Upper West Side

"WOW - I love this idea - I would LOVE LOVE LOVE a Costco in my neighborhood (actually I would prefer SuperTaget but Costco is great too) - I love cheap stuff and I'm tired of paying $5 for Corn Flakes - build it, build it, build it." ["Remember Trump City?"]

The Daily News today examines the ongoing retail turnover on Amsterdam Avenue, where rents now hover around $250 per square foot.

"It's no longer full of beer halls and guys with backward baseball caps watching the game," said Rafe Evans, a broker at Walker Malloy.

Oddly, the article makes no mention of the neighborhood's most recognizable beer hall, the endangered P&G Bar, which is expected to take down its iconic (and landmark-designated) signage and move out when its lease expires on Dec. 31, after more than six decades at the corner of Amsterdam and West 73rd Street.

Its latest rumored replacement: Baby Gap.

Salumeria Rosi, an Italian-style specialty foods store, joins trendy chocolatier Jacques Torres as the P&G's new neighbors on the rapidly changing block.

"The stores now have style where, before, they were utilitarian," said Stu Morden, managing director at Newmark Knight Frank, which inked the Salumeria deal.

Despite his penchant for political repression and election fraud, former two-term Nigerian President Olu Obasanjo scored points in the West for economic reforms in the oil-rich African country. But Mr. Obasanjo’s hands were by no means clean when he left office in May 2007.

Last March, for instance, Mr. Obasanjo was indicted by the Nigerian parliament for awarding $2.2 billion worth of energy contracts during his eight-year rule, without due process.

His son, Olu Obasanjo Jr., however, seems to have markedly less extravagant tastes and spending habits than his father. He and his wife, Imelse, live in a Park Slope condo at 705 Carroll Street that Mr.  read more »

Back in 2004, Howard Stern’s sidekick Robin Quivers pledged to leave the U.S.A. if George W. Bush was re-elected. Last November the shock-jock’s wing woman did sell her Staten Island home for $1.2 million, but it appears Ms. Quivers only intended to flee the borough, not the country.

She has paid $2.4 million for a 1,486-square-foot condo at the new, Costas Kondylis-designed building, 200 West End Avenue, city records show. Ms. Quivers took out a $1.9 million mortgage on her two-bedroom, 22nd-floor, Upper West Side apartment.  read more »

Activists targeted hotelier Hank Freid last week as the focal point for their campaign against illegal hotel conversions citywide, calling the much-maligned developer a "scamlord" and picketing his Broadway Hotel this past Saturday.

Mr. Freid's lawyer chimed in this week to make a point -- those hotels aren't actually illegal:  read more »

Activists plan to rally at noon on Saturday outside controversial hotelier Hank Freid's Broadway Studios on the Upper West Side to "denounce the continued operation of illegal hotels" by "scamlords" citywide.

"We are targeting Hank Freid as an egregious illegal hotelier ... with a particularly insidious past," organizer Yarrow Willman-Cole told The Observer.

Mr. Freid earned the dubious distinction as one of New York City's "Worst Landlords" after contracting with the government to provide housing for homeless persons living with HIV/AIDS at his hotels amid hard economic times, then evicting those tenants to make way for upcale renovations once the economy rebounded.  read more »

15 Central Park West has no shortage of accomplished residents. Pick a field and its leader might just have a condo in the building. There are dozens of Wall Street investors who’ve made (and in a few cases) lost billions of dollars, a Nascar star, a pharmaceutical executive, and even English teacher-cum-rockstar Sting.

The latest buyer might be the most dazzling professional hyphenate yet—M.D./Hedge Fund Manager. Dr. Lindsay Rosenwald, a one-time internal physician who made a fortune investing in bio-technology start-ups took out a $22.5 million mortgage to buy a $30 million duplex condominium on the 18th floor, city records show.  read more »

I wrote in today's Observer about the drops in doorman-building rents. The stats for that story came from a new February market report by The Real Estate Group New York.

Some of the other stats in the report show a marked increase in Lower East Side rents. For instance, the average monthly rent in a two-bedroom in a non-doorman building increased 3.3 percent from March of last year to $3,273.  read more »

The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in a non-doorman building on the Upper West Side was $2,478 in January, according to a report (PDF) from brokerage The Real Estate Group New York. The average for a one-bedroom in a non-doorman building on the Upper East Side was $2,439. In doorman buildings, one-bedrooms averaged $3,549 on the Upper West Side and $3,534 on the Upper East Side.

Hallowed cupcake mecca Magnolia Bakery has spawned a second location -- three times bigger -- on the Upper West Side.

For this week's Observer, out tomorrow, I sat down with Magnolia owner Steve Abrams and brother Danny Abrams, owner of the Mermaid Inn, who similarly opened a second location in the same neighborhood.  read more »

Guy walks into a bar, says to the bartender: "Same shirt as yesterday, Charlie?"

Same shirt, same shit, different day.

Indeed, change is rare around the old P&G Bar, founded in 1942 at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and West 73rd Street, where around 5 p.m. on Thursday regulars compared bowling scores over Budweisers while horse races flickered on an old boxy TV set in the background.

But change is happening outside the bar.

Scheduled storefront renovations have finally begun on the building. The bar's prior dark-green facade has been stripped away and new windows with light green trim are being installed.

Yet the defiant Chahalis family, which has owned and operated the bar for the past 60 years, refuses to budge and has rebuffed buyout offers from the landlord. (The bar's lease is up at the end of 2008.)

"WE WILL BE OPEN DURING STOREFRONT REPAIRS," according to a sign on the door.

Relations between the contractors and bar goers have been strained at times during the past few weeks, according to a bartender, who scoffed at the notion of unplugging his ice machine so a worker could plug in his drill.

Folks who frequent the place are anxious for construction to wrap up. Said the bartender: "They could've put up the World Trade Center by now!"

Come check out the latest technology by ... Liz Claiborne?

Indeed! Chic leather handbags with removable laptop sleeves are the first items on display when you stroll down the blue-carpeted entranceway to the city's freshest Best Buy, which held its blue-and-gold-balloon-strewn grand opening on Friday at Fifteen Central Park West.

A day earlier, the retailer even held a fashion show, with an appearance by design diva Tim Gunn of Project Runway fame.

Yes, the home of the Geek Squad has gone slightly more upscale at its new Columbus Circle location. After all, who in this ritzy neighborhood wants the common Targus tote when you can get something more fashionable, say, a cute floral-patterned laptop bag by Sigrid Olsen? (Just $199.99!)

The spacious three-level location also features two swank sound-proof booths so Upper West Side shoppers can crank up the Michael Buble on titanium horn-loaded tweeters as high as 75 decibels without disturbing the sleeping billionaires in the pricey condos upstairs.

"No other store in the city has one," asserted Luiz, one of many overly friendly, earpiece-equipped employees, who seemingly outnumbered customers by about 2 to 1 on this particular afternoon.

He also pointed to the "trippy" strip of soft blue lighting in the ceiling as another amenity exclusive to the new location.

If there is one boat you do not want to rock, it is an Upper West Side community board, particularly after its members have spent more than a year developing a detailed plan to keep their neighborhood more or less the way it is.

The Jewish Home & Hospital, a nursing home on 106th Street, felt that it had no choice apparently but to rock that boat when it sought a last-minute exception to that plan. In order to survive, the nonprofit said that it needed to sell off part of its property to a private developer and use the proceeds to build a more modern headquarters and nursing facilities on the remaining portion.

Even with a powerful healthcare union rooting for them, and some sympathetic politicians who tried to see their side, Jewish Home had to scale back its ambitions. On Monday, up-to-the-last-minute negotiations gave them an extra 30 feet on their own headquarters. But the companion building, which a private developer will build, will essentially have to abide by the new Upper West Side rezoning.

The rezoning passed a City Council subcommittee and committee unanimously, according to City Council Member Tony Avella. chairman of the zoning and franchises subcommittee, with the Jewish Home property, between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, grandfathered in with the old zoning. It will go back to the City Planning Commission before going to the City Council and the mayor for final approvals.

However, a separate covenant that will be filed against the property’s deed will restrict the height of the private developer’s parcel to 120 feet (compared to 145 feet as first sought) and the height of its own building to 150 feet (instead of 175 feet), according to City Council Member Melissa Mark Viverito, who represents the area.

“The community board felt that the whole reason they wanted this rezoning was to prevent overzealous developers from coming into the neighborhood and changing its character,” she said. “But there was also a general consensus that a community facility like the nursing home, there was more of an acceptance of letting them build a little bit higher than the height limit.”

An Upper West Side community board is planning to sit down with executives from a nonprofit nursing home to hash out a compromise between its plan for two mid-rise towers and a rezoning that would otherwise cap building heights at a maximum of 120 feet.

The move comes late in a nearly two-year process inspired by the sudden and unexpected construction of two towers, one 31 stories and the other 37, along Broadway near 100th Street. In a plan that has emerged in varying degrees over the past six months, Jewish Home and Hospital wants to replace its campus on 106th street with a 175-foot building, which it will occupy, and a 145-foot privately developed building, which would raise money for the nonprofit’s survival.  read more »

Just weeks shy of the City Council taking a vote to downzone the Upper West Side, a nursing home wants a special provision that would permit 14- and 15-story towers to be built on its property.

The Jewish Home & Hospital is planning to modernize its Manhattan campus, located between 105th and 106th streets, between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, by selling off the eastern half of its land to a residential developer who would build up to a 145-foot tower. Using the revenues, the home would consolidate its offices and resident rooms into a new 175-foot, 15-story tower on the western side. The home wants to retain the current zoning, which would permit these developments.

The nonprofit had not finished preliminary consultations with the state Department of Health on the proposed reconfiguration until last December, according to Bruce Nathanson, senior vice president for marketing and communications. By that point, the rezoning process, sponsored by the city’s Department of City Planning, had already begun.

The nursing home made its case to community board leaders in March and to the City Planning Commission in July, but neither panel was willing to make changes to the formal rezoning application that would allow the Jewish Home to be grandfathered under existing rules. Mr. Nathanson said that the home considered other possibilities, such as trying to upzone the parcels after the downzoning, or going through the Board of Standards and Appeals, but neither seemed possible.

“We were trying to find a solution to our needs,” he told The Observer. “I wanted to find a solution to build a new skilled nursing facility. Our job is to serve our families, our residents and to be a good neighbor to the community.”

If the rezoning goes through, the new buildings could only be 120 feet tall along 106th Street, Mr. Nathanson said.

Some Upper West Siders are stressing that the integrity of the months-long process would be ruined if it changed this late in the game, and that giving one institution special treatment would open up floodgates for more.  read more »

Equity Residential recently went on a shopping spree for Upper West Side apartment buildings, and spent close to $180 million.

The Chicago-based firm purchased 228 West 71st Street and 238 West 71st Street for $75 million total; 41 West 86th for $45 million; and 52 West 77th Street for $58 million, according to city records. All told, Equity spent $178 million. The seller was Portnof Realty Corporation.  read more »

The much-anticipated showdown between Landmark West and Congregation Shearith Israel has been postponed.

As we reported last week, the Upper West Side synagogue Congregation Shearith Israel wants to build five stories of luxury condos on top of a new community house at 8 West 70th Street. Landmark West, an Upper West Side community group, has led the opposition to the development because it feels Shearith Israel is a non-profit organization trying to make a buck.  read more »

For those who aren't up to date with Upper West Side land-use gossip, here's the skinny:

Upper West Side synagogue Congregation Shearith Israel wants to build a new community house at 8 West 70th Street, and then build five stories of luxury condos on top. Shearith Israel claims that the new building is necessary in order to address "the physical obsolescence and the ill-configured floorplans" of the current structure. Landmark West, an Upper West Side community group, has led the opposition to the development largely because they feel Shearith Israel could easily rebuild the community house without the condominium floors, and thus not violate any zoning laws.  read more »

Hank Freid's Marrakech Hotel NYC has scored a Starbucks on its ground-floor at 103rd Street and Broadway. The omnipresent coffee vendor has signed a 10-year lease for 1,400 square feet, and will open by the end of August.

Mr. Freid's Marrakech has an interesting history as does the hotelier himself. Put another way, no one would've expected, only a couple of years ago, that Starbucks would choose the ground-floor of 2688 Broadway for a new spot. But it has: According to an understated release on the lease from Mr. Freid's Impulsive Group, "Starbucks is popular in this neighborhood; currently there are other locations in the area."

On the Upper West Side? Get outta here!