Stuyvesant Town

Union Square Greenmarket Reopens Today at Madison Square, Other Locations Follow Suit

Same market, different location. Under brilliant sunny skies, but near-frigid temps, the Union Square Greenmarket reopened today for the first time since Hurricane Sandy. Not at its usual 14th Street location - which is being used as a Con Ed parking lot - but just off Madison Square at the inters ... More >>

100 Most Powerless New Yorkers

A 'power list' for the rest of us

Thursday Night Whole-Lobster Special at Petite Abeille

​Flame-grilling the lobster produces a slight smoky flavor. One of the best red-crustacean deals in town is found Thursday evenings at Petite Abeille, where $25 gets you a whole lobster of an estimated pound-and-a-half with a bowl of fries and a Stella. Oh, and there's a little salad, too, s ... More >>

Steven Heller Doesn't Need Your Matisse

From Screw to SVA and beyond—a visit with the New York design writer

Citizen Bloomberg

How our mayor has given us the business

Petite Abeille Wants to Put Its Honey Where Its Mouth Is

wwarby/Flickr​Like seemingly everyone else these days, Petite Abeille wants to put an in-house spin on its food. But its ambitions are literally loftier than most.

Dan Garodnick Q&A: The Senate Bill That Would Bail Out Landlords and Gut Court Ruling on Stuy Town Rents

David ShankboneIn 2009, a landmark state appeals court ruling found that the owners of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village had illegally deregulated 4,400 apartments while enjoying special tax breaks from the city. Its impact wasn't quite clear; no one was sure what the legal rents of those apartme ... More >>

1 in 4 Parking Permits Are Phony, Says Report

Transportation AlternativesMore than half of those thousands of precious parking permits in the city are either legal permits used illegally or simply illegitimate permits in the first place. And nearly one in four official parking permits are "illicitly photocopied, fraudulent or otherwise invalid. ... More >>

Eat the Rich

The rich are richer than ever, but don't ask them for help

City's Slumlord Watchdog Leaves: Assessing His Tenure

​Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the resignation of housing commissioner Rafael Cestero last Friday. Cestero leaves the city agency of Housing Preservation and Development -- the largest developer of affordable housing in the country -- for L M Partners, a private local affordable housing de ... More >>

Ice-Pick Bandit Was Just "Stressing" Over Christmas Gifts

39-year-old ​John Martinez, the accused "ice pick bandit" who was picked up in New Jersey after allegedly cornering and robbing at least six women in elevators in the Bronx's Co-op City and Manhattan's Stuyvesant Town, was indicted yesterday.Today, the New York Post says Martinez (who prosecutors ... More >>

"Ice-Pick Bandit" Suspect Nabbed by Jersey Cops

​The New York Post says police in Bergen County, New Jersey, have arrested a man whom the NYPD are calling a "person of interest" in the "Ice-Pick Bandit" case. (The so-called "bandit" has held up at least six women in elevators -- using what looks like an ice pick -- in Manhattan's Stuyvesant ... More >>

Temporary Walls Come Down: Roommates in Converted Apartments Are About to Get Cozier

​Apartment hunting may be the second worse experience endured by city dwellers, only to be beat by subsequent furniture moving. Throughout it all, "building a wall" has been a long-time saving grace for cash-strapped New Yorkers in need of a place to sleep. The case used to be: Can't afford a ... More >>

Pedro Espada's Enablers

The people who brought you Albany's greatest scoundrel

New Yorkers Are Really Bad at the Census

Just do it. Like, now.​Who cares what time it is. Do you know where your census is? If you're like us, you have not the vaguest idea. You think you mailed it last week, but that whole week was a bit of a fog, and now it's so hot (like, record-breaking hot) that it's hard to make sense of any ... More >>

Updated: Matzoh Price Watch

​Yes, the matzohs are still waiting expectantly to be purchased, but they don't want you to be price-gouged. On the first of March, Fork in the Road instituted our matzoh price watch, in which we report the prices being charged for matzohs around town as Passover approaches. We've added more ... More >>

Rose Mankos ID'd as Woman Smashed by 6 Train

​The woman killed in the subway yesterday has been identified. Rose M. Mankos, 48, was a lawyer who lived in Stuyvesant Town. She was on the 77th Street platform on the 6 line Thursday afternoon when she dropped her bag on the tracks and climbed down to retrieve it. She couldn't get back up qu ... More >>

The Riverton, Latest Collapsed New York Housing Icon, Auctioned for $120M

​Under the gaze of Moses, King Solomon, Hammurabi, and Abraham Lincoln (in a mural on the ceiling of the New York County Courthouse rotunda), the latest sad drama in the city's real estate bust played out this morning with minimal fanfare. Speaking slowly and deliberately, the auctioneer finis ... More >>

Stuy Town owners miss mortgage payment

​The Tishman Speyer/Black Rock Realty partnership which bet $5.4 billion that they could convert Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village to market rate housing in a booming real estate market that no longer exists moved one step closer to a total loss on Friday when it missed a $16 million mo ... More >>

Stuy Town/Peter Cooper mortgage changes hands

​Tishman Speyer and BlackRock, the owners of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in Manhattan, turned over the main mortgage for the 11,200-unit complex to a "special servicer". Special servicers are given the power to renegotiate the terms of a failing loan and possibly sell the assets t ... More >>

Stuy Town Tenants Don't Get a Break on November Rents, Despite Ruling

After last week's landmark Stuyvesant Town decision -- in which a state appeals court found that the mega-developer Tishman Speyer had misused city tax breaks and illegally converted to market rate thousands of rent-controlled apartments in the historic complex -- one would expect some confusion. Bu ... More >>

The Mayor's Press Pass

The unexamined world of Mike Bloomberg

Cheek, in Review: 7 Days of Runnin' Scared

​ "it's new york lol same shit lastnight some car was on fire in Fordham crazyy ass shit look." Twitpic by Itlabia. Can you believe last week at this time we were still thinking about Balloon Boy? Yes, that's how we passed our time before Steve Phillips, his "tubby temptress," and other exci ... More >>

Tishman Loses Stuy Town Fight; May Have to Pay $200 Million, Default

When Tishman Speyer Properties took thousands of units in Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village -- longtime middle-class bastions on the edge of the hyper-gentrified East Village -- out of regulation and raised rents, tenants sued and a court found that the properties could not be deregulated, b ... More >>

After Stuy Town Decision, Experts See Real Estate Market "Collapse." Really?

When a state appeals court decision came down today that private equity-backed realty company Tishman Speyer illegally converted thousands of Stuyvesant Town tenants into luxury units, the company pleaded with the judge that the ruling could be a death blow. Tishman and its partner, the firm Black ... More >>

Cheek, in Review: 7 Days of Runnin' Scared

​ Dancers from InSpirit beckon passers-by to enter a new store on Broadway near 13th Street. Labor Day, with its West Indian American Day Parade, was the high point of the week. The low point was, let's see... the rest of it. 9/11 was a popular topic. It was oddly related to a Twitter Festiv ... More >>

Stuy Town Owners Back in Court to Defend Jacked-Up Rents

After nearly three years of veritable civil war between two powerful real estate executives and thousands of tenants, the owners of the historic downtown residential complexes, Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, will appear in court again today. Landlords Jerry and Rob Speyer, and their part ... More >>

Long Green Eggplants Cause an Uproar

​ Looking more like Indian snake squashes (or pods from another planet!) than eggplants, these veggies created a stir at the Friday Union Square farmers market. Eggplants are slow-growing, often taking three months from seed to mature fruit. So, the heyday of the eggplant season tends to be A ... More >>

An Unlikely Rescuer from the Jaws of Debt

Another Thompson Supporter Rings Up a Big Pension Fund Score

Friday's Headlines: Paterson enrages enviros with state backtrack on power plant emissions

[HARKAVY is now blogging at The Smart Asset]Your Friday New York headlines...Paterson enrages enviros by going back on NY promise to crack down on power plant emissions.After hubbub, Gandhi items sell for $1.8 million in auction.Landmark law giving mayor control of schools coming up for renewal; cha ... More >>

Debt Collectors Rise to New Yorkers' #1 Nuisance, Says Consumer Affairs

New Yorkers complained more about shady debt collectors than about any other shady business last year, says the city's Department of Consumer Affairs. The agency published its annual ranking of top consumer complaints today, and consumer debt collection fraud complaints topped the list for the first ... More >>

Debt Buyers*, Unlicensed and Unregulated, Thrive in NYC

In this economic crisis, there's no shortage of people who thrive by taking advantage of other people's misfortunes. At a City Council hearing held last Wednesday, lawmakers and citizens lambasted the unlicensed debt collection agencies that collectively filed 300,000 collection cases in New York Ci ... More >>

Clip Job: Review: "The Bachelor Party"

Kool Herc Fights to Save Birthplace of Hip Hop

Slumming for Landlords

A pair of Bronx pols try to shoot down the latest in tenant protection

Behind the YouTube Music: Brooklyn's Muppets-Synced Escort

Muppet! at the Disco

On the endless Donna Summers of Escort, Brooklyn's finest disco orchestra

Atlantic Yards Lite?

Cops by the Sea

They were detectives. I said, How can you build property so small from scratch?

Letters

SpaghettiOs, Mom's Credit Card, and Centipedes in the Basement

Hungry grads make a shoestring assault on New York

Mix This

Young South Asians' Love-Hate Relationship with Hip-Hop's New Indian Beats

Close-up on Peter Cooper Village

Letters

Insurgent Elders

Tenants Strike at Park West Village

Four-Room Co-Op in Circa 1900s Walk-Up

Letters

Two floors of four-story brownstone

Czeching Out a Mathews Home

Five-room railroad apartment in 1915 Mathews building