It looks like a crepe joint called Vive Le Crepe will open on University near 13th in a former day spa. It joins an upcoming falafel place and the glam Italian place to come on the corner. That’s three chains filling spaces formerly operated by three local businesses. Times change.
One of new stores moving into the old Spice space at University and 10th will be Recess, which promises coffee, chocolate, frozen yougurt, and a new cafe paradigm. Should be interesting.
From the NY Times:
Barry Benepe, an urban planner who in 1976 conceived of inviting farmers to truck their ripe tomatoes, peppery arugula and fresh corn to forlorn patches of New York City, delivering bustling markets and excitement to the city along with flavorful and healthy food, died on Wednesday at his home in Saugerties, N.Y., in the Hudson Valley. He was 96.
New York’s popular Greenmarkets, the largest farmers’ market network in the country, helped start a national farm-to-table culinary movement. They are credited with saving thousands of acres of farmland in the region from development and reviving urban neighborhoods. Renowned chefs who discovered the bounties of fresh strawberries and zucchini blossoms were soon buying much of their seasonal produce from Greenmarket stalls.
Mr. Benepe (pronounced BEN-eh-pea) raised grant money and worked the city bureaucracy to organize the first market with a colleague, Robert A. Lewis, whose role was to recruit wary farmers. During a decade of high crime and urban decay in New York, farmers feared that whatever money they made would be boosted before they escaped the city.
Instead, the first Greenmarket — which kicked off in Manhattan in the summer of 1976 at East 59th Street and Second Avenue with a handful of upstate growers offering an open-air cornucopia — was an immediate success.
“It could not have been a better location,” between two popular department stores, Mr. Benepe recalled in a 2022 interview with On Hand, a foodie newsletter. “We were halfway between Bloomingdale’s and Alexander’s. We were in the passage between the two, so you had to stop.”
By contrast, the Union Square market — today the rock star of Greenmarkets — did not have a promising start. It opened later that year, but for weeks nobody came to visit the farmers who had set up in a park strewn with litter and known for drug sales. Mr. Benepe personally watered crab apple trees on the site.
The market went on to anchor a neighborhood rebirth that included Danny Meyer’s Union Square Café and a multiyear improvement plan by the Parks Department.
“We both loved the idea of the city benefiting from the revival of a European kind of lifestyle,” Mr. Lewis, whom Mr. Benepe hired in 1975 for his one-man planning firm, said in an interview. “He’d spent so much time in France and England. The daily shopping at the market. The fresh bread — this is Barry, a romantic.”
Next week (October 8 to October 12), 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 crane that is on site will remain for the duration of curtain wall installation and will not affect pedestrian or automotive traffic.
The following week (October 15 to October 19) Material and equipment deliveries and installation work will continue on all floors. Curtain wall installation will continue on all upper floors. Curtain wall installation on the lower floors will proceed along 5th ave inside the construction site. The site will be open on Monday the 8th.
This weekend the site will be open on Saturday, October 6th for superstructure related activities and curtain wall installation between the work hours of 7AM and 5PM as permitted by the City. Con Ed will be working in the street.
Once again, Jeremiah of Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York eulogizes another block lost to development, in this case the nearby block of 3rd Ave. between 13th and 14th Streets.
Bookmark THIS LINK if you want to keep track of what the New School is saying about construction of its new building.
