The 'for rent' signs have arrived on the corner of 14th Street and Avenue A

Spotted yesterday on the sidewalk shed...

A three-alarm fire wiped out the corner on May 12, 2010... taking with it neighborhood favorites Stuyvesant Grocery and Pete's-a-Pizza ...

[EV Grieve reader Sergey]

The corner has sat vacant since crews stripped the place clean several months after the fire... the owners of both businesses had said that they wanted to reopen here ...

[February 2011]

Conspiracy theories abound for this corner ripe for development. The usual suspects such as NYU have already been eliminated. (Via The Villager.)

The number is for Solil Management/Sol Goldman Investments. We didn't find any details about terms of the rentals, space available, air rights, etc.

Thoughts on what type of development will eventually land here?

Previously on EV Grieve:
Conspiracies: What next for 14th Street and Avenue A?

Renovations in order for Stuyvesant Grocery and Pete's-A-Place?

That color purple prompts the NYU fear

As EV Grieve reader Tom noticed during this past weekend, someone put a coat of primer on the plywood at the burned-out corner of 14th Street and Avenue A...

Then! Yesterday, someone painted the plywood various shades of purple and violet... Said Tom: "I thought, oh shit, maybe the rumor that NYU bought/was buying the property and turning it into dorms was true."

However! Tom noticed the two people painting the plywood... and talked with them...

They said that they were painting the construction wall as part of a fundraiser for an arts group. And they chose the color purple because they thought it would look nice....

Previously.

What's left of Stuyvesant Grocery and Pete's-a-Place — and come back soon

On Sunday, we posted some photos sent along by EV Grieve reader Tom from the fire-damaged stretch of stores on 14th Street and Avenue A ... The high winds knocked over the plywood... offering a peak at what's left inside... here are a few more shots we took on Sunday...

... and yesterday...

And yesterday afternoon .... workers were putting the plywood back...

[Bottom photos via Bobby Williams]

And per Tom in the comments:

Last summer I had heard from the manager of Petes-A-Place that they weren't planning to reopen until October. I wondered why it would take that long. But I guess it's understandable if they're going to do zero work during the winter.

Wind knocks out Stuyvesant Grocery plywood on 14th Street and Avenue A

Thanks to EV Grieve reader Tom for these shots yesterday along 14th Street at Avenue A... where the high winds wiped out the plywood outside the fire-damaged buildings along this commercial stretch...

..later in the evening workers put up barriers ...

An update on the Three Monkeys fire scene

BoweryBoogie has an update on last night's fire at Three Monkeys on Rivington and Ludlow. As BB notes, it doesn't look so good.

Fire on Second Avenue

...near Sixth Street...



Photo via @isaidgoshdamn. Anyone have any information on what happened here?

Not much left at the fire-damaged corner of 14th Street and Avenue A

Back in May, the stores here on 14th Street at Avenue A were wiped out by a fire.



Workers have been on the scene removing the fire-damged debris...



Which doesn't leave much else.




One of the workers said they were just there to take away what's left. He wasn't aware of what might happen here in the future...



Conspiracies/thoughts/ideas/gossip are welcome.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Conspiracies: What next for 14th Street and Avenue A?

Renovations in order for Stuyvesant Grocery and Pete's-A-Place?

Breaking: Fire at Ageloff Towers

There's word of a fire at the Ageloff Towers on Avenue A between Third Street and Fourth Street... No other information just yet. Anyone with more info or photos?

[Photo via RyanAvenueA]

Renovations in order for Stuyvesant Grocery and Pete's-A-Place?

Plywood has gone up at 14th Street and Avenue A... where the stores were lost to a three-alarm fire in May...




The only work permit on file states: ALTERATION TYPE 3 - CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT - FENCE
ERECT AND DISMANTLE 8 FOOT HIGH WOOD CONSTRUCTION FENCE AS PER PLANS FILED HEREWITH.

The permit is issued to All City Remodeling in Long Island City....



Perhaps a good sign... Remodeling and not, say, Demolition. So maybe this prime real estate won't become a condo or dorm. In any event, we're still collecting information here on the status...

Previously on EV Grieve:
Conspiracies: What next for 14th Street and Avenue A?

Activity at Pete's-A-Place, but what does it mean?

A reader noted some activity yesterday at Pete's-A-Place, one of the storefronts destroyed by fire back on May 12... The gates were up at the neighborhood pizza joint, and it looked as if workers were packing/inspecting some damaged kitchen equipment...





And yo9u can see from the photos the current state of Pete's interior...

Stuyvesant Grocery's three signs

I was going through the photos that I didn't use from the last few months, and I came across this one...



I took this about four or five weeks ago... I liked seeing all three Stuyvesant Grocery signs... Jill captured a better shot of it back in March...

On this topic... in case you haven't read it yet... Eryn Loeb writes about Stuyvesant Grocery here at The Faster Times.

Who's the landlord for the strip of stores that caught fire last week?

After the three-alarm fire wiped out the businesses on 14th Street and Avenue A, some residents began speculating about what might happen to the prime block of East Village real estate... The area here also falls outside the East Village/Lower East Side Rezoning ...

A reader says that the same crew who was doing work at Pete's-A-Place, where the fire started, has also been working on renovating Apt. #12 at 542 E. 14th St. at Avenue B. However, there are no permits on file with the DOB for this address.

According to the reader, the DOB has tried to get access to Apt. 12 without success. The workers allegedly don't answer the buzzer or door. There have been six complaints filed with the city since April about this unit. Among other things, the complaints include that the construction in the unit is causing the entire building to shake.

The 542 E. 14th St. building has had problems in the past... In August 2007, Curbed noted that workers ripped out the entire kitchen and bathroom in one unit and left a 12' x 6' hole in the floor in which the tenant could see into the apartment below.

Empire Properties owns 542 E. 14th St. as well as most of the rest of the block, including the fire-stricken businesses. Empire's holding company is the infamous Solil Management, which is the estate of famed real-estate investor Sol Goldman.

[Photo by EV Grieve reader Sergey]

Stuyvesant Grocery owner: "We want to stay here. It became like our home"

DNAinfo's Patrick Hedlund talks to Numan Hauter, 49, owner of the Stuyvesant Convenience Grocery, which has operated at 14th Street and Avenue A the last 20-plus years.

“We know everybody here,” said Hauter’s dad, Alawi Hussien, whose family hails from Yemen.
“These people are our friends,” echoed Stuyvesant Town resident Apoli Hiwali, who’s shopped at the deli “everyday” since it opened two decades ago. “They’re very friendly.”
While Hauter said he hopes to reopen “as soon as possible” ... “I hope they’re going to fix it,” Hauter said of his landlord. “We want to stay here. It became like our home.”

Previously on EV Grieve:
Conspiracies: What next for 14th Street and Avenue A?

Conspiracies: What next for 14th Street and Avenue A?

It didn't take long for the conspiracy theorists to say what IF yesterday's fire turns out to be suspicious ... after all, 14th Street and Avenue A is prime real estate ... and many of the storefronts along this stretch of single-level businesses have been for rent for months and months...

As I noted last summer: "This area on 14th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B is ripe for development. So when when the 'space available' signs went up last summer (2008)...Hello Marc Jacobs! Hello huge Chase branch!'"



Well... according to the Post, the fire started at Pete's-a-Pizza, where a welder was working on a fire-access door. There, his welding torch apparently set some grease on fire. And that was it.

Anyway, Rainbow took over a big space here last July.




The area here also falls outside the East Village/Lower East Side Rezoning ... Noted one reader, "a nice fat dorm here would solve NYU's missing square footage."

Anyway, I'm not suggesting that anything happened here aside from a terrible, accidental fire that destroyed four local businesses... but, it is something to think about... and we've been around long enough to see the unthinkable happen... luxury hotels on the Bowery? An NYU dorm popping up at the site of a venerable pool hall/concert venue//club?

Meanwhile, I've been told that the owners of Stuyvesant Grocery do have insurance. No word just yet on what their plans are. I meant to add that I hope all the businesses will be able to rebuild and reopen here.

Lamenting two lost groceries on Avenue A

With yesterday's three-alarm fire that knocked out four businesses along 14th Street at Avenue A... several readers had nice things to say about the Stuyvesant Grocery....



...another reader mentioned that, with the recent closing of Graceland down on the corner of Second Street, Avenue A has lost two of its neighborhoody friends...

One last look tonight at 14th Street and Avenue A

A little after 9, I was surprised to see the sidewalks had already reopened at 14th Street and Avenue A after the three-alarm fire that started after 10:15 this morning ... If you didn't know any better, then you might just think that these stores here were simply closed for the night... (never mind the lingering smell of smoke...) A few workers from ConEd and Verizon remained on the scene...




Many thanks again to EV Grieve reader Sergey for all his photos today... and thanks to everyone who left comments and shared their thoughts...

Previously.

14th Street, 6:19 p.m., May 12

Stuyvesant Grocery is destroyed

A little after 6 tonight, workers were taking apart the fire-ravaged Stuyvesant Grocery on 14th Street at Avenue A after today's three-alarm fire...





The tree near the store on Avenue A also had to be chopped down to battle the blaze.




Previously.

14th Street fire video

Video by Liberation Iannillo.

(Via BoweryBoogie)

Firefighters also made sure pets were safe from fire

Our friend Cat Sitter in the City posted the following story (and photo credit to Cat Sitter's friend Pauline...)

I saw a few people out on Avenue A clinging to their cats, including the nice guy above, who told me that he lived in an apartment building that was evacuated for fear that it might also catch on fire. The firemen made sure to save any animals that were in the building, he noted, including his handsome cat Gus Roberts.

More on the fire that engulfed the corner of 14th Street and Avenue A here.

Read Cat Sitter here.