Houston, and Flushing.

We may or may not technically live in Greenwich Village, but here are some fun stats anyway:
Though it’s known as a hotbed of diversity, Greenwich Village is really quite homogeneous according to a new New York University-commissioned study by Appleseed, an economic analysis firm. Some highlights from The Economy of Greenwich Village: A Profile:

** The population of the Village last year was 72,025, virtually unchanged since 1990.
** Children under 18 comprise only 9.2 percent of the population, compared to almost 23 percent citywide. But between 2000 and 2009, the number of children under age 5 grew by 48 percent.
** Working age people (25-64 years) account for 69 percent of the Village population.
** Almost 80 percent of Village residents are white folks, 9.3 percent Asian, 6.2 percent Latino, 3 percent mixed race and 2.2 percent black.
** Village people have a median household income of just over $100,000 a year, more than double that of the rest of the city.
** 82.4 percent of Village residents have college degrees, beating even Cambridge (71.4 percent) and Palo Alto (78.7 percent).
** Ten percent of Village peeps work in the arts, recreation and hospitality industries compared to a whopping 18 percent in finance, insurance and real estate.
** Universities and colleges employ 10,350 people in the Village and their plans to expand are expected to stimulate growth in the local economy.