And now we know at least one of the incoming vendors. The owners of Top Hops Beer Shop were expected to be on this month's CB3-SLA docket (Aug. 16) to operate a bar-restaurant inside the 21-story building at 124 E. 14th St. at Irving Place.
According to the questionnaire on file at the CB3 website, this location will feature 18 tables to accommodate 97 guests and an 18-seat bar. Top Hops is also applying for a backyard garden space here.
The food items on the sample menu include various sandwiches, burgers and dinner platters (bratwurst!).
Top Hops currently operates outposts in Essex Market and Urbanspace at 570 Lex. Their flagship shop/bar at 94 Orchard St. closed in March after nine years on the block below Delancey.
Here's more about the Zero Irving food hall via the official news release last summer:
Urbanspace will be a unique amenity for Zero Irving's tenants, users of the building’s event space, and the surrounding neighborhood. Urbanspace plans an innovative mixed online/offline platform that stays true to its exceptional, immersive food hall experience while providing enhanced online ordering with delivery and pickup options for building tenants and the local community.Urbanspace also plans a catering option offered to both building tenants and users of Zero Irving's event and conference center...
The building, developed jointly by the city’s Economic Development Corp. and RAL Development Services, will feature 14 floors of market-rate office space as well as "a technology training center and incubator, co-working spaces and state-of-the-art event space ... on the seven floors beneath," per the Zero Irving website.
Long contested by local preservationists and community groups, the new building sits on the former site of a P.C. Richard & Son on city-owned property.
Zero Irving is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
That Orchard St shop was incredible. Urbanspace chain though is meh, especially the one on Lex and 51st. Just more of the mallification of New York.
ReplyDeleteOF COURSE that's what it'll be! Tech hub, my ass! It's BRO-LAND!
ReplyDeleteNow, someone just explain to me how that is allowed, since presumably that's less than 500 feet from the NYU dorms there.
TBH, this project now sounds like almost a complete bait-and-switch by good ol' Warren Wilhelm and his crew. Ooooh, we NEEDED a "tech hub" here to make sure we were offering training to underprivileged teens so they could get hired by Google and FB. THAT was the "sales pitch" if you remember: EDUCATION so local kids would get hired at good salaries.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet somehow what we GET is 14 floors of market-rate space and co-working space (at a time when millions of square feet of Manhattan office space is sitting empty), and a "state-of-the-art EVENT SPACE" (b/c Webster Hall and Irving Plaza are not enough).
I believe this is called, in the vernacular, a "boondoggle".
A scam is a scam is a scam.
ReplyDeleteSome of you grumpy people need to get a grip or move to the suburbs
ReplyDeleteIf this blog were a drinking game, "move to the suburbs" wouldn't even be worthy of a well shot. Too frequent.
ReplyDeleteAs frequent as people who come on this blog and complain about college kids and young adults living their lives in a college area. As if the same folks complaining were so responsible during their younger days.
Delete@Anon. 10:02 AM - And let's not forget the developers' claim that they would not encroach on the sidewalk, that they would be able to remain within the confines of the building footprint and get the job done, so the impact on foot and/or vehicular traffic would be nonexistent. And no sooner do they get the permits then all of a sudden it's "Oh we misjudged, we do need the extra space after all", and now how many years has it been that the sidewalk and one whole lane of 14th Street has been taken over by their plywood and wire fence barricades, with total impunity and no fines or punishment, because they have basically been given free reign to do whatever the hell they want?
ReplyDeleteI'm still anti-this place, but Top Hops is a pretty classy joint. I've never seen any whoo-type behavior at their spot in Essex Crossing.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't live without alcohol! Who gets the cannabis contract?
ReplyDelete@1:35pm: Yes, that too - a very good point you made. Goes to show that de Blasio's word isn't even worth the breath it comes out on. He's the complete opposite of trustworthy. Anything he does, you can always bet that it will benefit HIM, no matter what.
ReplyDeleteBoth the tech and the tap are more relevant and important than PC Richards…
ReplyDelete@8:45pm: Yes, in fact, many of us *were* far more responsible when we were young! Though you don't seem to be able to imagine it, it IS possible to have fun & enjoy yourself without being stupid-drunk nor behaving like an mental patient on the loose.
ReplyDeleteAmong my large circle of friends from back then & my neighbors on my block, NONE of us behaved as jackass-y as what we see every weekend around here now. It would have been too embarrassing to have been seen behaving in such a way.
And, BTW, when we were in our 20's, you couldn't *give* this neighborhood away. One of my friends had to walk home to her Alphabet City apartment after work brandishing any broken bottle she found on the street, b/c the muggers & drug dealers were everywhere. And very much literally, a lot of people felt it was too dangerous to go below 14th Street, even though YOU can't imagine that. But even so, we DID NOT behave like the snide & sleazy bro's I see around here every weekend now.
Too many of today's young people seem to take pride in drinking well beyond their capacity, and in behaving horribly. Why do they consider that to be "fun"?? Their behavior is, IMO, genuinely anti-social, and a good number of them need to find both an AA meeting and some self-respect.
“Young people don’t know how to have fun anymore.” “This neighborhood was way better back in my day”.
ReplyDelete“Every liquor license is a bro bar”
I think the record is skipping.
@7:00AM: The neighbors were certainly more respectful years ago!
ReplyDeleteAnd it doesn't help to dis those of us who've lived in this area for many years; we've seen & survived a lot more changes than you realize. The one change that IS for the better now is that we don't have prostitutes plying their trade; that was an issue in parts of the East Village for about a hundred years (yes, really; you can look it up).
PS: No one (except you!) said "every liquor license is a bro bar"; that's b/c liquor licenses themselves do not determine clientele. But the owners of those bars set the tone & decide who they want to attract, and it's bro-city here now. BTW, today's bro's wouldn't have lasted 10 minutes around here, the way this neighborhood used to be. (Actually, they'd have been too scared to even BE in this neighborhood back then; they usually stayed on the UES.) People mostly used to come down here for drugs, drugs, drugs. And again, you can't picture it, yet in fact for a long time the ONLY reason anyone was on 13th St. between Fourth & Third Avenues after dark was if they were looking to score drugs.
"As frequent as people who come on this blog and complain about college kids and young adults living their lives in a college area. As if the same folks complaining were so responsible during their younger days."- Amazingly enough, @Anon. 8:45, there was a time when this was not a "college area", when it was simply "NYU is part of the neighborhood", before they were given license to become the non-tax-paying monster they currently are, before they attracted the never-ending droves of drunk woo-hooers living out their fantasies of anarchy and badassery on their daddies' dimes. And yes, those of us who lived here in those pre-behemoth NYU days acted a lot more civilized and responsible than the dreck currently polluting the neighborhood. One, we were just more mature. Two, if you called attention to yourself the way these muggles do, you would have been setting yourself up for, at best, a mugging, at worst - well, figure it out. This was not a neighborhood where anyone came to play or display public drunkenness unless you were a wino on the Bowery. It was dark, and dangerous, and everyone knew it - when I first moved here taxis would not even go east of First Avenue. If you came here to buy drugs you went straight to your destination, copped, and got out as fast as you could. You didn't hang out. Bars were few and far between, and at that point were pretty much the purview of the then-still-extant blue collar Polish and Ukrainian clientele, with an occasional punk or squatter thrown into the mix. It wasn't Disneyland East, the way it is now, and we who lived here, despite, or maybe because of, the post apocalyptic tone to it, were the better for it.
ReplyDelete@2:22pm: Thank you for the clarity of what you said. I have been in this area since I was in my early 20's, & now I'm retired, and I can attest to the truth of every word you wrote.
ReplyDeleteWhat most of the currently young folks don't realize is that back in the 1970's, NYU was NOT a factor in this area - mostly b/c NYU thought this neighborhood wasn't nice enough, and their students were AFRAID to be this far east (TRUTH).
Everyone over the age of 50 in this area remembers exactly what it was like here BEFORE there were ANY dormitories in this area. The nearest dorm was the Brittany at 10th & B'way. Nothing farther east, b/c THAT was too scary for NYU!
Then in the 1980's NYU decided they needed to be *more than* a "commuter school" - which is what they were known as then. In order to do that, they needed to build DORMITORIES, lots & lots of them. To do THAT, they needed LAND - and there were, at that time, numerous large empty lots in this area - where you could encounter prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, etc.
NYU came in as if they were the savior of the world. Their self-righteous pitch was "We are going to SAVE your neighborhood & lift it up from the gutter you're all living in" by building dorms here & thus rendering the area so "wholesome" that even freshmen would be "safe" living here.
Of course, NYU didn't actually give a shit about the neighborhood - that goes without saying. And NYU ignored the fact that all of us who were already living here didn't need to be "saved" by them. We were doing fine.
NYU also took advantage - major advantage - of the state law that allows DORMS to be built MUCH LARGER than any other kind of building in a given area.
Back in the 1970's, our neighborhood held protests re: a particular empty lot that was going to be sold to a developer who intended to put up a hotel. And our protest succeeded, b/c the developer withdrew from the purchase. Then, instead of a hotel, NYU bought the land & we ended up with a dormitory on that spot - a building more enormous than the hotel ever could have been.
And why had we protested the hotel? Because we needed affordable permanent HOUSING for the long-term residents of the area, and a hotel would only attract transients. We cared very much about our neighborhood and our neighbors.
Today, instead of tourists & hotel guests, we have ENTITLED transients who are called "NYU students."
So maybe some of you "Hey, I'm young & wanna have fun, woo-woo!" bro's might get a clue that this neighborhood not only existed, but in fact had many diverse businesses & THRIVED, before you were even born.
Maybe you can try to comprehend why the vile drunkenness we now endure with all the bars & partying is offensive to any rational person. I think the bro's & their parents wouldn't want this kind of drunken nonsense going on every week (and worse on weekends) on the street in front of the house where THEIR own families live.
"The neighbors were certainly more respectful years ago!"
ReplyDelete"The one change that IS for the better now is that we don't have prostitutes plying their trade"
And how much less murdery it is. When I was a tween we had over 50 murders a year in the "East Village".