Why the trees were cut down on Fifth Street next to the Cooper Square Hotel

To make room for the hotel's trash.

Previously on EV Grieve:
What's new around the Cooper Square Hotel: Sidewalk, lack of trees

Cooper Square Hotel ready for chilly reception

Winterizing at the Coop.

Meanwhile, as Jeremiah reported on Friday, there's rumor that the SoHo Grand Hotel team has bought the troubled Cooper Square Hotel.

Silver working to save the east side of the Bowery from further towering development

More development is certainly in the works along Cooper Square and the Bowery... Like this newish "for sale" sign that was added to the empty lot at Sixth Street and Cooper Square... While the City Planning Commission voted to approve rezonings in the Third and Fourth Avenue corridors in the East Village last week, one important area wasn't included: The Bowery.

The west side of the Bowery has a height limit of 120 feet. However! On the east side, developers can toss up anything that they'd like, and they have: the Bowery Hotel, the Cooper Square Hotel, New Museum, the new Cooper Union Building, and 52E4.

In The Observer today, Matt Chaban reports that the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors (BAN, if you're nasty) have a powerful ally: Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver.

Despite his persuasive ways, the city doesn't exactly seem to be cowering with fear... Per Chaban's aricle:

Rachaele Raynoff, a department spokeswoman, explained it this way in an email:

The Department of City Planning appreciates the dynamic nature of the historic Bowery, and its enduring strength as a vital, economically thriving corridor, having seen a range of new development activity and investment. The wide, centrally-located street continues to support a mix of commercial, residential, community and cultural uses, and has excellent access to mass transit. As the Department considers citywide policies on rezoning, we work hard to balance the varying needs of a broad and ever-expanding city and continually seek to strike a balance among uses, constituencies and planning strategies.

In other words, were the city to downzone everything, there would be nowhere left to build.

Out and About in the East Village

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village. James is traveling this week. East Village writer and photographer Joann Jovinelly compiled today's post.



By Joann Jovinelly

Name: Sally Young
Occupation: Mixed-Media Artist, Political Activist and
Preservationist, Photographer
Location: Sixth Street Community Garden
Time: 10:30 AM on Friday, Sept. 27

Part II (Read Part I here)

Beginning in 2005, we started to see a lot more redevelopment [in this neighborhood]. A huge glass hotel went up on the end of my street, the Cooper Square Hotel. We began to see the scaffolding go up around the buildings and then the buildings came down. That was when I started photographing like crazy, both on film and digitally. That was also around the same time the Cooper Union Hewitt building came down; I was photographing it every morning, photos that I eventually assembled in an accordion book.

I was looking at what was going on my block, East Fifth Street, and I noticed that there was a Federal house there, 35 Cooper Square, and it was still standing. I became very interested in Federal houses and the [older] architecture of New York.

In 2006, I set up a stand in front of my apartment building as part of the Art in Odd Places exhibit where I gave away my photo postcards. And I created a book with wooden pages that people could flip through to learn more about the architecture in the neighborhood. That is how I got my Deconstructing Bowery book together.

Eventually, I wrote a history of 35 Cooper Square from the time it was built in 1826, information that was used to help unsuccessfully landmark the structure, which was demolished in 2011. Even though there were major protests to save that building, the landmark proposal was rejected.

Another address I researched, 135 Bowery, which was built in 1817, had been slated for preservation and approved, but it was sold off to build “affordable” office space. In that case, just one council member had overturned the decision to preserve the building in order to provide the aforementioned offices, but the new owners lied, tore the building down, and immediately put the lot up for sale. In 2007, a group of other concerned citizens, myself included, formed the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors to preserve what’s left of the Bowery’s architecture.

I know that when artists come in, eventually gentrification follows, but today we’re talking hyper-gentrification. For instance, now there are areas on West Fourth Street that are so heavily congested with students that you can barely get through the block. I remember a few years ago before the big explosion of NYU, and there were signs up in the West Village that said, ‘Do you think this neighborhood is safe enough for NYU students?’ and I kind of wanted to flip that around and ask, ‘Do you think that the neighborhood is safe enough to withstand NYU development?’ I saw that question as a reversal, much before all of the redevelopment began happening.

The concerns of the newcomers today are far different from those waves of people who came to New York in past generations. We were involved with our community; most of today’s newcomers are not. We had rent strikes. We were committed. There were a lot of problems; there was a lot of crime. Most of those areas were just bombed out. We were under siege. All we could do then was work together. That’s around the time, in the early 1980s, when we stared creating the gardens like the Sixth and B Garden. While this is among the most protected of those green spaces in the neighborhood, others are still at risk.

In the 1980s, people bonded together, and that bond literally grew this neighborhood. Look at all these beautiful places that you can still enjoy. These days, newcomers moving to the neighborhood have slick, renovated apartments for which they pay a great deal. They’re often living with a bunch of people. But there are few among them who are actually fully invested in the East Village; instead they are in transition. They aren’t living here to put down roots. For years, I never saw a moving van on my block; now I see them all the time.

Read Part 1 of our interview with Sally Young here. Check out Sally's website here.

Joann Jovinelly is a freelance writer and photographer who still calls the East Village home.

Big changes in the works for the Standard East Village lobby, outdoor space; Café on the Bowery anyone?

The Standard East Village is on Monday night's CB3/SLA agenda... and, based on the documents on file at the CB3 website (PDF), some major alterations are in store for the hotel's public spaces on Cooper Square and East Fifth Street...

The documents clearly spell out the plans (click on the images to enlarge)...

A few highlights if you don't feeling like looking at the documents:

• The Hotel plans to close the second-floor bar/terrace to convert it to a guest room (with terrace). (If approved, then the change should eliminate this from happening.)

• The Hotel plans to expand the lobby and take over half of the current garden space that lines East Fifth Street. (They are requesting a service bar in this space.) There will also be a lobby garden (with soundproofing).

• The Hotel plans to introduce Café on the Bowery outside the front entrance. This space will run from Hettie Jones' home (the tenement the former Cooper Square incorporated into the hotel) to the northern property line. They'd like a liquor license for this outdoor space (transferring the one from the to-be-shuttered second-floor lounge).

• The Hotel would like to extend the hours of the current restaurant garden space from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. In exchange, the Hotel will add a "retractable soundproofed temporary enclosure" to use during those hours.

How will the neighbors respond? The meeting is Monday at 6:30 at the JASA/Green Residence, 200 East Fifth Street — right across the street from the hotel...

10 years and many glass towers ago on the Bowery

I posted this earlier today over yonder at the New York Nobody Sings....

I can't say that I have any opinion of UK singer-songerwriter Beth Orton. Eh.

But. The video for her "Central Reservation" was shot on the Bowery and other parts of the Lower East Side. The song is from 1999 — just 10 years ago, but look at how much has changed. You'll get a good shot of Cooper Square around the 28-second mark. No Bowery Hotel. Cooper Square Hotel. 2 Cooper Square. The Astor Place Tower. Avalon Bowery Place....

To no surprise, 35 Cooper Square will be torn down

On Friday afternoon, we posted photos of the new scaffolding at 35 Cooper Square. EV Grieve correspondent Bobby Williams was also on the scene. Bobby tried to ask one of the crew members what they were doing. The worker's reaction was all we needed to hear about what would be happening next: "It ain't me."

In a nonshocker, crews will soon begin tearing down the 186-year-old building. Both Jeremiah and the Local East Village posted the letter from developer Arun Bhatia (via an attorney) to council member Rosie Mendez about his final decision on the fate of the historic building:

"Unfortunately, it was concluded that it would not be feasible to develop the site with the building or any significant portion of it remaining."

Meanwhile, the developer will be making a financial contribution to the Landmarks Conservancy to help document the histories of Federal buildings such as 35 Cooper Square for which "creation of an historic record is all that can be done," as Jeremiah reported.

Let the condo/hotel/dorm building begin!

Previously on EV Grieve:
35 Cooper Square, 'this much-beloved little building,' dies at age 186

East Village — the new Midtown?

While we wait to learn more about the future of 35 Cooper Square, this is a good time to stop and note how vastly different this stretch of the neighborhood on the Bowery, Cooper Square and Astor Place ... from East Third Street up to East Ninth Street will look in, say, three years... Here's a recap of what's coming soon...

This summer, work is expected to start at the soon-to-be-demolished Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art building here...

As The Wall Street Journal reported , Edward Minskoff plans to build "a 430,000-square-foot tower on a site overlooking Astor Place ... Just outside the trendy East Village, it's an unorthodox location for an office building. Most of the city's modern office space is in Midtown and the Financial District."

According to the Minskoff Equities website, the 13-story mixed-use office, education and retail building is planned for Spring 2013.

Moving south...The city unveiled plans in January to dramatically reconfigure streets, parks and traffic islands around Astor Place and Cooper Union...

Here are a few images on what the space will look like...

There's a lot happening here, much of it positive. You can read coverage at Curbed ... BoweryBoogie ... The Observer has a slide show here ... The Architects Newspaper...
(The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation has an issue with eliminating parts of Astor Place and Stuyvesant Street...)

And then there's 35 Cooper Square at Sixth Street.

Arun Bhatia hasn't made plans for the space here public. However, the developer specializes in dorms and luxury condos. So that's a safe bet.

Here's one of their recent projects at 139 Wooster...

I'm going with luxury housing here... new digs for the folks working in 51 Astor Place...

Finally, there's 347 Bowery at Third Street...

...which will one day be a 72-room boutique hotel that would look like...

So... what does all this mean? We can speculate all we want... but likely an increase in rents... which may drive out the little shops along St. Mark's Place...

... to make way for the kind of businesses catering to a new office building. So maybe a Pret A Manger, Subway, Bread Factory and a Ranch 1 for office workers ... We hope we're wrong about the possible domino effect of all the new high-end housing, hotel and office building. Perhaps this is a good time to appreciate what's still here.

A few questions for spring

Food and real estate edition

1) When will the escalator renovations at the Zeckendorf Towers be completed on Union Square? (Now entering the third year...)



2) When will the 123 Third Ave. sales center open?



3) What will happen to the southwest corner of 14th Street and Third Avenue?



4) Who will post the first bill on the sidewalk shed on Seventh Avenue and Avenue A?



5) When will Diablo Royale open at 167 Avenue A?



6) Will anything happen with the long empty building that housed the former Angelica's Herbs on First Avenue and Ninth Street?




7) Who will be the new owners of Superdive, and will they keep the same keg-service concept?



8) Who will be the first to introduce the 89-cent slice?



9) When will we see more of Veselka on the Bowery?



10) Will Duane Reade expand into the basement space of the former Dolphin Gym on Avenue B?



11) Will Cabin Down Below do something about its stairs?



12) When will Curbed get the sordid details of the first beserk A Building pool party of the 2010 season? (My guess: June 2)



13) When will the Village Green gym show itself?



14) Will the Cooper Square Hotel keep the noise down this season? ... Or! When will we get the first installment of Notes from the Backside at the Cooper Square Hotel this season? (My guess: April 27)



15) When will the Pita Pan Sports Grill at Second Avenue and Sixth Street open?

Here's what left of 186 years of history on Cooper Square

A stairway to a ghost building on the Cooper Square Hotel.

And as a reminder, the 35 Cooper Square funeral/rally is tonight at 6 right here.

Meanwhile, here are a few shots from yesterday via EV Grieve correspondent Bobby Williams...

Yesterday at 35 Cooper Square

Yesterday afternoon, part of 35 Cooper Square started coming down. (Here's a photo via Curbed.) Still, not quite the full-on wrecking ball shitshow some people expected.

EV Grieve contributor Bobby Williams was on the scene too.

He noted a few suits looking down at the condemned property from the Cooper Square Hotel next door...

...including (MAYBE!) developer Arun Bhatia there on the right (have only ever seen him with a helmet on...)

...after a little while the suits left...