14th St. in 1939, Part I

Karaoke Boho, on 13th past University, is hosting an open house from 1 to 7 on Saturday June 4. Free food provided. Stop by to see how they’ve transformed the former Crunch gym into a karaoke palace.

Comfort food joint Chat ‘n Chew shut its doors this week after 22 years in the neighborhood, but the owner plans to reopen it as an Italian restaurant.

The diner-style eatery at 10 E. 16th St. near Fifth Avenue will relaunch in two weeks as Little Sal’s, said Ethan Silverman, son of owner Andrew Silverman.

“[Chat ‘n Chew] lost some of it’s energy, and now we’re getting it back,” Ethan Silverman said. “It’s going to be a Chat ‘n Chew on steroids. It’ll have traditional Italian food like chicken parm, eggplant parm and pastas.”

Silverman compared the concept of Little Sal’s to New York City restaurants like Sauce and Parm, where it’s “casual and family oriented — selling wine by the glass and not the bottle,” he said.

Andrew Silverman also co-owns Flatiron’s City Crab and Barbounia restaurants.

Little Sal’s will open as a pop-up in two weeks for a test run, and may remain open permanently depending on how well it does, Silverman said.

As for Chat ‘n Chew’s abrupt closure, Silverman said the team had known that they would be closing for a while, but hadn’t made it public.

“If people took a look at the place recently, they’d see that the staff was slowly kind of diminishing,” Silverman said.

“We’ve been in Union Square for a while, and we’re going to come back with energy,” he continued. “But [the concept] will be [in] keeping with the people who work and live in the neighborhood.”

Got $15 million? That’s what it will cost you to buy the burned out deli on the corner of 13th and 5th, which has stood vacant for the past two years. At that price, and given the zoning regulations, the most likely outcome would be a 10-story luxury condo building. But now doesn’t seem to be a good time for new condo development, so there are no takers. Even the New School, which as we all know is interested in increasing its presence in the area, has said that it is uninterested in the lot. Check out the fascinating history of the building.

Warby Parker’s 200th real-world store is located nearby at 73 5th Avenue.

Next week (January 21 to January 25), 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 site will be closed for the holiday on Monday, the 21st.

The following week (January 28 to February 1), Material and equipment deliveries and installation work will continue on all floors and roofs as well as sidewalk work.

This weekend the site will be open on Saturday, January 19th for interior and superstructure related activities between the work hours of 7AM and 5PM as permitted by the City.

The 14th st. YMCA has been spruced up.