Construction watch: 287 E. Houston St.

These photos are from Sunday. By now, there's likely another few floors.

Work has been zipping right along here at 287 E. Houston St. between Clinton and Suffolk... site of a planned 11 stories of condos...



The 120-foot-tall luxury building will feature 28 apartments. The development will have two to four apartments on each story, including two duplexes on the first and second floors and a penthouse duplex on the top two floors.

The condoplex's website shows seven available units, starting at $1.18 million for a 624-square-foot unit... and $2.95 million for the 1,100-square foot penthouse with an additional 140-square-feet of outdoor space.

AA Studio is the architect while HOGG Holdings and Vinci U.S. Real Estate are the developers. (Corcoran Group Marketing is heading up sales. And marketing.)

And as for the final product, we'll just drop this in...



The lot here previously housed a tax-preparation business; a landscaping business also shared part of the property.


[Via Google Street View]

Previously on EV Grieve:
11 stories of condos to join the growing East Houston residential corridor

About the Taste of 7th Street 2017

The now-annual Taste of 7th Street begins Thursday and ends Sunday... A $30 ticket gets you an item from 10 different Seventh Street food shops.

The ticket sales end tonight (Tuesday!) at midnight. Find all the details on tickets and participating vendors here.

Updated: Steve Croman's next Criminal Court date is tomorrow morning

Steve Croman, who is charged with 20 felonies and a civil suit accusing him of forcing tenants from their rent-controlled apartments, is due back in court tomorrow morning (Tuesday, May 2).

Croman tenants are holding a rally outside Manhattan Criminal Court at 100 Centre St. at 8:45 a.m. Afterwards, tenants are going to room 1333 on the 13th floor for the legal proceedings.

It has been nearly one year since State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced the charges against Croman. His criminal case has been adjourned and bail continued five times now, according to the Croman Tenants Alliance. (His civil court date is June 5.)



The criminal charges stem from false documents Croman submitted listing rent-regulated units as market-rate apartments and inflating his commercial rental rates to obtain better refinancing. His debt broker, Barry Swartz, was charged with 15 felonies. Croman and Schwartz pleaded not guilty in state Supreme Court last May.

Croman's real-estate empire includes 47 buildings with 617 units in the East Village. As previously noted, Croman owns more buildings in the East Village than any other landlord.

Updated 11:30 a.m.

Richard Johnson at the Post this morning reported that Croman was going to cop a plea that will have him serve eight months behind bars and pay a fine of $5 million to $10 million.

Croman is said to be thrilled he will get off so lightly, and so is his wife, Harriet, who is part of a wealthy clique of Upper East Side moms.

Croman faced up to 25 years in prison on charges of harassing rent-stabilized tenants so he could lease their units at market rates and inflating his rental receipts in order to fraudulently secure $45 million in bank loans.

Vogue Magazine held a pre-Met Gala party on 6th Street Saturday night

Tonight is the annual Met Gala, aka the Costume Institute Gala aka the Met Ball, the fundraising gala for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute. (This evening's honoree is Rei Kawakubo.)

On Saturday night, Vogue Magazine held its annual pre-Met gala at 6BC Botanical Garden and Grape and Grain on Sixth Street between Avenue B and Avenue C.

As we understand it, Vogue "made a very generous gift" to the garden and "promised to be respectful of the space."

Here's the recap via Vogue:

[There was] a “Midsummer Night’s Anime” dress code. All around, guests decked out in their finest mingled amid glowing flowers. For dinner, attendees meandered over to Grape and Grain, an adjacent wine bar, for custom bento boxes from David Bouley’s Brushstroke. Afterward, revelers returned to the garden for a dessert of Taiyaki fish cones topped with matcha green tea ice cream. Trays of Minamoto Kitchoan mochi and cookies were passed, along with glasses of Moët & Chandon Champagne and cups of Heavensake sake.

EVG regular Shawn Chittle shared the photos on this post...

[Updated] A message in Tompkins Square Park

EVG correspondent Steven spotted this earlier today in Tompkins Square Park... someone left an anti-war recording on a tree using three plastic cups as a holder as well an amplifier for the sound...



The device remains in place as of this afternoon, though the recording has stopped...

Updated 6:30

Steven spotted a second homemade speaker... this one is no longer working either...

May is Lower East Side History Month

Via the EVG inbox...

Lower East Side History Month is an annual celebration of the rich and diverse history of the Lower East Side. Each year in May, Lower East Side cultural and community groups, small businesses and residents create a variety of public events, exhibits, tours, and learning opportunities. All events take place in the historical boundaries of the Lower East Side, which includes the East Village, Chinatown, Two Bridges and Loisaida.

The activities officially commence on Wednesday evening with the opening reception for an exhibit titled "A Photographic Journey Through the East Village." The photos will be on display all month at ILevel, an installation gallery, at 37 E. Seventh St. between Second Avenue and Cooper Square. Details here. Find the full calendar of events here.

A proposal to co-name part of 2nd Avenue and 7th Street after the victims of the 2015 gas explosion

Members of CB3's Transportation & Public Safety/Environment Committee will hear a proposal this month to co-name Second Avenue between Seventh Street and St. Mark's Place after the two men who died in the gas explosion here on March 26, 2015.

Authorities have said that siphoned gas at 121 Second Ave. was to blame for the explosion, which killed Moises Ismael Locón Yac and Nicholas Figueroa, and injured two dozen other people.

Figueroa, 23, a recent graduate of SUNY Buffalo State, was at Sushi Park with a co-worker. Locón, an employee at Sushi Park, was 27. Locón sent most of his paycheck back to his family in Guatemala, where he worked as a school teacher before moving to the United States in 2008.

Here's more information about the street co-naming proposal via a petition:

In memory of these young men, we ask that our community honor their lives and demonstrate to their families who their loss was also our loss and that we share in their sorrow by co-naming these blocks.

The petition must be signed by a minimum 75 percent of the total number of residential units and 75 percent of the total number of businesses on these blocks. (We appreciate the support, but do not need signatures from elsewhere in the neighborhood. The petitions will be available at neighboring businesses.)

If approved, then City Council will vote on this in May or June. If passed in the City Council, we will set a date with the Department of Transportation for a street blade installation and have a street co-naming event.

Here's a document (PDF) with more information on CB3's guidelines for co-naming a street. (If you have any questions or want to get more involved, then please email nicholasandmoises [at] gmail [dot] com.)

The committee meeting is May 9 at 6:45 p.m. at Downtown Art, 1st Floor Theater, 70 E. Fourth St. between the Bowery and Second Avenue.

The committee is also expected to hear a request to co-name Second Street between Avenue A and Avenue B for Mary Spink.

Spink, a local business owner and member of CB3, was a community activist and later served as executive director of Lower East Side People’s Mutual Housing Association. She died in January 2012 at age 64.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Updated: 2nd Ave. explosion — landlord, 3 others charged with 2nd degree manslaughter; showed 'a blatant and callous disregard for human life'

Memorial for Mary Spink tomorrow

RIP Nicholas Figueroa

RIP Moises Ismael Locón Yac

The housing limbo of Raphael Toledano's (former) East Village tenants

The New York Times delved into Raphael Toledano's crumbling East Village real-estate empire yesterday... focusing specifically on the resnt-stabilized residents who accepted buyouts to leave their homes — but have yet to receive their payment.

When we last checked in with Toledano, Madison Realty Capital had replaced the 27-year-old landlord as the property manager of 15 East Village buildings while a deal to transfer the ownership was worked out.

Toledano planned to use $124 million worth of financing from Madison Realty Capital for buyouts and renovations.

Per the Times:

What followed was a familiar playbook: Coerce tenants to give up their valuable rent-regulated apartments with threats of eviction or offers of cash payouts, or both. Once the tenants leave, renovate the empty spaces and lease them for considerably more money. “At the end of the day, it’s a part of the business plan,” Mr. Toledano said in a telephone interview.

Then...

“He made it really clear that he was going to make it a miserable place to live,” said Jen Bekman, 47, an entrepreneur who lives in another Toledano-owned building, on East Fifth Street. She also fielded daily calls and texts from the landlord. “Sometimes he’d lose his temper. You could just tell that he was kind of volatile.”

The clock was ticking for Mr. Toledano. His deal with Madison Realty Capital gave him a year to clear out apartments, then renovate and rent them.

In the end, 140 of the 300 tenants who lived in the 15 buildings signed buyout agreements, totaling $7 million in payouts, Toledano confirmed. (Bekman received the largest payout offer — $600,000 for the $1,900-a-month, one-bedroom apartment she lived in for 25 years.)

However, by the time all the buyout offers were finalized, Toledano no longer had the money to pay his debts.

To shield himself from personal liability, Mr. Toledano had purchased each of his properties using limited liability companies. Last summer, the L.L.C.s that owned the buildings in the Madison Realty portfolio went into default and Madison stopped funding the buyouts.

So the residents who took the buyouts are in various stages of housing limbo. You can read the piece for more.

Meanwhile, Toledano has sold off other pieces of his East Village portfolio, as we've noted.

You may want to warn anyone you know who lives in the West Village.

Back to the Times:

[Toledano] said he was in contract with an investor to buy a $200 million portfolio of properties in the West Village, a neighborhood where he said tenants were less organized.

“I kind of want to get out of the East Village walk-up business, to be honest,” he said, without a hint of remorse. “There is so much scrutiny of the buyouts.”

Previously on EV Grieve:
Foreclosure notice arrives on Raphael Toledano-owned building on 12th Street

Claim: Landlord of 444 E. 13th St. threatened 'to drop dynamite on the building'

Cleaning up 444 E. 13th St.

Report: State investigating East Village landlord Raphael Toledano

Health Department to inspect Raphael Toledano's East Village properties for toxic levels of lead dust

Foreclosure notice arrives on Raphael Toledano-owned building on 12th Street

Report: Raphael Toledano files for Chapter 11; $145 million deal for EV portfolio is off the table

Raphael Toledano tenants take to Midtown streets to speak out against their landlord and his lenders

L'Apicio serving its last meal on May 20

L'Apicio has announced a closing date. The upscale Italian restaurant on First Street in the Avalon Bowery Place complex will shut down after service on May 20.

Here is their announcement via Facebook:


Back in March, we reported that Chef Sujan Sarkar was applying for a new liquor license for the space for an unnamed restaurant that will serve "upscale modern Indian cuisine."

Sarkar is the chef partner at Ek Bar, "India's first Artisanal cocktail bar." He is also the chef of Rooh, a similar-sounding restaurant that recently opened in San Francisco.

L'Apicio debuted in 2012. Here's what Pete Wells at The New York Times had to say about it in a generally positive review from December 2012: "L'Apicio can deliver a very enjoyable night out if you don't ask too much of it."

This large space with outdoor seating (capacity inside/outside is 266) here between Second Avenue and the Bowery was also home for four years to the Bowery Wine Company.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Chef Sujan Sarkar bringing 'upscale modern Indian cuisine' to the Bowery

Parantha Alley opens in the Bowery Market today

Parantha Alley, a regular on the Brooklyn food-fair circuit, debuts today at the Bowery Market, the year-round open-air food court at 348 Bowery and Great Jones.

Parantha Alley serves Indian flat bread with a variety of fillings. (Their menu is here.)

Colleen Kong-Savage created the mural...

Just about done w @ParanthaAlley mural! Add counter, menu, sign, then fresh paranthas come to Bowery Markt May 1! #indianfood #illustration pic.twitter.com/0doW0mFyj6

— Colleen Kong-Savage (@KongSavage) April 23, 2017

Parantha Alley joins Alidoro and Sushi on Jones here. The Market launched last July with five vendors... and since then, the mini outposts of Champion Coffee, The Butcher's Daughter and Pulqueria have moved on, as previously noted.

Previously on EV Grieve:
A winterized Bowery Market, now down to 3 vendors

The Bowery Market opens today with 5 year-round food vendors

A new vendor for the Bowery Market

Bowery Road and the Library of Distilled Spirits check into the Hyatt Union Square

The new bar-restaurant is now open at the Hyatt Union Square — please welcome Bowery Road to Fourth Avenue and 13th Street.

Here's more about it:

Gather at Bowery Road, a neighborhood American restaurant. Chef Ron Rosselli's flavorful and thoughtfully prepared dishes are inspired by long relationships with local farmers and purveyors and loaded with seasonal produce from the Union Square Greenmarket. The restaurant takes its name from its location on 4th Avenue, which was formerly called Bowery Road when it served as the pathway to Peter Stuyvesant's farm.

Located directly off the lobby, Bowery Road is open from 7am-11pm for breakfast, lunch, dinner and weekend brunch.

Rosselli has also worked at Locanda Verde and The Standard Grill.

The hotel now also sports The Library of Distilled Spirits, which: "pays tribute to liquor makers and their craft with over 700 bottles made around the world. Explore the collection neat, or shaken and stirred into more than 150 classic cocktails. Barkeepers and encyclopedic volumes of single spirits will help you choose."

As previously noted, The Fourth and Singl, the hotel's two dining-drinking options, had closed. Marco Moreira and Jo-Ann Makovitzky, the restaurateurs behind these two as well as a third Hyatt space, Botequim, reportedly parted ways with the hotel last spring.

The two new establishments are operated by APICII, "a multi-concept restaurant company."

The hotel opened in April 2013.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Slim dining options at the Hyatt Union Square for the time being

Juice Press annex for rent on 1st Street

[Photo from October 2015]

Going back to September 2015, the flagship Juice Press on First Street seemingly had dibs on the small retail space next door here between First Avenue and Second Avenue… The official JP signage/brandage eventually appeared.

The space sat empty for more than a year. Last fall, the space became a gym ... where we would see founder-CEO Marcus Antebi working out.

Anyway, to bring this storefront story to a close... that space is now for rent...



Previously on EV Grieve:
Juice Press is up to something on East 1st Street

Sunday's parting shot

Photo in Tompkins Square Park today by Steven...

About the Moon passing through Orion, and other upcoming 2nd Avenue Star Watcher events

Here's a dispatch about last evening via East Village astronomy buff Felton Davis...

As Virgo rises in the East, Orion sets in the West, and the seasons change. (At last, after weeks and weeks of nothing but clouds and rain!) When the light from Aldebaran left the star 65 years ago,"Guys and Dolls" was playing at the Shubert Theater on Broadway. When the light from the Pleiades left the star cluster 400 years ago, Shakespeare was writing his plays. When the light from the Orion Nebula set forth 1,600 years ago, Rome was sacked by the Visigoths (later defeated by Attila the Hun). The crescent Moon tonight was passing through Orion between Taurus and Gemini, but was repeatedly blocked by passing clouds.

However, there will be more opportunities for sky gazing from Second Avenue and Third Street...

Upcoming events:

May 7 — near conjunction of waxing Moon and Jupiter in Virgo

June 3 — another near conjunction of waxing Moon and Jupiter

June 9 — near conjunction of full Moon and Saturn in Sagittarius

July 6 — near conjunction of waxing Moon and Saturn

August 21 — total eclipse of the Sun in the afternoon. (A partial in NYC.)



Find more 2nd Avenue Star Watcher pics here.

Illustrations/photos here courtesy of Felton Davis