Expanded pedestrian space and more cycling lanes are central to a planned redesign of Manhattan’s Broadway between E. 17th and E. 21st streets, city officials announced on Monday.
The changes are subject to public outreach — but Department of Transportation officials said they could mimic a change to other areas of Broadway between Union Square and E. 50th Street, where crews in recent years have added more pedestrian plazas, outdoor dining space and wider crosswalks designed to keep pedestrians safe from crashes.
DOT officials also said they’re considering adding a two-way bike lane between E. 17th and E. 21st streets, which already has a one-way southbound lane for cyclists.
The city earlier this year completed an overhaul of Broadway between E. 25th and E. 32nd streets, adding more space for pedestrians, another two-way bike lane and other infrastructure designed to make motorists drive slower.
“This next phase of Broadway Vision will provide the same kind of vibrant public spaces connecting Union Square and Flatiron, just like our administration is doing with incredible success across the entire city,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement.
The latest planned improvements are just north of Union Square — and just south of where a taxi driver jumped a sidewalk last year, sending several pedestrians to the hospital.
The New York Times reports:
This season’s inclement weather affected farmers’ markets as much as their crops, and customers lost early on never really came back. Just ask Michael Hurwitz, director of greenmarkets for the Council on the Environment of New York City.
“God, this was a tough year,” Mr. Hurwitz said. Market problems snowballed from the spring, when less produce than usual was available because of rain, cool weather and late planting on vendors’ farms. “That impacted customers coming back to market,” he said. “Spring is not for making money; it’s for getting customers in. Fall is for making money — and less people all season came to the markets.”
Those all-important weekends, including the two biggest market weekends of the season in mid-October, were rainy, and that meant fewer shoppers, Mr. Hurwitz said. At the largest market, in Union Square, business was off by as much as 40 percent this season. The economic crisis compounded the low turnout, though on the bright side, he said, it generally kept vendors from raising prices.
But farmers like John Glebocki had little choice. Mr. Glebocki is an Orange County farmer who sells his produce exclusively at 22 farmers’ markets, most of them in the New York City system. He figures he lost nearly 50 percent of his 80 acres of mixed vegetables, but he has faith in his customers. “People understand it’s a low production year,” he said, “and if we have to tack on another quarter a pound.”
A major renovation is coming to the former Tammany Hall headquarters in Union Square where owners want to put a new glass dome over the landmarked building and demolish a theater to make way for retail and office space, the project’s architects said.
The historic structure at 44 Union Square East, built in 1929 to house the Democratic Party machine, will undergo a major overhaul that will restore the facade, gut the existing theater and add windows and glassier storefronts, according to BKSK Architects which is designing the project.
The most striking change will be a new 30-foot glass dome on top of the building, which will add about 27,000 square feet to the structure and will house office space, according to Harry Kendall, a partner at BKSK.
“Our effort is…to make it a more distinctive destination and presence on Union Square,” Kendall said. “We think we can make this building into something it never was.”
After hearing a presentation about the proposal this week, Community Board 5’s Landmarks Committee voted unanimously to reject it, saying the changes would be too drastic for an historic building that was just landmarked last year.
“While I like the way it looks — can you put something like this on a landmarked building?” said Edward Klimerman, a committee member. “It turns it into a different building.”
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building as a landmark in June 2013, noting its references to early American architecture, including Colonial columns out front. The building’s design drew inspiration from the original Federal Hall in Lower Manhattan, where George Washington took his first oath of office.
What might be next in the Virgin Megastore space? The New York Post has these rumors:
RELATED Cos. is negotiating with several tenants at One Union Square South for the Virgin Megastore space, sources said. The chain, which was purchased by Related and Vornado Realty Trust in 2007, is closing the store in late May or early June. All US-based Virgin Megastores are due to shut down by the summer.
Related controls the Union Square outlet, while Vornado handles the one in Times Square, which is closing in April to make way for Forever 21, the retailer that signed a megadeal for 100,000 square feet. The two real-estate giants licensed the then 11-unit Virgin chain precisely so they’d be able to control the retail in their buildings.
Sources said the asking rent in Union Square has recently dropped to $15 million per year from $25 million. According to its CoStar Group flyers, Winick Realty is seeking $700 a foot for the 26,000-foot ground floor and $150 a foot for the 31,035-foot lower level. One Union Square South, at 52 E. 14th St., includes the hulking Metronome artwork on the lower north side of the luxury apartment tower that rises from the retail base. Some of the prospective tenants include CVS and Best Buy, which has its eye on the Circuit City space now being controlled by the bankruptcy court.
Last fall, Related signed a letter of intent with Nordstrom Rack for about 40,000 feet. But Nordstrom in the end was reportedly loath to bring its off-price success story into the Big Apple before it snagged an A-plus site for the upscale department store flagship and nixed the Union Square opening. A Nordstrom spokeswoman said, “We will keep looking for a great spot to serve our customers.”
There is also talk that Forever 21 might jump from Vornado’s Whole Foods building at 40-48 E. 14th St., which also hosts Filene’s Basement, and expand into 19,200 feet at One Union Square. The Forever 21 store, which opened right after 9/11, has seven years left on its deal. But a buyout doesn’t make sense in the current economic climate.
An urban planner who has been looking around for ways to make the city more pedestrian-friendly (and to open up more space for protesting) wrote “Union Square could be greatly enhanced by following through on a 2010 plan to pedestrianize Union Square West. Also pedestrianizing University Place would be a bold step that could link Union Square and Washington Square Park, merging two vital public spaces into a permanent platform for open expression.”
That would certainly change the neighborhood.
The details are emerging about 116 University Place, the five-unit condo currently rising on the corner of University and 13th. The lower four units will range from $7.2 to $3 million (each is 3,050 square feet). The penthouse, with its expansive roof deck, will sell for a cool $10 million.
