What’s Clean, Safe And — Most Of All — Free Of Charge Across New York City

How about a Take Back The Tap campaign for city schools? Maybe they know something we don’t . . . or not:

Parents who sent their toddlers to the well-regarded Mandell preschool on the Upper West Side used to count on getting into the private school of their choice.

But with the recent boom in the city’s under-5 set, the competition for kindergarten places can rival that of Ivy League admission. This spring, for the first time, several of the 43 Mandell preschool graduates found themselves without anywhere to go. So Mandell, which has been around for generations, decided to do its part to ease the kindergarten crunch by opening its own $2 million elementary school, in a 17,000-square-foot storefront on Columbus Avenue at 96th Street.

“I think we’ve reached a crisis level in terms of capacity,” said Gabriella Rowe, Mandell’s head of school. “Although the majority of our families are still going to be able to send their children to their first-choice school, it’s clear that it’s going to become more difficult every year if these numbers continue to increase.”

The new school, financed through bank loans, will start with 50 kindergarten students in two classes. Ms. Rowe plans to expand to 450 students through 8th grade by 2017. Tuition is $28,000 for the 2008-9 school year, rising to $30,000 the next year.

Despite mounting layoffs on Wall Street and the broader economic downturn, private schools in New York City continue to thrive, with administrators and consultants saying this year has been the most competitive yet for admission to kindergarten. Some estimate that several hundred children were rejected from every place they applied.

About 150,000 students are enrolled in private and parochial schools in New York City; about 1.1 million attend the city’s public schools.

$150 Million Could Fund Tenafly’s Budget Needs For Six Years

But I guess you have a better view at 15 CPW:

Remember that rumored $90 million listing at 15 Central Park West? It was nothing.

Dolly Lenz, New York City’s most gargantuan real estate agent, broke astounding news at Portofio’s Four Seasons get-together this morning: “There are a few apartments on the market at 15 CPW, a new development on Central Park West, asking somewhere between $80 and $125 million — three different apartments — and one quietly on the market at $150 million,” she said.

Wowzah. Brokers have already made it known that two condos in the Robert A.M. Stern-designed blockbuster building are being offered at $80 and $90 million, so Ms. Lenz’s quote not only means that there’s a third apartment on the market in the building for somewhere between $80 and $125 million, but that there’s a fourth spread whose owner wants $150 million.

That would be more than any single-family residential property in New York City has ever asked for.

See also: Borough of Tenafly, New Jersey 2008 Municipal Budget.

Getting Into The Sunday Styles Wedding Announcements Just Got That Much More Difficult

Cutbacks at the Times; appearances-oriented couples hardest hit:

Meanwhile, a Sunday institution, the weddings and celebrations pages in the Styles section, is also planning to scale back the number of wedding announcements it has in its pages after two staffers were lost from this year’s round of buyouts/layoffs. “We contemplate a small reduction in the number we run compared with last year at this time,” wrote Catherine Mathis, the paper’s spokeswoman, “but last year represented an expansion of our columns somewhat from the historical norms in our pages.”

Best Green, Then Spurned

The dirty secret of parks is that while they’re great for real estate values (and therefore a boost to city property tax revenue), the people who live next door treat them like the ornamental gardens they are:

[Arlene Harrison] has added to a list of regulations (no dogs, no feeding of birds, no groups larger than six people, no Frisbees or soccer balls or “hard balls” of any kind) that, in turn, have served to dictate how [Gramercy Park] is — and is not — used. Most recently, she helped pave the way for Zeckendorf Realty to redevelop a 17-story Salvation Army boarding house on the south side of the park, and for the company’s plan to convert the 300 rooms into 14 floor-through apartments plus a penthouse duplex. The company would not confirm the transaction.

. . .

She added: “It will change the neighborhood for the better. It will be less use on the park.”

Indeed, while a key to Gramercy Park — or, more precisely, an address that entitles one to such a key — is among the most coveted items of New York real estate, under Ms. Harrison’s stewardship, the park has become perhaps the least-used patch of open space in the city. Most days, in nice weather, one would be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of people in the park at once, and few linger.

Gramercy is one of two private parks in New York City (the other, in Queens, is Sunnyside Gardens Park), and a key is required not only to enter, but to leave through a gate in its wraparound wrought-iron fence.

Each of the 63 lots on which the current 39 buildings sit gets two keys, which residents (and guests at the Gramercy Park Hotel) may borrow from their doormen. In addition, residents of those buildings — but only those — may purchase keys for $350 per year; the keys are all but impossible to copy and cost $1,000 to replace.

About 400 people now have keys, but many of them apparently sit unused in junk drawers in the grand foyers in the apartments overlooking the park. One sunny morning last week, as Ms. Harrison chatted with the Rev. Thomas F. Pike, rector of Calvary-St. George’s Church, there were three others in the park: a woman checking her BlackBerry, a custodial worker and a jogger. On a Saturday morning three days later, about two dozen people could be spotted in the park over the course of four hours, and never more than six or eight at a time.

“Honestly, we don’t use it that much,” said Gale Rundquist, a real estate broker who has lived on the park for five years. Still, she said, access “adds a lot to a listing; it’s panache.”

“Because we work during the day, and we leave town on the weekends,” she explained of her own nonusage. “But it’s beautiful to look at.”

Actual use of the park is not Ms. Harrison’s measure. “It was always an ornamental park,” she said. “A lot of people don’t even go in to enjoy it. They’re so thrilled just to see it. It’s like a hotel room with a view of the ocean.”

. . .

[Harrison] knows the rhythms of the park intimately. “Between 5:30 and 6:30 in the morning, there are two people here,” she said. “One walks, the other breaks into a jog and stretches occasionally. Two women walk here at 7, and then a third joins them at 7:15. The nannies come in with the small kids around 11, and then again around 4.

“Saturday, it’s empty,” she added. “People are doing their errands.”

There is, to be frank, not much to do in the park. Music is forbidden. So are alcoholic beverages, bicycles and furniture. A gravel path around the perimeter provides the only opportunity for low-impact play, or, for that matter, running or walking. Ms. Harrison said parents constantly offer to donate playground components for the park, but she won’t have it.

“Too much wear and tear,” she said. “But do you know what? The children who grow up here learn to use their imagination.”

We Need A New Zoe Baird

For all the hot air about trusting social security no one seems to want to put their money where their mouths are:

About 84 percent of city parents pay their nannies off the books — and 71 percent “greatly respect” their helpers while one-third admit they worry they would do in an emergency.