Sure, this gritty East Village enclave saw its fair share of shenanigans related to drug use and violent crime not terribly long ago, and perhaps that’s one reason why new housing construction here has remained relatively dormant — until now.
Yes, at last, Alphabet City is getting a healthy dose of nice housing, and experts agree the activity there comes hand-in-hand with downtown’s development boom. But it also marks developers’ discovery of the area’s cheaper land and convertible buildings. Combined with buyers’ strong demand for downtown living, this previously overlooked zone is filling up quickly with more upscale new options. (They’re a far cry from the rundown artists’ shacks immortalized in the ’90s hit musical “Rent.”)
Beyond the friendly atmosphere and better prices, sources say Alphabet City’s creative spirit — thanks to a long-standing community of artists — is another lure for house hunters.
“What’s nice about the East Village is that it’s finally becoming residentially amenable to everybody,” says Nest Seekers’ Ryan Serhant — who’s gearing up to launch sales at Magnum Real Estate Group’s 33-unit 100 Ave. A. Meanwhile, Magnum’s president, Ben Shaoul, says the area’s “very cool modern bohemian lifestyle vibe” is a winning factor for buyers.
543.5 East 6th Street consists of two contiguous and inter-connected buildings at the corner of Avenue B and East 6th Street. The buildings comprise five residential apartments and two ground floor commercial units, all free market and all currently leased. The free market residential units are on annual leases and the commercial leases expire on 2020 and 2016.
Additionally, there are approximately 800 square feet of available air rights. Luxury triplex unit with deck and private roof, currently rented at $9,000.00/ month, would make an excellent owner occupied unit. Triplex and one bedroom units could be upgraded to increase rent roll. Roof replaced 1 year ago. New HVAC units in triplex. Triplex decks replaced one year ago. Great opportunity to own a performing asset, or as a live in opportunity with income.
[T]hese five buildings on East Fifth Street received a coordinated visit last Thursday [Oct. 22] by a group of representatives from the New York State Attorney General’s office, The New York City Department of Buildings and The New York State Division of Housing and Renewal. All apartment doors were knocked on, and representatives spoke with available tenants, made inspections of apartment conditions and building conditions and issued violations to the buildings. Perhaps the presence of these state and city agencies will ensure that Toledano’s tenants on East Fifth Street will not have to suffer what those at 444 East 13th St. did.
We are doing our best to have your monthly rent payments processed as soon as possible and apologize for any delay in doing so during this first month of ownership. Moving forward you can be confident that processing of your payments will be timely and accurate. This being said, if you have found that your rent check has not been processed for the month of October 2015 and your bank account has not been debited, please re-send your payment to the below address. We have been informed by USPS that there was a system glitch, which resulted in the return of numerous tenant's rent payments. This was remedied on October 19,2015.
If your payment was processed and thus your account has been debited, no action is required on your part. Please continue to ensure that your check is made payable to the order of
the specific LLC designated to your building.
Name: Robert, who is a little camera shy, with Stellar
Occupation: Hair Stylist
Location: 2nd Street and Avenue A
Time: 5 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 23
I’m from upstate New York originally. I moved to California after graduating from SUNY Binghamton. I went to beauty school and ended up having my own salon. It was great. I had traveled around California and had friends who were living in Monterey. I spent 15 years there. But I became sick of the friggin’ fog.
I came to the city in 1986. My parents were moving back up from Florida. I spent two weeks with friends from California and partied my ass off. Then an apartment I had fell through at the last minute and friends said, oh but so and so knows this place on St. Mark's and 1st, so I ended up there with a couple of roommates.
At that point, I would come to Avenue A, go to Odessa, go to the Pyramid Club to go dancing and stuff, but you couldn’t go into the Park. It was a real mess. But I enjoyed the part of the neighborhood you could walk in. It was friendly. You could actually talk to people and meet people and stuff. There’s a sense of community. It’s changing. There are all these new buildings that to me don’t seem to fit in.
My career went really great in California. After a few years I got a clientele together and had my own salon. I was busy as hell. Then when I moved here, I found a salon to work in on 7th and 23rd. It was called Eclipse. I started dating the hair colorist. Then the salon closed for back taxes. We were able to get clients files. So we ended up sitting on 23rd Street splitting up the files. It was coming up summer and you know how dead the city gets. We were like how are we really going to survive?
I ended up back in California because that was the place where I knew. Only lasted a year there because [my boyfriend] freaked out. I think he expected Florida. In California, he'd stand on the balcony looking out through the fog and say, They called this place fuckin’ beautiful?
So we moved to Orlando. This was back in the 1990s. There were lots of job openings and, of course, the weather was great. We had a pool in the backyard and a two-bedroom house. But you can’t make any money. After doing hair for 20 years I was getting paid like $7.50 an hour. I stayed for two years and had eight jobs. I worked a couple jobs for Disney — for the Epcot Center.
I ended up coming back here. I moved to an apartment on Avenue A near 14th Street. There was a large thunderstorm once when I wasn’t there. I came back and said something’s wrong downstairs. There was black mold from floor to ceiling and all around. And [management] did their half-assed renovation of it. They just took a cloth and washed it and slapped on some paint. I didn’t think it was healthy to continue living there. I tried to get the landlord to check it out, to do something about it. The building manager wouldn’t so I got a local lab. I took a piece and they tested it and it came back with like four pages. It was Stachybotrys plus seven or eight other molds. My landlord was like, You’re just freaking out. I was like, You’re goddam right I’m freaking out.
So it was time to move. And now I'm in an apartment between C and D. It is a safer place in a lot of ways, but, then again, I would say that I don’t think it’s that safe, especially on Avenue D and especially later at night. I was returning home [over the summer] and walking the dog. I went up the steps and I saw the cops who were walking by me and I said, thank you for being out here and walking the beat, because I feel like Avenue D is going downhill and they turned to me and said, the whole neighborhood is going downhill.
In my building, two people have reported junkies walking in during the afternoon … and finding junkies in the hallway shooting up. As you walk down the stairs, there are stairs that lead into the basement. I walked out awhile ago and there was a junkie on the steps. He turned and looked up at me and carried on.
"This store closure is a next step in implementing our previously announced turnaround plan, which includes closing underperforming locations and investing in new stores in promising areas."
The first location opened in 1995 in Chinatown on the corner of Mott Street and Bayard Street. Back then I don't believe bubble tea was even a word in the English Dictionary. Now you can get bubble tea almost anywhere.
When foods get popular, they get commoditized. It becomes a way for many people to cash in on what's popular today. This is a double edged sword. The obvious benefit is the popularity. I am very happy that the product is getting national, even international recognition. The downside is that in many attempts to cash in, some very important aspects are taken for granted. The quality is compromised for profit margins. The experience is compromised for convenience.
Development rights — also known as air rights — are a hotly contested jewel sought by Manhattan developers. Every property has its own allocation of air rights based on zoning, and for those buildings that haven’t used all of them, the rights can be sold to others looking to build vertically. But such sales are generally restricted to properties on the same block.
Stuyvesant Town has more than 700,000 square feet of these rights, according to people who have reviewed the property’s zoning. That is more than half the size of the Chrysler Building— roughly enough for about 1,000 rental apartments.
[W]e must express our concern regarding your intention to pursue transferring air rights from ST/PCV to the surrounding communities. This component of the agreement has not been disclosed in any detailed way either in the public documents or in our New York’s communities are keenly aware of the potential impacts associated with air rights, and any plan to radically change the zoning of a large parcel of land must include the community’s voice. ST/PCV tenants, the local community board, and the surrounding neighborhoods need and deserve a detailed description of Blackstone’s intentions including the scale, timeline and public purpose of the zoning change.
Air rights are not a commodity that can be transferred across the city at will; they are zoned onto individual properties pursuant to a larger neighborhood plan and only after full consideration of the potential impacts. The transfer of air rights from one block to another has only been permitted in connection with a clear public purpose and only when limited to the immediate vicinity of the site in question...
While ST/PCV is an iconic community endowed with substantial open space, the two superblocks that make up the complex include neither landmarks nor public parks. Further, the neighborhoods immediately surrounding the superblocks have few vacant parcels to accommodate any new density. Therefore, the public purpose of your proposal, and the boundaries within which an air rights transfer can occur, are not readily apparent.
The public reporting has indicated that only 700,000 square feet of air rights are available on the site. However, the October 2015 term sheet applies no restriction on the total density that can be transferred, and Department of City Planning data indicates that the unused air rights on the two superblocks could amount to 10.7 million square feet when community facility uses are included. While we recognize that no official number has yet to be set, the potential impacts of 10.7 million square feet of density on public transit, streets or other critical infrastructure are staggering, and the true number must be clarified and publicly disclosed.
Finally, while we appreciate that no formal agreement has been submitted, a change of this potential magnitude deserves immediate public disclosure and discussion. It is essential that these conversations begin prior to finalizing an agreement to ensure time for community consultation.
