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.
