"This is an awesome space, an awesome location," chef Scott Conant said, during a packed-house grand opening party at his new digs in the meatpacking district--er, at least, sort of in the meatpacking district.

"It's not really in the meatpacking, it's on, you know what I'm saying?"

The former L'Impero and Alto cook's latest restaurant Scarpetta opened Monday evening in the former Gin Lane and old Village Idiot space at 355 West 14th Street, just east of Ninth Avenue.

"A lot of the core clientele, a lot of Upper East Siders and a lot of people from Uptown, they're not going to be kind of spooked by going too much into the meatpacking. Too far inside of it, it might scare 'em off. But because it's on it, they feel comfortable coming down.

"I looked everywhere," Mr. Conant said. "But I really wanted it to be a West Village restaurant. It's probably one of the last neighborhoods that is pure New York."  read more »

Meatpacking district stalwart Novac Noury has graciously asked neighborhood restaurateur Florent Morellet to move into his underutilized building on Little West 12th Street once Mr. Morellet's iconic Florent diner closes for good because of a huge rent hike this summer.

"I gave him a call yesterday and we may be in talks to continue his stay in my building," Mr. Noury told The Villager this week.

But Mr. Morellet apparently isn't interested, according to the article.

Instead, the flamboyant restaurateur is planning to go out "with a bang," kicking off the “Final Five Weeks of Florent" over Memorial Day weekend, with each following week given a theme to represent a stage in the "grieving process he’s undergone over losing his restaurant....Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and, finally, Acceptance."

Eater is reporting today that iconic Florent diner is now officially on the market.

Winick Realty is shopping the space for $700,000 per year.

That's roughly $58,333 per month -- a substantial increase from the restaurant's current $6,018 monthly rate and quite higher than even the $43,000 estimate that one broker gave The Observer last week.

Read our previous coverage here.

UPDATE: Eater is now reporting that Lansco is marketing the Florent space -- not Winick. Oh, and the asking rent is more like $50,000 per month.

Restaurateur Florent Morellet called today to clarify something from last week's Observer article on the fate of his iconic Florent diner on Gansevoort Street.

That $150,000 he's seeking from landlord Joanne Lucas in court? "What we're claiming is not really damage," he said. "It's being overcharged."  read more »

Florent Morellet just called to chat about today’s news that his eponymous eatery may, before too long, close its doors for good.

“It’s funny, the Internet, it’s like SARS,” Mr. Morellet joked, referring to the way today’s news has spread on the Web. “It’s going to be a process. I’ve been a fighter all my life—for my rights, people’s rights,” he said. Mr. Morellet, who is HIV positive, told us that the possible closing has nothing to do with his health. In fact, the restaurateur said he’s in fine shape these days, pointing to a healthy T-cell count (over 800), which is updated on a board in Florent.  read more »

We dropped by the shiny new Apple store at 401 West 14th Street in the Meatpacking District today, the latest fiefdom in the company’s growing retail empire.

The new store, which smelled a whole lot like a new car, sits in a spacious, yellow-brick former home to a Western Beef supermarket, encased with black grid, warehouse-style windows.

At three stories, Apple tells us it set a new height record as the tallest store in Apple’s fleet. (Wow!) The previous record was two stories.

The company seems to be imagining this store—the largest in Manhattan—will appeal more to the local crowd, something that would stand in contrast to the tourist-heavy SoHo and Fifth Avenue stores.  read more »

Above is an image shot about a half-hour ago of The Observer's Eliot Brown inside the new Apple store in the Meatpacking District. We will have more on the opening later.

Every ritzy Manhattan neighborhood deserves its own place for ogling expensive, shiny MP3 players. The third Manhattan Apple flagship (out of five) will open at a 52,000-square-foot monster on West 14th Street, thus making the Meatpacking District a tiny bit less hateful. [Apple Insider, via Gawker]

The mysterious-sounding Center For an Urban Future predicts Staten Island will suffer "an economic decline and a significant deterioration in its quality of life." Surely, Staten Island-born rap group Wu Tang Clan does not want their old borough to become a “lower-middle-class retirement community.” [N.Y. Mag/D.I.]

Ivanka Trump, Manhattan’s most aesthetically pleasing real-estate mogul, says she has “thirty-three projects under my direct control.” Plus, in an interview accompanying her very stirring new GQ pictorial, she uses the words “cocky” and “shit.” Wowzah! [GQ]  read more »

The Real Estate got a triumphant email on Friday afternoon from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, which has opposed the billboards:

"We have just received news that the City has ruled that the controversial 8-story high billboards at the Hotel Gansevoort in the Meatpacking District are in violation of zoning rules."

The boards' fate now seems to hang with hotel owner Michael Achenbaum:

The owner of the Hotel Gansevoort can now take down the signs, as we and many area business and community leaders have been calling for, or he can try to correct them and keep them up. Because the owner has said publicly that putting up the billboards were a mistake he would change if he could, now is his chance to do so.

The Real Estate has a call out to speak to Mr. Achenbaum.

"The hotel has not received any notice of a violation from the DOB. The address mentioned in [the preservation society's] letter--352 West 13th Street--is not the address of the Hotel Gansevoort and not the address filed on the application for the billboards (both 18 Ninth Ave.). Until we receive this notification, this is all the information we have available at this time."

• Colors example of struggling city restaurant.
[NY Times]
• Public Advocate calls for more city housing lawyers.
[NY Times]
• Commercial condo's rotating lobby exhibits.
[NY Times]
• Stuy Town key cards vex religious Jewish residents.
[NY Post]
• New live-music venue for Meatpacking District.
[NY Post]
• Jackson Heights residents to rally against "slumification."
[Daily News]
• Areas of City Hall Park to reopen.
[NY Sun]
• New York Aquarium chooses new exterior design.
[NY Sun]

Did we miss any New York City real estate news this morning? Please send along tips and links.

]]> http://origin.observermediagroup.com/node/35821#comments Real Estate Meatpacking District New York City The New York Times Company Wed, 07 Mar 2007 03:20:31 -0500 Observer Staff 35821 at http://origin.observermediagroup.com