All along the Hudson Yards, buildings are coming down, or getting grabbed up by developers who aim to upscale. Into empty lots and parking lots are going new condos and hotels. Even the Brutalist 450 West 33rd is getting a facelift. In a city where everything must glitter, silvery cool, this brown beast just won't do.
It will be clad in pleated glass and incorporated into Brookfield's "Manhattan West" development, that massive hall of mirrors.
A couple blocks up, two little tenement buildings remain--440 and 442 Tenth Avenue. The buildings were bought by the Silverstone Property Group in 2012. Tenants reached out to Curbed to complain about the subsequent conditions--no gas, no hot water, holes in the ceilings.
Are there any rent-regulated tenants left? Apartments in the two buildings are now renovated and renting ($2500 for a studio) to anyone who won't mind the noise of construction on both sides.
On the north end of the block is rising a $20 million 17-story hotel--owned by a company calling itself Tenth Avenue YYY, LLC.
On the south side, a towering Marriott Hotel is coming. This one's costing $180 million and will have 385 rooms.
It's big and it's bland, just like they like it.
Across the avenue, another pair of tenements stand, surviving for now. But they look vulnerable out there. One houses a Penske truck rental place, the other is home to Taxi Parts, Inc.
This stretch of 10th Avenue, from the 20s through the 30s, used to belong to taxi drivers. It gave them gas stations, flat-fix shops, mechanics, medallion brokers, cheap food, and places like this shop, where you can find everything from tail lights to mud flaps.
Over the past decade, we've watched it all vanish. First by High Line development, and now by the Hudson Yards. Of course, we know the two are connected, one Bloombergian scheme rolled into the other. The whole west side, from below Gansevoort and into the 40s, is being paved in glass.
Soon, it will gobble up the carriage horsemen of the west 30s. (Read here for an in-depth look at what remains of that world.) Along with what remains of the old city a few blocks south, a parcel that Bloomberg's planning department targeted.
Take a walk up 10th and witness a neighborhood vanishing before your eyes.
Michael Bloomberg’s master plan for demographic cleansing of NYC.
ReplyDeleteAnd in addition to Bloomberg's destruction of NYC’s social and cultural fabric, its neighborhoods, housing and architecture, his demographic cleansing is resulting in profound political changes. For example, in a relatively short amount of time, long-time middle-class and politically “liberal” areas such as the Upper West Side are definitely less so, with the rapid influx of the very affluent, who have more of a conservative and libertarian framework.
And regarding Hudson Yards development…one more aspect that is not discussed in the media and that the Bloomberg Administration ignored: the massive amount of traffic, from delivery trucks to taxis to people, that will result and which will also impact the Lincoln Tunnel. It will be standstill traffic around the Lincoln Tunnel 24/7.
Can it get any more depressing? What a sad reality...
ReplyDeleteI live on the block you are talking about. I hear you about all this but there really isn't much of a neighborhood over here. Several years ago before all the construction began it was pretty bleak. No grocery store, one deli. One restaurant to eat at. Empty sidewalks. Sorry to say that it was inevitable that the city was gonna push through here. It is mostly undeveloped. I lived on Hudson 15 years ago and we lost our delis and laundry matts and local hang outs and restaurants. That's not happening in the far west 30's because those things just don't exist. There is no neighborhood here.
ReplyDeleteWhat's going to happen when Mr. & Mrs. VonTrust wheel their double wide stroller out the front door on the way to infant pilates class, and they see nothing but thousands of carbon copies of their own building and their own selves as far as the eye can see from River to River?
ReplyDeleteOr will they not look up from their iMasters long enough to notice.
Welcome to Stepford on the Hudson...
DeleteGet a grip dude! Now you know how the Native Americans feel after we stole their land from them!
ReplyDeletedont forget de blasio has a hand in detroying the stables. he may be in bed w/the developers so i read. these new buildings are so ugly. yeeeecch.
ReplyDeleteAs long as boring yuppies continue to pour into the city from bland suburban hellscapes and buy into these sterile ugly boxes they will continue to be built. I live on 29th and 10th in an old tenement, and am watching in amazement as the huge high-rises obliterate the neighborhood but are filling up almost instantly with the kind of people who would only shop at CVS, Whole Foods and Duane Reade, and eat at upscale 'artisan' restaurants w/ 'crafted' offerings.
ReplyDelete