From the NY TIMES:
As bikes abound and roads grow narrower, New York can seem to be turning its back on cars. The rapid disappearance of gas stations may not be helping things either.
Parking garages are befalling similar fates, which may not be that surprising: Often humdrum, and built for function, they rarely seem to be the focus of preservation efforts, and developers have long eyed their sites for their potential.
But in Greenwich Village, two garages are being incorporated into condo developments, at 12 East 13th Street, with eight units, and 17 East 12th Street, with nine.
On East 13th, near Fifth Avenue, DHA Capital and Continental Properties are at work on a garage once used mainly by Hertz, the rental car company, which also had a ground-floor office. With eight floors, the garage was built in 1930, before modern zoning laws were imposed on the low-slung area, limiting height.
Indeed, had the developers torn down the garage and built new, it is doubtful that a new structure could have been as bulky as what is there now, which meant converting was a better option, said Dan Hollander, DHA’s managing principal.
Still, the developers could shift some things around; by shaving off the back of the building and adding that mass to the top, they were able to boost the height to 12 stories.
Other alternations are needed. The windows were not big enough for residential use, so they are being enlarged, as the building also gains a new facade, Mr. Hollander said. But starting with a foundation and walls cut some construction costs on the $75 million project, he added; similarly, the condo will take less time to complete, about 16 months, versus 24 months for ground-up construction.
DHA is also keeping a parking area, but for 11 cars, not 100 as before, and just on the second floor. Residents will drive into the original bay, then a robotic lift will pick up the vehicle and stow it.
Starting at $7.5 million for a three-bedroom, the units went on sale in April, although no contracts had been signed by late June.
An almost identical game plan is being followed on East 12th Street, where Rigby Asset Management is removing walls and floors from the back of the eight-story building to allow it to grow to 11 stories, giving apartments more light and air. There, too, a floor will be kept for parking, on the ground floor, for nine cars; and the same automated apparatus as at East 13th Street will serve as attendant. The nine condos, most of which have four bedrooms, are much pricier, however, starting at $14 million. Sales began at the end of June.
“You get column-free space and tall ceilings,” said Peter Armstrong, Rigby’s managing partner, who previously converted a garage at 73 Wooster Street into a six-unit condo. “You feel like an artist with a blank canvas.”
We now know that the 13th St. parking garage will be converted into eight multimillion-condos, the priciest of which will be $20 million.
Another dry cleaning option has arrived. Young Cleaners is located on University Place between 12th and 13th St.
Simply Grid announced today that it has launched a food cart electrification pilot in New York City’s Union Square. This is the first example of a mobile food vendor on New York City’s public streets using grid electricity rather than a noisy, polluting generator. Citywide, more than 3,000 mobile food carts create the equivalent pollution emissions of approximately 10,000 cars. This pilot, launched in conjunction with the New York City Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, Con Edison, the NYC Department of Transportation, and Closed Loop Advisors, will last for up to a year and abate up to 9 metric tons of CO2.
Simply Grid’s technology allows lot owners and municipalities to provide grid electricity to mobile food vendors which makes them cleaner, quieter, and more profitable. Electricity is made available to these vendors via outlets in industry standard electricity pedestals which have been customized with proprietary metering controllers. The controllers connect wirelessly to Simply Grid’s cloud-based platform which manages customer accounts, metering, and billing. The system allows vendors to initiate service with their mobile phones and connect to the electric grid with cables they already use with their generators. Grid electricity is a significantly cheaper energy source for food vendors, and it also eliminates the pollution and noise associated with running a generator.
Here’s you reminder that the shareholders’ annual meeting takes place on Monday June 6 at 7:00 PM at the International Seafarer’s House at 123 East 15th St. Second Floor.
This hand-drawn map from 1926 identifies our building as a 5 and 10-cent store, which, of course, as Woolworths, it was, all the way until 2003.
