Triage: Mount Sinai Beth Israel has confirmed that it will downsize after losing hundreds of millions of dollars over the last few years, according to Crain’s. Rumors, however, that the hospital may close altogether, to be replaced by outpatient services, continue to circulate and a spokesperson “declined to confirm or deny whether the hospital would close and did not answer questions about future plans for the site.”
Chinese investors buying up huge swaths of U.S. real estate may be “less sophisticated” than they seem—i.e. have no idea what they’re doing—The Real Deal reports. Xinyuan Real Estate’s managing director of U.S. operations says that many Chinese institutional investors often seem to be lacking in basic finance concepts because in China, so much real estate investment is in the extremely straightforward build-sell-make a profit model.
The Greenwich Village townhouse complex where the Whitney Museum was born will open to the public on a limited basis in June, according to The New York Times. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney not only exhibited art in the space, she also made it, they note. Since 1967, the buildings have housed the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture.
The manufacturer of a lightweight crane called the skypicker has called foul on the Department of Buildings ban of his design, which had initially received a greenlight only to be turned down after the union that represents tower crane operators objected, Crain’s reports. “It was like Herod wanting to kill Jesus when he was 2,” the creator complained.
Montauk is on the make and unpleased with the blue-collar look local mechanic’s messy yard, forcibly hauled away Tom Ferreira’s old cars, boats, old tires and rusty propane tanks, The New York Times reports. Mr. Ferreira, understandably, sued, claiming that the town improperly employed emergency health and safety laws to enhance the real estate value of a neighboring property. “Whatever the eventual result,” they note “the trial has provided Mr. Ferreira, whose family has lived on Navy Road since 1946, with the means by which to vent his spleen against officials in East Hampton. He not only lost his entire set of tools in the removal — his air compressor, his wet-dry vacuum, his 20-ton hydraulic press — but he also later got a bill for $20,000 to cover the cost of carting them away.”
Neighbors behaving not so nicely: a man has accused his Tribeca neighbor of harassment for shining bright spotlights and even a strobe light into his apartment as payback for not closing his blinds when he watches TV, according to DNAinfo. The man claims that Suellen Epstein, who has run Children’s Tumbling from her Murray Street loft for decades, has been shining the lights in retaliation for the glow that emanates into her apartment from his TV watching.
