For the Kids: A Playground

It’s almost too painful to think about. And while we’re at it, goodbye, Wet Nose Doggy Gym. Looks like the first three buildings along that side of 13th St. will come down and be replaced by…more condos.

This image looks south on 6th Avenue from 14th St. in 1909. It’s hard to imagine a time when there were so many elevated trains.

In response to community concerns about the time in the evening we end our concrete placing, DOB has granted our request to start placing our concrete at 6am, which will allow us to finish this work earlier in the evening. We have 8 more instances like this until we finish our superstructure in early June.

Therefore next week (April 16 to April 20), Superstructure work will continue at the 13th and 14th floor levels. Wednesday, April 18th, we will have an identical pour with a 6 am start time and similar end time, weather permitting. Deliveries for the internal systems of the building have been ongoing and will continue, although they should not greatly affect the flow of pedestrian and road traffic.

The following week (April 23 to April 27), we will continue superstructure concrete and slabs on the 15th and 16th floor levels. Deliveries for the internal systems of the building have been ongoing and will continue, although they should not greatly affect the flow of pedestrian and road traffic.

This weekend the site will be open on Saturday, April 14st for superstructure related activities between the work hours of 7AM and 5PM as permitted by the City. To control noise levels within the site, work activities will be limited to the placement of formwork and concrete, plumbing and electrical work, rebar for concrete placement, using the crane and equipment to support all activities. Safety horns are used, and required by law, to coordinate lifting with the crane and to alert the workers of the danger overhead. We have directed the operators to limit the use of horns to one short sounding and to use the crane later in the day so as to avoid any excess noise.

In addition to the normal work on the job site, the 14th St. Con Ed Vault utility connection street work will continue per DOT Permit granted for weekends only.

Next week (September 10 to September 14), Material and equipment deliveries and installation work will continue on all floors. Curtain wall installation on upper floors will continue. Curtain wall installation on the lower floors will proceed along 5th ave inside the construction site.

The following week (September 17 to September 21) Material and equipment deliveries and installation work will continue on all floors. Curtain wall installation will continue on all floors. Curtain wall installation on the lower floors will proceed along 5th ave inside the construction site.

This weekend the site will be open on Saturday, September 8th for superstructure related activities and curtain wall installation between the work hours of 7AM and 5PM as permitted by the City. Con Ed is on site working on the building but is not in any of the streets.

NYC’s zoning for businesses has recently changed, allowing for a wider range of retail and experiential offerings. In Union Square, this means new opportunities to lease to unique amusement and recreation facilities, live entertainment establishments and clean production and maker spaces. This bolsters the emerging trends in Union Square, where new nightlife hotspots like Midnight Blue and Upright Citizens Bridge have established
roots alongside a cluster of experiential retail arcades like Boba Box, Sweet Cats Cafe, and Partea. And with the much anticipated 2025 opening of the darts-centric bar Flight Club at 31 Union Square West, Union Square is poised to be at the center of this new wave of ground-floor leasing enabled by the modernized zoning code.

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.