Something has gone wrong in Union Square Park this summer. Complaints about illegal behavior, drug use, and vagrancy have led to a 320% increase in police citations. Now the police are patrolling much mor aggressively, as are hired security teams from the Union Square BID.
Next week (January 14 to January 18), material and equipment deliveries and installation work will continue on all floors inside the building as well as roof work. Additionally we will begin work on the new sidewalks around the building.
The following week (January 21 to January 25), Material and equipment deliveries and installation work will continue on all floors and roofs as well as sidewalk work. We will begin dismantling the sidewalk shed on 14th street at the end of the month.
This weekend the site will be open on Saturday, January 12th for interior and superstructure related activities between the work hours of 7AM and 5PM as permitted by the City.
We were going to announce the opening of the Union Square Holiday Market today, but it’s been open for over a week already. Christmas comes earlier every year. Our advice: go midday. At night it’s an agita-inducing mosh pit.
What the cluck? Roast Kitchen is gone.
Curbed reports: The curvy low-rise building at 61 Fifth Avenue, devastated by fire in 2006, has been marked for death ever since the structure—a former Scrafft’s luncheonette (see photo at top left circa 1940)—was sold to a developer in early 2008. An architect was quickly enlisted to draw up plans for a 10-story building with apartments and ground-floor retail, and it was made clear that the current 61 Fifth Avenue was too far gone to be preserved in any manner. Has the economy put a pause on those plans? Perhaps, but broker-blogger Andrew Fine reports that demolition permit was issued for the property in December, so the wrecking ball could come calling any day now.
What: Hotel No Tell:
A Book Talk by Daphne Uviller
When: Monday, June 20
6:30 – 8:00 P.M.
Where: Jefferson Market Library 425 6th Avenue (btwn West 9th/10th Streets)
Cost: free; reservations required
RSVP: rsvp@gvshp.org or 212-475-9585 ext. 35
Zephyr Zuckerman, the lovable, hapless heroine of Daphne Uviller’s Super in the City, is back. In Hotel No Tell, she’s armed and undercover as a concierge at a Greenwich Village hotel, tracking down a missing hundred grand. Please join third-generation Villager Daphne Uviller as she reads from Hotel No Tell which will be available for purchase and signing. (More information)
Curious to see what our block looked like 400 years ago. Check in at the Mannahatta Project, search for our address, and you’ll discover that as you might guess, it was covered with trees. There was also a lovely little river running north to south between 5th and 6th Ave.