Central Park As Giant Cash Machine

While vast swaths of public parkland go ignored, quasi-public park conservancies raise funds with overwhelming force:

Finding a unique gift for your honey can be a walk in the park — if you’ve got enough green.

The Central Park Conservancy is launching private, customized tours of the park, to be conducted by Sara Cedar Miller, its official historian and photographer, for a flat $500-per-hour fee for up to seven people.

Miller, the author of “Central Park, An American Masterpiece,” will drive the minivan that will take your party on a design-your-own walk and/or ride.

The conservancy offers free guided walking tours, but this one, it says, will be tailored to your interests, be they in landscape design, history, architecture — or little-known secrets.

Not To Worry — There’s A Seat For Every Ass

Some fear a shortage of kindergarten openings at the city’s elite schools:

Concerns that too many families are applying for a scarce number of kindergarten spots come every year — and then usually pass by February as most children find places. This time around, the anxiety may be warranted, school leaders said.

With decisions looming for next year’s kindergarten classes, placements that often determine the location of a child’s academic career, several schools are reporting historic rises in applications, as many as double the number they received last year. Overwhelmed, some schools have already shut their admissions processes, turning away families who handed in applications weeks before the ordinary deadline, December 1. The Dwight School on the Upper West Side announced its changed deadline, to October 19, on its Web site with one week’s notice; Calhoun, which accepts only a set number of applications each year, reached the maximum days after applications became available, forcing admissions to close two weeks earlier than last year.

The result, observers said, is a stock of distraught parents who now face a dwindling list of schools where their 4-year-olds might be considered.

. . .

Emily Glickman, the president of a private firm that helps families apply to kindergartens, Abacus Guide Educational Consulting, called the early shutouts, reported to her by parents in frantic phone messages, unprecedented. “I’ve been doing this since 1999. I’ve never gotten messages like this year,” Ms. Glickman said.

. . .

An increase in the number of applications handed in earlier in the year does not necessarily mean increased competition. Panic can breed panic, creating an illusion of heightened competition as nervous families send in more applications per child and rush to send them in earlier, Cynthia Bing of the Parents League, a resource group for parents at independent schools, said.

Indeed, nursery school directors have been recommending that families apply to more schools, closer to 10 versus five or six several years ago, and families are following suit.

. . .

That does not mean a crisis, Ms. Bing said. “We’re not hearing an uproar in the streets yet,” she said. “And the good news is — frankly, as it has been in the past — everyone has a place.”

. . .

Consultants and school leaders said another way to calm parents is to change the admissions process. Admissions directors are reconsidering an old idea of making the kindergarten process more like admission to medical school, with students and schools simply listing their top choices for more efficient sorting, Ms. Lynch at the Buckley School said.

Ms. Glickman said her preference is a lottery that would sort children automatically — eliminating measures such as play observations, applications, and parent interviews, which she called a “farce.” “If you remember that the whole point of this is that they’re ranking and sorting 4-year-olds openly — and secretly judging parents’ wealth connections and likeliness to give — it really becomes apparent what a disgusting process this is,” she said.

Reminded that an end to the traditional application process could hurt her professionally, Ms. Glickman maintained the position. “I also have a conscious,” she said.

We’re Number One . . . At Russifying Our Shopping Districts!

Definitely something all New Yorkers can take pride in — a bunch of upscale chainstores drove up rents and turned Fifth Avenue into one giant overvalued loss leader for retailers:

Rodeo Drive? Puh-leeze!

The country’s far-and-away leader in elite retail remains Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, by a $7 million mile.

Real-estate firm Colliers International ranked the most expensive shopping streets in the United States by price paid per square foot, and Fifth Avenue took top honors, with an average rent of $1,350.

Rodeo Drive, by comparison, ranked third with a relatively bargain-basement price of $480 per square foot.

“Retailers, and in particular luxury retailers, continue to desire prime street-front locations,” said Ross Moore, senior vice president at Colliers.

And more than anywhere else in the country, “prime” means Fifth Avenue.

“Fifth Avenue is iconic. It’s synonymous with fashion and shopping,” said Tiffany Townsend, communications director at the city’s marketing organization, NYC & Company.

. . .

The influx of such global brands as Apple, Hugo Boss and others has dramatically driven up prices along Fifth, rising from an average of just $1,000 a year ago.

Gucci last year agreed to a record retail price of $1,500 per square foot for the right to bring back their flagship store to The Trump Building.

“Fifth Avenue is by far the greatest retail street not just in the nation but, in my opinion, the world,” said Stephen Siegel, chairman of Global Brokerage at CB Richard Ellis, who brokered the Gucci deal.

. . .

Fifth Avenue, however, just misses being the priciest stretch on Earth, with London’s Old Bond Street taking the top spot at $1,400.

“I’ll Never Have To Leave The Neighborhood”

Is can’t be a coincidence that Bloomberg’s Upper East Side residence on 79th Street is within New York’s proposed congestion pricing zone while his 3,600-square-foot, uh, pied-à-terre in the London neighborhood of Knightsbridge is situated in that city’s actual congestion charging zone (.pdf), can it? Nah:

The residence Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg keeps here is not in the grandest house on the block. Spread over three floors of an attached red brick Victorian, the apartment overlooks a quiet locked garden in one of the city’s most exclusive precincts, where Ferraris and Bentleys roll past the boutiques of Hermès and Chloé.

But the apartment is a place of welcoming elegance, with artfully planted window boxes, heavy tasseled drapery and the warm glow of a chandelier highlighting gilt details on the ceiling. And Mr. Bloomberg, who has hardly been here since taking office in 2002, says he plans to spend more of his time enjoying it when he is no longer mayor.

Indeed, earlier this year, property records show, the mayor spent more than $7 million (3.5 million pounds) to extend his hold on the Cadogan Square property through 2113. Apartments in London are generally not sold, but are leased for decades.

Mr. Bloomberg’s visit to London over the weekend was for official business; he was meeting with Mayor Ken Livingstone and learning more about security and traffic measures in London that might work in New York.

But it was also a homecoming of sorts for the mayor, a lover of parties and art. He was honored at a buffet reception given by 100 friends at the prestigious Serpentine Gallery, on whose board he once sat. And it allowed him a rare night in the 3,600-square-foot flat, which once served as his platform for conquering the London social scene.

“It brings back a lot of memories,” Mr. Bloomberg said on Monday at a City Hall news conference here with Mayor Livingstone. “I said to Ken on the way over, ‘You know, after I finish this job I’m sure I will spend a lot more time in London because it’s exciting and they have great museums and nice people.'”

And nice digs. The mayor’s office declined to confirm details. But the apartment, with a spiraling, filigreed central staircase, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a drawing room, office and study, according to plans at Britain’s land registry, was decorated by Jamie Drake, who is known for exuberance and has festooned rooms for Madonna as well as for Mr. Bloomberg in his Upper East Side town house.

Those who have visited say the flat is filled with American art, including works by Andy Warhol and Henry Moore in addition to Jasper Johns. Mr. Bloomberg’s love of finery is also reflected in the mahogany doors and marble columns.

Like real estate on Mr. Bloomberg’s Manhattan block, East 79th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, property on Cadogan Square is not cheap. Records from the real estate agency Strutt & Parker Lane Fox indicate that in 1997, the apartment cost about $5 million (2.8 million pounds) for a lease of about 26 years.

. . .

Talking to reporters on Sunday in Blackpool, where he had addressed delegates at the Conservative Party convention, he said of his New York home: “I get a haircut two doors away from these buildings, I live a block and a half away, my favorite Greek diner’s across the street. I’ll never have to leave the neighborhood.”

And you’ll have to pay the greenback equivalent of 8 quid to get in . . .

I Pulled Into Nazareth, Was Feelin’ About Half Past Dead

Put the load right on me:

The burden of housing costs continues to stretch the pocketbooks of New Yorkers, as large percentages of residents see more of their income go to their mortgages and rents, according to an analysis of new census data.

Across the city, homeowners in Brooklyn and renters in the Bronx are carrying the heaviest burdens, with many spending half or more of their monthly paychecks on housing.

In Brooklyn, 31 percent of homeowners with a mortgage are spending 50 percent or more of their income on housing costs, the highest percentage in any large county in the state. In the Bronx, 32.9 percent of renter households are paying a similar share of their income for their apartments, the highest percentage in the city, according to an analysis of the Census Bureau’s 2006 American Community Survey, which was released to the public yesterday.

. . .

In 2006, 26.4 percent of homeowners with a mortgage in the city paid half or more of their income on housing, up from 25.4 percent in 2005, according to the analysis conducted by Queens College demographers for The New York Times. About 49.8 percent of homeowners with a mortgage in the city were paying 30 percent or more of their income on housing, a level commonly viewed as a limit of affordability, compared with 48.8 percent in 2005.

In Brooklyn, 55.3 percent of homeowners in 2006 paid 30 percent or more of their income on housing. Homeowners there had the second-highest median monthly costs in the city, at $2,194. Those in Manhattan had the highest, with $2,758.

. . .

The city’s median gross rent climbed to $945 a month, up from $909 in 2005. Manhattan remains the most expensive borough for renters, with the median rent at $1,081, according to the census data. Renters in the city spending at least half their income on housing remained unchanged from 2005 to 2006, at 27.9 percent.