Summer in the Square for July 18

From the Times:
The countdown has begun to the closing of the 16th Street space that this influential restaurant has occupied for 30 years. The cafe, which was the first piece of Danny Meyer’s culinary empire, has been a favorite of New York’s publishing world and jump-started the renaissance of the Union Square area. But it will not renew its lease at a higher rent, and in the spring will relocate to nearby 235 Park Avenue South, at East 19th Street.

To mark the final days at its current spot, from Dec. 1 to 12, the last day of service, the restaurant will switch to a three-course dinner menu called the 12 Nights of Union Square Cafe, highlighting some of its best-known seasonal dishes, including garganelli with white truffles, beef tartare, lamb braciole and Berkshire rack of pork. There are optional wine pairings from some of the restaurant’s favorite producers. Lunches will feature the regular à la carte menu:

Dinner reservations Dec. 1 to 12 by phone only, $85 prepaid; lunch reservations up to 28 days ahead, opentable.com;

Union Square Cafe, 21 East 16th Street, 212-243-4020,

unionsquarecafe.com.

Here’s a great look back at the former Schraffts Restaurant which stood on the southeast corner of 5th and 13th before it morphed into clubs in the 80s and then delis in the 90s before burning down a few years ago. Now, of course, a 10-story condo is rising on the site. But enjoy these memories of the good old days.

Here, in its entirety, is a recent New York Times article about maintenance increases and transfer fees and how co-ops are currently suffering.

 

Co-op Fees Go Through the Roof

CO-OPS across the city have raised their maintenance charges by as much as 15 percent in recent months, and one of the main causes is rising property taxes.

 

Board members and building managers say that while maintenance increases averaged only about 5 percent last year, many co-op buildings are now dealing with double-digit increases.

 

“Operating costs have gone up, but property taxes have skyrocketed,” said John Janangelo, the president of Bellmarc Property Management, which manages about 50 apartment buildings in Manhattan. He said that taxes for some of his buildings had risen by as much as 35 percent in 2009. “It comes at the worst time,” he added, “because financially everyone is suffering. You don’t want to pass through these huge increases because people can’t afford them, but you have no choice.”

 

Property taxes went up at the start of the year when the city eliminated a 7 percent homeowner tax cut initiated in 2007, when the city was on better financial footing. But there is another reason for the increase. Buildings whose property values soared in recent years are experiencing even bigger tax increases because the assessed values of their buildings have gone up.

 

Co-op boards routinely challenge their assessments and if the city’s Tax Commission does not reduce the assessments, boards can appeal in court. Because the process is lengthy, a building that has received a series of big assessment increases may not get relief for years.

 

“Assessments have gone up based on last year’s market,” said David Kuperberg, the president of Cooper Square Realty, which manages about 200 co-ops and condominiums. “And that’s like kicking homeowners while they’re down,” he added, noting that assessments often take a while to catch up to the market.

 

Marty Hoffman, the board treasurer of a 106-unit co-op on West 89th Street, said that the assessed valuation of the building had gone up every year in the last five years for a total increase of 107 percent. The property tax bill has gone up 55 percent, from $369,000 in 2004 to $574,000 in 2009. Taxes this year alone went up by $83,000, or roughly $783 more annually for each tenant shareholder.

 

Because each year’s higher assessment is phased in over a five-year period, Mr. Hoffman’s building faces at least four more years of hefty assessment increases as the increases that were issued when the market was booming continue to kick in. Mr. Hoffman said that even though the tentative assessment increase for 2009-10 was only 1 percent, the building may have another tax increase of about $83,000 next year because of the phase-in of previous assessment increases. “Aside from the run-up in oil prices,” he said, “nothing has gone up as fast as real estate taxes.”

 

Mr. Hoffman said cheaper fuel was the only reason his building had been able to limit its annual maintenance fee increase to 7.2 percent. “If oil prices hadn’t dropped, we would have been faced with a 15 percent increase.”

 

Some operating costs have risen, however. Richard Montanye, a partner with the accounting firm of Marin & Montanye in Uniondale on Long Island, which works with hundreds of buildings in the city, said that water and sewerage charges went up 14.5 percent last year. “Housing costs in the city in the past four to five years have far outpaced inflation,” he said.

 

At the same time, some revenue sources have been drying up for many buildings. Those with commercial tenants, especially retail outlets, have been hit hard by the recession, with many tenants asking for rent reductions because their sales volume has dropped off significantly.

“Retail tenants are all hurting,” said Richard Siegler, a lawyer who represents about 150 co-ops, “and they’re all coming to boards and asking for relief. If the economy improves, then a lot of this will go by the by, but if not, then boards will have to contemplate losing tenants, even though they’d rather not have a vacancy.”

 

Buildings that in a stronger market relied on income from flip taxes — a sort of transfer fee for each sales transaction — may also struggle now that sales volume throughout the city has been reduced to a trickle.

 

Robert Berliner’s 277-unit building on Sutton Place has a 2 percent flip tax for outside buyers, which he said “was a pretty significant source of revenue in 2006 and 2007.” The building had used that income to meet operating costs, but because there are now so few apartments changing hands in the building, the board has shifted its flip tax revenue into its reserve fund. “We’re trying to be more realistic and more conservative in dealing with our budget,” he said.

 

Mr. Berliner said that because real estate taxes are so high for the building, the board may consider raising the flip tax to 3 percent. Property taxes were just under $3 million last year and represented the single largest expense in the building’s $7 million budget.

 

Mr. Berliner, who is the co-op’s board treasurer, said that the city raised the building’s assessment by 25 percent in 2008, but the building challenged the increase and got it reduced to 10 percent.

“But when you consider the state of the economy and what’s happening in real estate values,” he said, “how the city could have come up with any increase in assessed valuation is beyond me.”

In this article, an NYU rep fires back at Village preservationists.

Next week (January 16 to January 20), Superstructure work will continue at and 3rd, 4th and 5th floor levels. Sidewalk shed along 14th Street has been opened and we will open the sidewalk shed along 5th ave completing the sidewalk shed work.
The following week (January 23 to January 27), we will continue superstructure concrete and slabs on 3rd, 4th and 5th floor levels.
This weekend the site will be open on Saturday, January 14th 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 this Saturday we will be installing a new crane on 5th Ave. that will service the site for the duration of the project. During the installation 13th St. will be closed as well as some lanes on 5th Ave.

Our new neighbor Ann Roth tells us about this incredible image of the 14th St. building that she dug up:

“I found the image on the web, where someone was selling a hand-colored print of the 14th Street facade, from a magazine that dates to 1891. So it clearly dates to that year (or earlier), not 1899, as all the real estate ads say. I ordered it, and they immediately took it off their site, so I can’t send you the link, but I copied the image first, so I’ve attached it. I must say, I wish it still had the fancy spire. The architects were D’Oench & Simon. Albert D’Oench studied in New York and Stuttgart, and then worked for Robert Morris Hunt (who designed the Metropolitan Museum’s facade) for a while. He was the NY Inspector of Buildings for five years, which seems to have mainly involved fire safety. After that, he had a successful architectural partnership with Albert (or Bernard?) Simon, and they designed and built several fire stations in New York. D’Oench later married the mayor’s daughter. Clearly a man with good connections. The plan calls it a “store building,” built it for Mrs. Mary S. Van Beuren, who was the granddaughter and heir of Henry Spingler (who I think has a building on Union Square named after him). She lived nearby, on 14th Street, just west of 5th, and seems to have been a bit of a sharp customer, to judge from some of the legal tussles I found when I searched her name on Google.”