Healthier Skin Coming to 4th Ave. and 12th St.

Next week (September 16 to September 20), material and equipment deliveries and installation work will continue on the academic floors inside the building.

The following week (September 23 to September 27), material and equipment deliveries and installation work will continue on academic floors. This weekend the site will be open on Saturday, September 14th for interior activities between the work hours of 7AM and 5PM as permitted by the City.

Sebco Laundry will no longer be accepting pre-paid cards to use the machines in our buildings. They are switching to an app which is called My Magic Pass. Residents will need to download the app and use the site code 7–11 EAST 13TH STREET.

You will be able to pay for use of the machines by using the app. Directions on how to use the app are posted in each laundry room.

If residents have money on their current cards Damian will provide an envelope to mail to Sebco to get refunded. Please let us know if you need an envelope. THere are also envelopes available in the laundry rooms.

Later this year, Capital One will open a new banking concept in New York City’s Union Square with a large café, operated by Peet’s Coffee, and an upstairs lounge that will function as a communal work space, complete with free Wi-Fi.

Not unlike the Apple Store, the bank will serve customers with mobile tellers, who will have iPads on which they will handle transactions, rather than the standard glass window setup.

The bank already operates a number of Capital One 360 Cafés, where customers are invited to enjoy coffee while they learn about ways to manage their finances, but the upcoming location takes a page from the rising popularity of communal office spaces, which are increasingly common in New York City.

The basement of the café at 853 Broadway will be used as a classroom. Customers can take courses on mortgage financing and other topics.

The elevated café concept is expected to expand beyond Union Square; the bank is reportedly already looking to open a location in the SoHo neighborhood, but a deal has not yet been made.

Some fun history about 65 5th Ave.

“The New School has been a presence at 65 Fifth Avenue, the site of the University Center, since 1967, when the university converted a Lane’s department store building for student use. But long before the address became associated with educational innovation, it was renown for innovation of another kind. In 1881, inventor Thomas Edison installed at the address (which was then occupied by a handsome brownstone) a permanent exhibition of his electrical discoveries. The biography Edison: His Life and Inventions reports that “the house was thrown open to the public until late at night, never closing before ten o’clock, so as to give everybody who wished an opportunity to see that great novelty of the time—the incandescent light—whose fame had meanwhile been spreading all over the globe.” It is a fitting legacy for the University Center, which upon opening in Fall 2013 will itself serve as a living teaching tool, with exposed energy and water management systems to provide working demonstrations of sustainable design.”

From the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation:

NYU recently revealed its draft Environmental Assessment Statement and draft Scoping Document for its massive proposed zoning changes and taking of public land to allow its planned twenty-year expansion in Greenwich Village. These documents provide greater detail about what NYU is planning, what the potential impacts are of their proposed changes, and how NYU will be required to analyze those impacts for the public review process of their application.

Community Board #2 will be holding a public hearing on the documents and the response to them on Thursday, May 5 (time and location TBD). Following the Community Board hearing, the City Planning Commission will hold a hearing before the documents are finalized and the review and analysis takes place. This process is expected to take several months. After that, the public hearing, review, and approval process for the actual proposed zoning changes and transfers of public land may take place.

Read this excellent post at Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York to learn the complete history of the doomed building at 61Fifth Ave. on the corner of 13th.