Two and a half years after opening, All’onda, on East 13th St., is done. It burned hot and bright, but the fire couldn’t last forever.
Not exactly Occupy Wall Street, but this is what Union Square looked like on Labor Day 1882. Fun parade.
Next week (December 12 to December 16), DOT approved street connections to underground utilities on Fifth Avenue have been completed. Superstructure work will continue at 1st and 2nd floor levels. Sidewalk sheds will continue being erected around the perimeter of the site. The roof protection at USC Condo courtyard will be started this week as well.
The following week (December 19 to December 23), we will continue superstructure concrete and slabs on 1st and 2nd floor levels.
This weekend the site will be open on Saturday, December 3rd 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, plumbing and electrical work, rebar for concrete placement and use of 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.
Simply Grid announced today that it has launched a food cart electrification pilot in New York City’s Union Square. This is the first example of a mobile food vendor on New York City’s public streets using grid electricity rather than a noisy, polluting generator. Citywide, more than 3,000 mobile food carts create the equivalent pollution emissions of approximately 10,000 cars. This pilot, launched in conjunction with the New York City Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, Con Edison, the NYC Department of Transportation, and Closed Loop Advisors, will last for up to a year and abate up to 9 metric tons of CO2.
Simply Grid’s technology allows lot owners and municipalities to provide grid electricity to mobile food vendors which makes them cleaner, quieter, and more profitable. Electricity is made available to these vendors via outlets in industry standard electricity pedestals which have been customized with proprietary metering controllers. The controllers connect wirelessly to Simply Grid’s cloud-based platform which manages customer accounts, metering, and billing. The system allows vendors to initiate service with their mobile phones and connect to the electric grid with cables they already use with their generators. Grid electricity is a significantly cheaper energy source for food vendors, and it also eliminates the pollution and noise associated with running a generator.
Here’s an update on what NYU plans to build on the now vacant lot on Washington Square Park South where the Catholic Church used to be.
At least it’s only six stories high.