The former P.S. 64 and CHARAS/El Bohio community center on East Ninth Street will house students from several New York colleges, The Wall Street Journal reported today.
University House will be home to 500 co-eds, with Cooper Union already signing a 15-year agreement for 200 of the beds.
Developer Gregg Singer said that he "expects rents to be about $1,550
per month per bed," according to the Journal.
Singer said that the renovations will cost nearly $40 million. Amenities of the University House will include a health center, private study rooms and a fitness center.
The brief appears on page A22 today.
Previously on EV Grieve:
Will old PS 64 get a theater for nonprofit groups?
Rebranded P.S. 64 up for grabs: Please welcome University House at Tompkins Square Park to the neighborhood
Deed for 'community facility use only' at the former P.S. 64 now on the market
37 comments:
HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? OUTRAGEOUS.
I fail to see how a dorm is community use. The health center, private study rooms and a fitness center will be for use by those paying rent, not the general community.
"Community Facility Use:
A community facility use provides educational, health, recreational, religious or other essential services for the community it serves. Community facility uses are listed in Use Groups 3 and 4."
The above, to my knowledge, is the zoning language for community facility use. HOW IS A PRIVATE RESIDENCE PROVIDING THOSE THINGS TO THE COMMUNITY? Honestly, this makes me sick to my stomach. What a slumlord, he's pure scum.
$1,550 a month per bed with at least two beds in a room, for 200 cooper union, (THE NO LONGER FREE SCHOOL) students? Another step in the dehumanization of the East Village (formerly the Lower East Side).
NYU led the way to price gouging and real estate grabbing and Cooper Union was an apt student.
Will the commercial spaces include a Duane Reade, a CVS, a Chase bank, a Subway, a fro-yo, and a 7-11?
Will there be a liquor license involved?
God help us!
I live right across the street and it's a lovely, quiet street. There goes the neighborhood! :(
F*CK
THIS
SH*T
Is there ANYTHING we residents can do to block this (as it is NOT being used for community space)?! Can we sign petitions, etc??
It's being used for something and it's not being torn down - thank you.
Another giant leap towards an uninhabitable east village.
Damn, there goes my halloween hangout!
Finally some use to come out of that building. I am new to this but why is Singer a bad person for turning a vaacant building that he brought at a city run auction into student housing a bad thing? I know some people wanted it for the community - but then they shoudl have purchased it at the acution. Just because Sinegr owns it doesnt make him a bad person.
anon, it was not vacant when Singer seized control over it. It was a vibrant and active community center called Charas. Study the history of how he ended up in control over that space. It was a crime against the community and his involvement certainly is evil.
Anonymous 5:37 it is a long story. But Singer's vandalism at the building, chopping off all the decorative stone work on the north side, FOR SPITE, is just one example of why he is a "bad person." Also, the building was not vacant when he bought it. It was a vibrant community center.
Hopefully this will clean up 10th St. and the vagrants that shit on the sidewalk in broad daylight.
Is the street going to be able to handle 500 additional residents? It's going to be insane. How is this legal?
Too many status quo whiners
Kleindeutschland, aka Loisaida, aka East Village, like the rest of NYC has always been about change and providing housing to students is a positive addition to the neighborhood.
The NIMBYs who are lucky enough to live in the Christadora House and the rest of the NO crowd should not be able to dictate how this beautiful building is used.
It has been an eye sore way too long.
It'll be interesting given the landmark status. Also, the WSJ is an unreliable source. Has Cooper REALLY signed on? And is that enough? Lots of zoning and BSA stuff for Singer to overcome. Plus the personal shite and lawsuits he's been throwing at Bloomie? Finally, i know at least some of the warriors who defeated Singer in the past have left the hood, in no small measure thanks to the cementheads who put their thumbs up their butts and chanted "die yuppie scum" to the wrong people. Well, you may now have REAL yuppie scum to deal with, and maybe on your own. Altogether now..."give us Barabbus."
What do you mean how do we fight this? If you intend to stop it, then vandalize the construction equipment, lock it up with foreign locks and squat it, or, stop just complaining.
They were there before you, you poor hating snob outsider!
The central issue here was and is the destruction of a community center. A dormitory is not a community center. Will there be community use rooms/space/stage, etc for the community?
The operative word here is community!
What a shame that the money crowd always seems to have the last word!
If you want a community center go rent one out, or band toegther raise funds and attend the auction and buy the building. You cant get something for nothing and dont act all entitled to it. Singer purchased the building at an auction - that means it is his. Dont blame him for what the city did when it needed funds to support its budget. The community should of purchased the building from the city, stop blaming other people for your mistakes and lost opportunities.
Kleindeutschland -- really? who's stupid enough to bring that up? It did not end because of real estate developers; it ended because hundreds of the German child-bearers died on a ferry that sank.
And we still don't know who murdered Armando Perez -- Giuliani's Street Crimes Unit.
"You cant get something for nothing..." -- developers do all the time in this City and tax breaks galore. Simpleton!
Ha, I was just reading in the paper how Madison Square Garden will continue to get it's $16 million tax break every-single-year.
"The sense of entitlement of those living off of government largess rarely ceases to amaze." (see Meltzer post)
But we're "blaming other people" if we want to keep the community center we used to run in Alphabet City or if we think old people should have a place to live that isn't like 5 Points was. ugh!!!
There is a new Community center opening soon on 9th street across from Ave C so why not consider the issue solved and let the purchaser of this property finally do what he committed to do...forty million in capital going in spells a lot of jobs to me. The students may party a little hard but they (or their parents spend money in the village)they are not running around with glocks shooting people for a jacket or getting "a check" from the taxpayer.
"why not consider the issue solved" -- you clearly do not know the history here and don't care, but many others do. But thanks for the BS "glocks" strawman.
The issue seems that the people that call themselves the "community" want something for nothing and are annoyed that someone purchased the building from the city when the "community" could not do so themselves. When the city sold the building to the landlord the city did not attach any restrictions on the landlord to keep a community center in the building. Being self entitled thinkers, these same people are not blaming the city or themselves for their innaction - they are blaming the landlord. Take some responsibility and grow up and stop blaming others for missing opportunities.
@ Anon 1:17pm
"the city did not attach any restrictions" -- that is just wrong! Restrictions were attached, but now the landlord is attempting to redefine "Community Facility Use". He should not be allowed to get away with that by building a dorm - it's not a Facility that will be Used by the Community. period.
Businesses and Developers get "something for nothing" far too often (sometimes buying entire buildings for $1), but now I see, the Community should be afforded the same largess. Thanks for educating me, a-hole.
"they are not running around with glocks shooting people for a jacket or getting "a check" from the taxpayer."
Thank you, Thanks Patrick J. Buchanan for chiming it. This is about as blatant racist tripe I have seen on the EV Grieve in quite some time. Speaking of “tax breaks” BTW, everyone who has a soul and posts on this blog (Anonymous 12.30 PM obviously doesn’t have one) should read “Other People's Money”, They story of Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town, by Charles Bagli of the NY Times.
“Other People’s Money delivers one of the great untold stories of the financial crisis—how greed, arrogance, and the distorted incentives of the commercial real estate market helped drive our nation’s economy off a cliff. Told through meticulous reporting of what was arguably the worst real estate deal of all time, in this vitally important book Bagli demonstrates how the well-heeled and well-connected walked away relatively unscathed from the wreckage that they created, leaving a devastated middle class holding the bag yet again.”
—Neil Barofsky, New York Times bestselling author of Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street
Wrong, Anon. 1:17, the building was put on the auction block with the express proviso that it would continue to be used SOLELY as a community-oriented facility. Those were the terms to which Singer agreed when he bought it, but without, it's plain to see now, ever having any intention of abiding by them. If you can look at the thuggish behavior he has engaged in - stripping the building of its ornamental stonework knowing it was being considered for landmark status, threatening to put a fictitious drug treatment facility in there and putting up posters with images of meth-eaten addicts to show the neighborhood the kind of people he'd be "ministering to", trying to bully his way into getting permission for a 27 STORY DORM - and still think he is a decent guy who has been getting the runaround from a bunch of lazy-ass do-nothings, and that he somehow has the right to run roughshod over both the agreement he entered into with the city and the neighbors whose lives he will permanently impact, then you are either a fellow developer or your initials are Gregg Singer. There's no other explanation for your pecksniffery.
The point in mentioning Kleindeutschland is to point out the East Village is constantly changing So rather than calling others "stupid", deal with the fact the East Village is changing. The whiners who want the East Village to be like it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago need to get a life. Developers are not inherently bad, nor is gentrification.
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
@Anon 2:54pm
No one here has said that we don't want the neighborhood to change. And no one here wants to go back to the bad old days. Those are pathetic strawmen. But there is an alternative to having outsider developers just turn our neighborhood into what they want it to be. They really don't care. They just want to money, and will be gone once they get it. Those of us remaining will have to deal with whatever is left behind, so the community deserves a say in what is built around us. A mass tragedy is one thing, but total greed at our expense is just not tolerable. I know good developers, and GS has yet to show himself to be the slightest bit of good developer.
"...the building was put on the auction block with the express proviso that it would continue to be used SOLELY as a community-oriented facility." This is true, except not by proviso, but by law. Since the building was constructed with tax-payer dollars, it has to remain a community facility. Note that at the time PS64 was sold to Singer, other buildings like PS64--which had been rehabilitated by community groups and long used as viable community centers--were sold to the responsible groups for a few dollars. But Giuliani (Crude Rudy) did not like the people at Charas, so willfully sold the building to Singer knowing full well there would be problems. It wasn't all that long ago, and it still annoys the crap out of many people, rightfully so.
good2go has it right. The buidling's deed requires it to be a community facility in perpetuity. That's why it'll be a dormitory not condos -- it's tied to an educational facility. But its 1904 construction predates city zoning law (1916) which defines community facility, so I wonder whether the current zoning definition of community facility might be challenged since a dormitory isn't educational in itself, aside from sex education.
I blame Giuliani most of all. He sold it not to fill a city shortfall, but to encourage gentrification of the neighborhood and as part of his ideological privatization program. I have no love of Singer, but Giuliani stuck him in the middle of a struggle between him and another developer and Christodora and Charas and Margarita that's left everyone bitter. Blaming it all on Singer misses the origin: Giuliani and the intellectual midgets in his Manhattan Institute.
Rob has it right as I understand it, and if you don't think that Giuliani and his Street Crimes Unit had a hand in the murder of Armando Perez, well, you're kidding yourself. Classic NYC corruption.
What happened over ten years ago and yes Bowery Boy I know the history well living on 8 and 10 for some years is past, no time machine travel available sorry the movie Loopers was sci-fi. This worn out old school house from the days of Teddy Roosevelt is an eyesore I pass everyday to the dog run the sidewalk is a hazard...glocks just travel 3 blocks north..two summers ago I watched NYPD put the sheet over a 16 year old "drug dispute" outside Campos major drug bust there just last week having lived down here along time with the crime I for one welcome some privatization as well as restoration too prime example St Brigid beautiful job
Just why is it an eyesore? Just why is the sidewalk a mess? Gregg Singer owns it. Why are you not blaming him for the mess of his own property, if you are so into property rights. He has WILLFULLY failed to maintain the property, on purpose, in order to propel his development aims. He wanted to make it an eyesore so that people like you would say, it's an eyesore, let's develop it, who cares what it is....
The issue is,for me, how will the neighborhood absorb several hundred more kids, not known for their community consciousness, without also increasing the kinds of businesses that serve them, ie. bars and bar/restaurants. It will make having a balance of businesses that actually serve the permanent residents of the EV even more difficult than itis currently. This continues to be a zoning issue, and perhaps that is the way it can be fought.
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