The 14th Street Shoe Repair Shop has closed

The 14th Street Shoe Repair Shop, 428 E. 14th St. between Avenue A and First Avenue, has closed.

An EVG reader said that Saturday was the last day for business. We were told that the cobbler could not remain open following a rent increase.

A vendor named Ba had also been selling items such as socks, gloves and phone chargers in front the past three years. (He was at the East Side 99¢ space before this.) EVG reader Michael Paul believes that Ba may move to another storefront on the block.

Previously on EV Grieve:
The shoe repair post that you've been waiting for

Report: Manhattan’s vacancy rates are highest in the East Village (but rent is still going up)

Let's get to some takeaways from the most recent rental outlook via the Elliman Report.

From Curbed:

While median rental prices climbed for the 21st consecutive month, the vacancy rate is the highest it's been in nine years, which means landlords are being forced to offer tenants more concessions on rentals, explains data whiz Jonathan Miller, the author of the Elliman Report.

From DNAinfo:

Miller doesn’t expect to see big rent drops anytime soon since there is still a lot of “pressure” on the rental market — there’s a “robust” economy as well as tight credit and the potential of rising mortgage rates, which prevent some renters from becoming buyers.

But affordability continues to be a big issue, Miller said.

According to Gary Malin, president of Citi Habitats, Manhattan’s vacancy rates were highest in the East Village (3.2 percent), followed by the West Village (2.6 percent).

“The fact that vacancy rates are the highest in the East and West Villages is strong evidence that for apartment seekers, paying high prices for small spaces no longer adds up,” Malin said.

Malin said the “party’s over” for landlords, as inventory has been “trending upward for the past six months,” giving renters more options.

Min's Market is closing today

[Photo via @TheWeeklyNabe]

Last call today for Min's Market on the southeast corner of Clinton Street and East Houston. Not surprisingly, a rent hike is to blame for this ouster.

Meanwhile, stuff is mostly on sale…



H/T Mike Brown/@Lot71

Yoo's Convenience Store — home of New York's 'best coffee' — going out of business on 2nd Avenue

The time for Yoo's is coming to an end at 50 Second Ave. …



The owner (is it Mr. Yoo?) said that the landlord is doubling his rent. "How can they do this?" he said while shaking his head. "But what are you going to do."

We'll miss the handwritten notes here boasting having the best coffee in the city…

Welcome back?

A quick grab of an article this morning on DNAinfo:

Skyrocketing rents, cramped apartments and a cut-throat rental market. Conditions that originally forced New Yorkers out of Manhattan are now sending them back, a report claims.

A real-estate expert said Williamsburg and DUMBO homes have become so hot that people are being priced out — and Manhattan has become a cheaper alternative.

Read the whole article here.

[Image via Free Williamsburg]

Noted

Looking at this morning's headlines...

Per a broker in the article: "Right now, he said, the average rent for a one-bedrooms in Williamsburg is $3,300, $2,875 in Long Island City and $2,800 in the East Village."

Photos by Dave on 7th.

What the rent is for the former Luca Lounge space on Avenue B

I can't tell you exactly when the Luca Lounge closed on Avenue B between 13th Street and 14th Street... I'm guessing it was in April?

In any event, the space is for rent...

Happened to spot the listing at the Croman 9300 site... and it refers to the Luca Lounge as "legendary" ... which must explain why the asking rent is $19,995 dollars per month...

Meanwhile, the Luca Bar remains open on St. Mark's Place...

Oh really?: Rent is getting more expensive

Today, the Post takes a look at the latest real-estate industry reports ... and finds that rentals are getting — no shit! — more expensive. Manhattan rentals increased 8.6 percent last year. The average Manhattan apartment rent is now $3,309 a month.

The East Village is below that rate, with a downright cheap average of $3,027 a month. The above chart breaks it down by apartment size... Meanwhile, according to the report, the average vacancy rate in Manhattan was just 0.96 percent.

really

[EVG Flashback] The Lower East Side: There goes the neighborhood

On occasion we'll revisit an old EVG blog post ... like this one from June 6, 2008 ...

That's the headline for the May 28, 1984, New York magazine cover story that I recently came across. The piece begins in the early 1980s with the rotting hulk of the Christodora and the young man eager to own it, Harry Skydell.

Skydell's enthusiasm was indeed mysterious. The sixteen-story building he wanted to buy, on Avenue B facing Tompkins Square Park, was surrounded by burned-out buildings that crawled with pushers and junkies. It was boarded up, ripped out, and flooded...Early in the seventies, the city had put up the Christodora up for auction and nobody bid.

The building was eventually sold in 1975 for $62,500. (Last I saw, two-bedroom units there -- roughly 1,100 square feet -- average $1.6 million or so. Of course, they're rarely available.)

The article talks about the influx of chain stores, art galleries and chic cafes. "And real-estate values are exploding" as a result. Said one longtime resident on the changes: "I've lived in my rent-controlled apartment for years and pay $115 a month. I live on the Lower East Side. The young kids who just moved in upstairs and pay $700 a month for the same space -- they live in the East Village."

There are so many interesting passages in the article by Craig Unger that I'd end up excerpting the whole thing. So it's below. You can click on each image to read it. Meanwhile, what do you think would be the headline for this story today?

Reminders tonight: A discussion on proposed rent hikes

Reposting this from yesterday...

This is at the corner of the Bowery where the CB3/SLA meetings usually take place.

Reminders tomorrow night: A discussion on proposed rent hikes

This is at the corner of the Bowery where the CB3/SLA meetings usually take place.

Protect tenant rights

Rob from Save the Lower East Side sent this information along...

The June expiration of rent regulations in New York should be a personal concern of every renter, regulated or not. The erosion of rent regulations deprives all renters of rights.

Rent deregulation encourages landlords to withhold basic services since deregulated renters are often afraid to complain to city agencies, knowing that the landlord may retaliate with an unreasonable rent hike at renewal, just to get rid of an outspoken tenant. Tenants associations are weakened by that fear, so all tenants, regulated or not, are harmed. Communities are harmed by market-rate expansion and the transiency it brings, no less than its gentrification effects. The city's culture is harmed by the decreasing availability of affordable space so essential to new artists and communities devoted to creativity and social reflection and social action.

As the pool of regulated tenants dwindles, so does its voting clout. It is more important than ever for all renters to band together to make their voices clear. From Met Council on Housing:

Kick-Off Party for the Met Council on Housing's 2011 Campaigns!

Saturday, Feb. 12, 2011, 1-4 PM

61 East 4th Street, 4th Floor Btwn. the Bowery & 2nd Ave (wheelchair accessible)

Learn about our 2011 campaigns, how you can get involved, and party with a purpose!
• Rent-Law Reform
• Tenants' Bill of Rights
• Stop the Tenant Blacklist

The event is free and open to all. No need to RSVP.

[Image via Met Council on Housing]

Do not be alarmed: Fab 208 space for rent

Prepare yourself for walking by Fab 208 on Seventh Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue... (Maybe East Village vintage stores are doomed?)



As Racked noted last week, the store, which has been on the block for 18 years, is moving to the former (and smaller) Howdy Do space across the street...(We imagine they'll fare much better than the post-Howdy Do tenant .)

Anyway, you guessed it: Rent hike. Per Racked: "So don't be spooked if you see a 'for rent' sign in the window — they are moving, but they're not going far." And this is the first that I noticed the sign...

Meanwhile, we're curious what new business will come calling here at Fab 208...

Mikey's Pet Shop for rent

Last fall, we covered the saga of Mikey's Pet Shop on Seventh Street near Avenue A... the shop eventually closed...



At the time, some readers and Mikey's patrons passed along several tidbits....one reader said that she was told a nail salon is already in place to take over the store... and that Mikey's had to close because the landlord was reportedly raising the rent to $20,000 a month.

A "for rent" sign is now out front....



According to the listing:

Approx 600 SF

$4,500/month

Available Immediately

Available for any use as per Zoning

So no nail salon — yet. It will cost a bundle to turn this place into any kind of eatery...but that's my guess now...something to complement Butter Lane, Porchetta and The Bourgeois Pig on this stretch of Seventh Street between First Avenue and Avenue A....

Previously on EV Grieve:
Mikey's Pet Shop closing at the end of the month

EV rent snapshot

Via BusinessInsider.

Mikey's Pet Shop to become a nail salon?

Several readers have passed along updates on Mikey's Pet Shop on Seventh Street near Avenue A...the store will likely be open until the end of this week...and, despite the moving signs on the sidewalk out front, they don't have a new store just yet...



Another reader said that she was told a nail salon is already in place to take over the store. Mikey's had to close up because the landlord was reportedly raising the rent to $20,000 a month. And a nail salon will be able to afford that...?

And with a new tenant, I imagine we'll be losing Chico's mural...



Previously on EV Grieve:
Mikey's Pet Shop closing at the end of the month

Mikey's Pet Shop closing at the end of the month

A reader passes along some sad news: Mikey's Pet Shop on Seventh Street near Avenue A is closing at the end of the month. According to the reader: The landlord raised rent to $20K a month.

The reader ended the note with a "sigh."

I'll add a double sigh.

As you'll remember, Pretty Boy — the Mayor of Seventh Street — wandered into Mikey's one day back in 1988...

Last year at this time on EV Grieve: The Lower East Side — There goes the neighborhood

That's the headline for the May 28, 1984, New York magazine cover story that I recently came across. The piece begins in the early 1980s with the rotting hulk of the Christodora and the young man eager to own it, Harry Skydell.

You can read the article here.

It has begun: The downturn

According to the Times anyway:

EVEN though the average price for a Manhattan apartment, at $1.5 million, is higher than it was a year ago, some New York neighborhoods have already started to feel the downward tug that has wrenched the housing market elsewhere in the nation.

Such as:

Other neighborhoods that experienced price drops include the Lower East Side and the East Village, where median prices fell 5.5 percent...

Rent ends; Life lives on

Rent is ending its 12-year run on Broadway. Meanwhile, fans of the musical won an online video contest to attend a party at the Life Café where the first scene is set. The Times has the back story today:

For Kathy Kirkpatrick, the owner of the Life Café, it was a moment she had resisted. During nearly all of the show’s run, she had done little more to capitalize on the cafe’s appearance in the show than to put up a poster signed by the cast . . .

“We thought if we did anything it would look like we were exploiting the show, and that’s not what we are about,” Ms. Kirkpatrick said.

But times have changed — and so have the needs of fans, who began to take menus as souvenirs. Since the play announced in March that it was closing, the cafe has begun to sell “Rent” memorabilia, designing a line of T-shirts, buttons, hats and tote bags and displaying journals in which fans can memorialize how the play has touched them.

In today’s East Village, expensive glass-fronted condominiums abut rows of hip Mexican and Asian restaurants, and the anti-materialistic, bohemian spirit immortalized in “Rent” can be difficult to see.

Gone are the days when the Life Café could stay afloat selling 50-cent bowls of vegetarian chili cooked over a Coleman burner, as it did in 1981, when it opened in a dilapidated storefront on East 10th Street and Avenue B, surrounded by abandoned buildings and shuttered storefronts.

The rent Life Café pays is now “well over $9,000 a month,” said John Sunderland, Ms. Kirkpatrick’s husband, and may double when the lease comes up for renewal in June.

So when “Rent’s” public relations firm asked whether the Life Café would host a video contest and party to mark the end of the show, Ms. Kirkpatrick said yes. “It’s hard to continue on in the way we have over the years without taking some hard, tough decisions to move forward. You do have to be creative in order to survive,” she said.

Here is the list of the winners and their videos. I'm not sure of any of these Rent fans were winners (oh, the third clip was a winner). . .here's their entry via YouTube: