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Matt Chaban

By Matt Chaban 1/24 5:53pm

Silicon Alley U

Thumbs up. (Morphosis)

Tech Tronic: BP Stringer Approves Cornell’s Roosevelt Island Campus, Wants More Red Buses

The public review process known as ULURP, through which most every large-scale development in the city must pass, is rarely an easy one. New York created the NIMBY, and ULURP is about the only way Joe Public can even pretend to influence such projects as Columbia or NYU’s new campuses, the Hudson Yards redevelopment, Riverside South, the Kingsbridge Armory, Chelsea Market… the list of contentious projects goes on and on. A better acronym for the Uniform Land-use Review Process might well be DIVISIVE.

That is what makes CornellNYC, the upstate university’s Roosevelt Island tech campus, such an interesting anomaly. After beating out Stanford in a breathless deathmatch for Mayor Bloomberg’s blessing to build the campus, the project has so far sailed through ULURP with nary a protest. Back in December, the campus was approved by the local community board (typically a bastion of browbeating), and now Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer gave the new campus his enthusiastic thumbs up. Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/24 11:28am

office space

11 Photos

Villareal on Sixth

Avenue of the LEDs: Leo Villareal’s Largest Installation Is Inside a New Durst Office Lobby

Sixth Avenue is a haven for corporate art, from Robert Indian’s Love to Curved Cube outside the Time Life Building, to say nothing of the massive galleries spanning the entire block between 51st and 52nd streets inside the UBS Building. The Avenue of the Americas is also home to mostly older office buildings, still very splendid and class A, but many in need of updating. It has become a hub of new elevators and air conditioners and reconfigured lobbies.

At 1133 Sixth Avenue, the Durst Organization is merging these two currents, popular public art and a sparkling new lobby, into a striking whole. The centerpiece of a new Gensler-designed lobby is an installation by light artist Leo Villareal, Volume (Durst). At 90-feet long, 12-feet high and 6-feet deep, the dazzling sculpture is Mr. Villareal’s largest three-dimensional work yet. Floating near the top of the lobby, it not only enlivens the space but the avenue, as well, fully visible through the two-story windows facing out on the plaza between the International Center for Photography on one side and a bank on the other.

“I love the chance encounter,” Mr. Villareal said at an opening reception for the lobby Tuesday night. Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/23 10:10am

Elsewhere

On the Market: Big Green Apple; Another Colossus for the Far West Side; Whither Brooklyn’s Middle Class

So what’s middle class in Brooklyn? [Brownstoner]
Governor Cuomo outlines budget, including Sandy and infrastructure [Times, Journal]
Another 1,000-footer for Far West Side by Joe Moinian. [NY Post]
Obama first president to walk to inaugural along bike lane. [Streetsblog, WNYC]
Inside the new housing options show at Museum of the City of NY. [Journal]
Is the National Tennis Center in Flushing really “public space?” [CapitalNY]
Blogger says NYU hasn’t quite ruined the West Village. [BrickU]
Bedford Avenue Salvation Army is coming down. [Brownstoner]
LPC spikes awful Gage & Tolner shop. [Curbed]
Inside Ian Schrager’s 40 Bond beauty. [FT]
Sales boomed in the fourth quarter thanks to the tax cliff. [Crain's] Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/22 12:17pm

Prefabulous

6 Photos

The Little House That Could

Would You Live in One of Mayor Bloomberg’s 300-Square-Foot Micro-Apartments?

New York apartments are notorious for being about as big as a shoe box, but those were typically 19th century tenements. Today, the Bloomberg administration brought tiny apartments into the 21 century with My Micro NY, the winning entry in a competition launched last July to create a miniature housing model for the city.

Currently, it is illegal to build a new apartment smaller than 450 square feet, but the new program seeks comfortable, attractive housing units between 250 and 375 square feet. The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development received 33 different entries for the project, which will be built on a city-owned site in Murray Hill. Read More

By Matt Chaban 9:25am

Elsewhere

On the Market: UWS Mansion for $50 M.; Karl Lagerfeld Lose $2 M. in Gramercy; Middle Class Manhattan?

What is Middle Class in Manhattan? Not much, not vanishing. [NY Times]
Karl Lagerfeld finally sells his Gramercy condo for $2 M. less than he paid. [NY Post]
Villagers rage against 7-Eleven and other chains. [Crain's]
Joe Chetrit confirmed to be developing apartments and hotel in Sony Building. [NY Times]
This tax-troubled UWS mansion still wants $50 M. [Real Deal]
Developer forcing out Seaport businesses from Pier 17 by March. [DNAinfo, NY Post]
Love Lane Mews penthouse sells for a record price per-square-foot in BK Heights. [Curbed]
Hence the Brooklyn luxury market is just booming. [Brownstoner]
How Grand Central Terminal, now 100, was born. [NY Times]
Alicia Keys slashes price of Soho penthouse to $15 M. [Real Deal]
A slum on Central Park South? This apartment looks like one. [NY Post]
West 50th Street condo gets financing, showing support for outlying projects. Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/18 4:17pm

Street Fighters Too

5 Photos

Willoughby Wonder

‘This Is Set In Stone:’ At Plaza Ribbon Cutting, Sadik-Khan Says Street Changes Will Continue After She’s Gone

For the past six years, thousands of people a day have descended on a 150-foot long stretch of black top across from Borough Hall. There, nestled among planters and folding chair, Brooklynites and visitors, workers, students and tourists would all relax, meet up, hang out, maybe enjoy a shack stack.

Willoughby Plaza was one of the very first asphalt strips formerly dedicated to cars that was closed to vehicles, taken over and transformed into a space for pedestrians, helping to inaugurate the city’s popular if occasionally controversial NYC Plaza Program. Before Times Square and the Broadway Boulevard, before the new Grand Army Plaza or Fordham Plaza, before Janette Sadik-Khan even became DOT commissioner, there was Willoughby Plaza.

And now it is permanent, a thoughtfully designed, well-integrated piece of the streetscape rather than a bastardized piece of roadbed dressed up as well as DOT and the local business groups could manage. This is the dream for all 50 (and counting) of the city’s new temporary plazas, and 16 finished spaces are already in the works. But standing in the freezing cold with Commissioner Sadik-Khan and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz trading barbs, one wonders how many more plazas might be in store for the city. Read More

By Karsten Strauss & Al Barbarino 1/18 1:39pm

Postings

REBNY Ballroom final

Ballroom Waltz: A Minute-By-Minute Account of Last Night’s REBNY Gala

Thursday’s Real Estate Board of New York gala packed an estimated 2,400 guests into the Hilton New York’s overstuffed Grand Ballroom—an increase from last year by about 200. The Commercial Observer walked the room, hobnobbed with brokers and landlords and taste-tested a dinner of steak and potatoes while washing it all down with a few stiff drinks. Staff Reporters Karsten Strauss and Al Barbarino get the inside dish.


Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/18 9:38am

Elsewhere

On the Market: Sony Building’s Billion-Dollar Sale; Buy Coen Brother’s Apt; Recovery in Staten Island

Sony Building sold for $1.1 B to mysterious Joe Chetrit. [Journal]
Oy! After decades on the decline, New York’s Jewish population is rising. [NY Times]
But director Ethan Coen’s Greenwich Village pad for $2.3 M. [Curbed]
It could be three years before South Ferry subway station reopens. [Journal]
Miss America is leaving Brooklyn, but only for the year as she tours the country. [BK Paper]
Surprising signs of recovery in Staten Island. [Journal]
New reality show follows sports stars as they go house hunting. [NY Times]
People are jamming listings in Williamsburg, desperate for a house, any house. [Daily News]
Big real estate continues to lobby for Cuomo. [Journal]
Scenes from last night’s REBNY gala. [Real Deal]
Judge Judy’s Pierre pied a terre is on the market for $9 M. [Curbed] Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/17 5:47pm

on the waterfront

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His Ship’s Come In: Hedgie Michael Novogratz Named Chairman of Friends of Hudson River Park

The Friends of Hudson River Park have traded a real estate big for a Wall Street one.

Today, the West Side park booster group announced that Michael Novogratz, head of Fortress Capital, will take over from Douglas Durst, the former board chair, who left last month over a dispute about the future of Pier 40 and the direction of the trust that overseas the park.

Mr. Novogratz has been a board member of Friends for some time now, and an announcement calls him “an avid user of the park.” After all, the hedge fund manager and city’s foremost wrestling booster lives around the corner in a multimillion-dollar compound he has assembled at 110 Hudson Street in Tribeca. Read More