Peter Cooper Village And Stuyvesant Town To Replace Park Place And Broadway As Most Sought-After Real Estate Pieces

Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town could be yours . . . for five billion dollars:

Metropolitan Life is putting Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village — a stretch of 110 apartment buildings along the East River — on the auction block.

With a target price of nearly $5 billion, the sale would be the biggest deal for a single American property in modern times. It would undoubtedly transform what has been an affordable, leafy redoubt for generations of Manhattan’s middle class: teachers and nurses, firefighters and police officers, office clerks and construction workers.

MetLife, one of the largest life insurers in North America, said in July that it might sell the two complexes, which it built nearly 60 years ago with government help. It has hired a broker, who started registering bidders last week for the 80-acre property along First Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets.

Behind the scenes, the sale has already drawn interest from dozens of prospective buyers, including New York’s top real estate families, pension funds, international investment banks and investors from Dubai, according to real estate executives, even though the marketing book will not be released to bidders until next week.

. . .

Already there are signs that bidding will be feverish. As one executive involved in the sale put it, “This is the ego dream of the world: 80 acres, 110 buildings, 11,000 apartments, covering 10 city blocks in Manhattan.”

According to several bidders, the list of buyers who have signed up includes the most active developer in New York City, the Related Companies; one of the largest landlords, Glenwood Management; Tishman Speyer, which controls Rockefeller Center; two publicly traded real estate companies, Archstone and Vornado; the international bank UBS; and the Blackstone investment firm, as well as the Rudin, Durst and LeFrak real estate families.

Given the size of the deal, buyers are expected to team up. “You’ll see some interesting people stepping up to the plate for this one,” said William Rudin, whose family owns about 2,000 apartments in New York.

Consensus Emerges For A Padavan Law Revision — A Public Hearing Must Take Place When 3 Or 4 Churches Operate Within A 500-Foot Radius

You can’t win:

In a neighborhood where three or more drinking establishments per block is not all that unusual, E. Seventh St. between Avenues B and C doesn’t seem to be in that kind of spirit.

Instead of the usual assortment of drinking establishments, five religious institutions hold sway here, making it the kind of block that would most certainly give any cocktail hour devotee the shakes.

“It’s a blessing,” said Wilfred Moore, deacon of the Gethsemane Garden Baptist Church, at 223 E. Seventh St. “I don’t have a problem with the number of churches on this block because we’re outnumbered, anyhow.”

. . .

Not all the residents of E. Seventh St. sing the praises of this confluence of churches.

Joan Eddings, 21, confesses that she’d rather have more wining and dining establishments along the block and fewer Bible-toting neighbors.

“You’re walking along minding your business and someone’s always saying ‘God bless you,'” she griped. Eddings added that, “Some people think it’s a blessed block because of the churches, but it’s the realtors who own property here who are truly blessed.”

Another disgruntled block resident, Michael Shenker complained, “There used to be a beautiful garden where they built Gethsemane Garden Baptist Church, and we lost it. I’d prefer that we had kept that open space open rather than another church.”

Historic Stonewall Closes . . . Again

The second incarnation of Stonewall has closed:

Seventy-six years after the first bar of the same name was opened at 53 Christopher Street, the prospect looms that the historic site of the 1969 riot widely credited as the birth of the gay-rights movement might disappear.

And the neighborhood surrounding the block of Christopher Street just east of Sheridan Square (which has been ceremonially named Stonewall Place) is raising a glass to the Stonewall’s demise.

Born in infamy on a sultry summer night when a ragtag group of drag queens and gay hipsters started hurling bottles at the police who were raiding the bar, the Stonewall, neighbors say, remains riotous — at least for the now ultra-gentrified Greenwich Village.

“They promote these urban youth parties,” said Bill Morgan, the owner of the Duplex, a popular gay nightspot at the end of the block where Stonewall is situated. “They pushed out the regular gay clientele in favor of this new, urban, hip-hop, gangster clientele. Then you bring a bunch of 18-to-20-year-olds in the area who have no place to go and start goofing off and being loud. It’s disruptive to the neighborhood and brings in the wrong element in the neighborhood.”[*]

Others say that the bar’s owners co-opted the site’s history and ran the business into the ground:

Dominick Desimone took over the lease on the historic location, which hadn’t been a bar for nearly 20 years, in 1989, amid promises to return the bar to its former glory and create a fitting commemoration of its original character.

Many were dubious.

David Carter, the author of Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution, told the story of how he pointed out to the owner that the original flagstones of the bar’s most popular dance floor remained intact even 20 years after the bar had closed. The next time he walked by, the flagstones had been covered in what he described as “bathroom tile.”

“They were interested in exploiting the Stonewall name to make money,” Mr. Carter said. “They had no appreciation for the site itself. I think it was a purely money-making venture done under the guise of preserving and honoring history. This was a total fraud from the beginning.”

. . .

Mr. DeSimone, who is straight and was interviewed from a hotel in St. Lucia on Monday, defended himself and said that tight finances are just a reality.

“Think how many $6 drinks you have to sell to make up for $20,000 a month in rent,” he said.

But ask anyone at the bar, and they point fingers directly his way.

“There’s been terrible mismanagement,” said a bartender who goes only by “Tree” and who also served at the original Stonewall in the 60’s. “Dominick doesn’t know how to run a gay bar.”

*Update — Bill Morgan emails (8/30):

I want to set the record straight regarding the Stonewall Bar. I am in no way thrilled at the prospect of losing such an incredible landmark for both the West Village and the Gay community. I have nothing but empathy for any fellow businesses especially one of Stonewall’s stature. Losing Stonewall will actually hurt my business as Stonewall brings people to the neighborhood. The “reporter” from the observer not only paraphrased my sentiments from the 20 minute telephone interview he edited them together in a way that has very little in common with what I actually said. It’s as if
he had a bias in mind for the article and decided to tailor or fabricate statements to bolster his case. When he asked why I thought the Stonewall was failing I stated that I felt the owners had forsaken the history of the place and the hardcore regular clientele by bringing in the 18-20 year olds for the “detention parties” and the like. I did say that the crowds can be disruptive late at night as once they leave the Stonewall they have no other bar to go to because they are underage. So they hang out and make noise. That’s the nature of 18 year olds. I never said that the kids were “the wrong element” and I never said anything even remotely close to being happy at the prospect of losing such a historical establishment. The article this person wrote is not only misrepresentative of me but of the attitude of the community toward Stonewall. I hope Stonewall survives and prospers for years to come. As far as the Duplex is concerned – We are very proud of the diversity of our patrons and the diversity of our staff as well. As you may imagine I am sickened by the bigoted quotes that were attributed to me. I have written the reporter from the Observer, pointed out the inaccuracy of his article and requested that he set the record straight on his end.

The New York Times On Your Side

The good news is that they finally found your car underneath tons of rubble. The bad news is that you have to pay to have it towed away:

Denise Jack got a good news-bad news phone call from an insurance company yesterday regarding her blue 1993 Nissan Pathfinder, which was buried by an avalanche in Upper Manhattan last year and has been sitting beneath the mountain of dirt on Riverside Drive ever since.

The good news was that after more than a year of waiting and frustration, her sport utility vehicle would soon be dug out.

The bad news was that she would have pay to have the S.U.V. — or the presumably flattened hunk of metal, glass and rubber that was once her car — towed away.

“They said they were about to dig out the cars and needed my documents to see if they could settle it,” Ms. Jack said. “That made me hopeful, but then they said it was my responsibility to have the car towed away once it was dug out.”

On the morning of May 12, 2005, Ms. Jack parked the Pathfinder on Riverside Drive next to a 75-foot-high retaining wall beneath the Castle Village apartment complex near 183rd Street.

When the wall gave way that afternoon and collapsed onto the Henry Hudson Parkway, it buried the stretch of Riverside Drive where Ms. Jack’s vehicle and several others were parked. There the S.U.V. sat as the seasons rolled by, beneath a two-story mountain of dirt, debris and uprooted trees.

Since her car insurance policy did not cover landslides, Ms. Jack filed a claim with the Greater New York Mutual Insurance Company, which insures Castle Village. Yesterday, she said, that company contacted her to say that the cars would be dug out soon, and asked her to fax some ownership and registration documents to them. And, they said, she should be ready to pay for towing costs.

“I definitely don’t think I should be accountable for removing the car,” Ms. Jack said. “I didn’t know the wall was going to fall when I parked there. It wasn’t even that great of a parking spot.”

Backstory: Retaining Wall to Henry Hudson Parkway: Drop Dead, Rvr Vus.

I Guess This Just Goes To Show How Few Actually Read The Post

After shining the light on the establishment’s health department violations, the Post returns to Shake Shack to see if everyone got the message:

The city’s trendiest outdoor snack bar continued to draw long lines of customers yesterday, but most of them hadn’t gotten the dirt on its latest Health Department inspection and the huge number of violations it’s racked up.

“I’m very upset by the violations,” said James DePrima, who quickly got off the Shake Shack line when told of the report.

“It’s especially upsetting because I had my family in the park recently and I insisted we eat at the Shack.”

One customer blamed the eatery’s location in Madison Square Park.

“When you have a restaurant in the park, there is going to be an inherent risk of vermin,” said Terry Fortunate, who also made a quick exit from the line.