This rather fascinating report on pedestrian foot traffic in the area reveals that sidewalk crowds are up 53% in the past five years. If you’ve ever walked past Whole Foods at 6 PM, this will come as no surprise. In fact, Whole Foods is probably mainly responsible for the surge.
15 Union Square West is how home to a very fancy yoga boutique. Your downward dog has never looked so good.
Here’s one problem we haven’t had in our bulding (yet): a bee swarm. Bee experts had to be called in last week to collect a swarm of bees at 4th Ave. and 14th. St. Weird.
In response to community concerns about the time in the evening we end our concrete placing, DOB has granted our request to start placing our concrete at 6am, which will allow us to finish this work earlier in the evening. We have 8 more instances like this until we finish our superstructure in early June.
Therefore next week (April 16 to April 20), Superstructure work will continue at the 13th and 14th floor levels. Wednesday, April 18th, we will have an identical pour with a 6 am start time and similar end time, weather permitting. Deliveries for the internal systems of the building have been ongoing and will continue, although they should not greatly affect the flow of pedestrian and road traffic.
The following week (April 23 to April 27), we will continue superstructure concrete and slabs on the 15th and 16th floor levels. Deliveries for the internal systems of the building have been ongoing and will continue, although they should not greatly affect the flow of pedestrian and road traffic.
This weekend the site will be open on Saturday, April 14st 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 on the job site, the 14th St. Con Ed Vault utility connection street work will continue per DOT Permit granted for weekends only.
Last Friday, NYC Parks & Recreation, CYNTHIA-REEVES PROJECTS, and the Union Square Partnership officially cut the ribbon on LOTUS, the newest piece of temporary art in the Union Square Park Triangle. LOTUS was the creation of Seoul-based artist Jaehyo Lee. To create the piece, the artist meticulously carved, shaped, burned the individual wood elements attached to a steel armature that stretches 12 feet high. The artwork has certainly made an impression as passersby who can be seen at all times of day stopping to look and touch the new art in the triangle.
Now baking at 64 University Place is Papa d’Amour, the new bakery from celebrated pastry master Dominique Ansel. It’s gonna be fancy. Here’s New York magazine’s take:
On a recent afternoon inside the kitchen that will open as Papa d’Amour later this month, the pastry chef Dominique Ansel was holding a spoonful of tomato-tinted scrambled eggs for the consideration of his wife, Amy Ma. “White pepper,” she said after trying it. “That’s not a bad thing.” She explained that Ansel will add vermicelli to the eggs to soak up any excess moisture so the mixture can then be stuffed inside a soft, steamed bao bun, which — because this is from the same chef who invented the Cronut all those years ago — will be folded in the shape of a croissant.
A single pastry that manages to reference a dim-sum staple, French patisserie, and the tomato-egg stir-fry that Ma’s mother cooked for her at home in Taiwan is but one of the many complex, globally collaged items on the menu of Papa d’Amour, which is Ansel’s “exploration” of Asian bread culture, as he puts it. More than that, it is a manifestation of love for his two children (the enfants to his papa) where customers will be able to find loaves of shokupan and sandwiches made on that Japanese milk bread (plain or laminated); pretzel-salt-crusted Chinese custard tarts; and a banana bread Malay cake derived not from the humble American home-baking staple but of Malaysia’s more elegant, fluffy, steamed sponge cake.
The Papa is particularly excited about a scallion-basil “blossom,” which, you’d never guess unless he told you, is his take on a Taiwanese scallion pancake. “I wanted something I can pull apart,” he says. He’d seen the way the pancake’s dough is fluffed by hand to give it a flaky, almost shredded surface and a chewy middle and wanted to come up with something that mimics that interplay. He was trained in France, so his mind went to two kinds of brioche: a regular version to encase the scallion component in the middle and a laminated, layered crown to encourage ripping.
