Monday, December 6, 2021

Preparing the former B Bar & Grill for demolition on the Bowery

Plywood now surrounds the former B Bar & Grill on the Bowery at Fourth Street... signaling that the demolition of the one-level structure is likely imminent... 
As we first reported in January, permits were filed for a 21-floor mixed-use development — a 283-foot-tall office building. (For comparison, the Standard East Village, a block to the north, is 21 floors.) The city approved the permits on Nov. 16, per public records.

According to plans, the well-employed architect Morris Adjmi's building will encompass 98,799 square feet, with 26,000 square feet set aside as an unspecified community facility. 

As pointed out here in August, a billboard for the new building looms over the doomed property (right below the "Licorice Pizza" spot)... 
Meanwhile, here's a look through the blogger portal on the plywood...
CB Developers paid $59.5 million for a stake in 358-360 Bowery, a gas station before its conversion into the bar-restaurant. B Bar owner Eric Goode, who owns a handful of hotels, including the Bowery Hotel across the way, assembled air rights to build the more extensive development on this corner space. 

As for the B Bar, the one-time hot spot (circa the mid-1990s) was expected to close for good in August 2020. However, the place never reopened after the PAUSE in March 2020. On April 3, 2020, nearly 70 B Bar employees were laid off without any extension of benefits or offer of severance pay.


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are six Honey Locust trees in the courtyard of the former bar and grill at this location that should be protected from being cut down and discarded. I submitted a 311 complaint about those trees and received a response that the NYC Parks and Recreation is going to the location to look into the matter. I hope they can do something.

Anonymous said...

I hate everything about this - the people who were treated like garbage when they lost their jobs, the destruction for more 'luxury' development, yet another generic glass box that looks like 1000 other buildings, the loss of open sky, the months of scaffolding...what will this neighborhood gain? You could argue B-Bar was already gentrifying the area, but this is worse.

Anonymous said...

Cooper Union owned this lot, formerly a gas station, and sold it to Goode, who started out owning clubs, including Area. The people who started the Good Food Coop on 4th Street tried to get the lease and turn it into a recycling center after Cooper Union ended the gas station lease. Goode got the space after having kids at tables set up outside who got people to sign petitions in support of them getting the space. Spouted a load of nonsense about how BBar was going to do so much for the neighborhood. They did absolutely nothing for the neighborhood and now they are putting up a building that was originally supposed to be all offices and is now mixed use. Last thing we need in a city with so many empty offices for rent. How soon will they sell it for a dorm or "luxury" condos. The trees in the courtyard did more for the neighborhood then anything else this place has done or will do. Predatory capitalism wins again.

Anonymous said...

Mad because it was a gas station. Mad that it was a club. Mad that is going to be a building with ground floor stores. Clearly the only solution is a newly built pre-war walk up with tasteful graffiti, an organic but not too organic bodega, non-profit cooperative art gallery with a wide selection of anarchist books, but obviously nothing published after 1991, and only biographies of Bakunin.

anonymous said...

I remember when b-bar was a gas station. Never really cared for it, but I’m not looking forward too some boxy ugly luxury condo tower.