Blue-Collar High Line

The Highline Effect keeps knocking down Chelsea, and blue-collar businesses along the park have taken a few more hits, adding to the lightning-fast timeline of loss.


2012

At 19th St. on 10th Ave., Kamco Building Materials has been completely demolished. Nothing remains but a blue plywood wall.


today

Soon to take its place will be a pair of giant, $40-million condo towers, rising on both sides of the High Line. The condo project is called "The Highline." Because that name hasn't been used nearly enough. Here's a rendering of the double tower to come:


tomorrow

One block north, on 10th Ave. stretching across the entire block from 20th to 21st Streets, a GGMC parking garage is being demolished. Not much to look at, but part of the old low-rise neighborhood just the same. It sold for $47,900,000.



The address is 500 West 21st. Originally bought by hotelier Andre Balasz, the current developer, according to the Wall Street Journal, is "Sherwood, a New York City real-estate company that developed the Times Square buildings home to the Renaissance Hotel and the M&M Store."


today

The Times just did a story on the condo building to come: "As the area has become more family-friendly, the building will be made up primarily of larger apartments, many measuring more than 4,000 square feet. ...units could sell for 'somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,500 a square foot,' putting the price for a 4,000-square-foot three- or four-bedroom unit around $10 million."

It's only being called by its address, but shouldn't it have the word "Highline" in its name? Maybe Highline Modern or Highline 500 or HL500 or The Highliner or...how about M&M Highline?


tomorrow

On the next block up 10th Avenue, D&R Auto Parts is up for rent. In 2011, the owner of D&R told AMNY, "'The High Line sucks.' He said he would 'rather have my knees cut off' than take a stroll along the sylvan pathway, as his profits have dropped 35% to 40% since it opened." And now it's gone.



I started this timeline awhile back, showing the blue-collar businesses along the old tracks that have folded since the northern sector of the New Highline opened in June 2011. Time to add more to the list:

5/2013: D&R Auto Parts shuttered
5/2013: GGMC Parking Garage demolished
4/2013: Kamco Building Materials demolished for condo towers
2/2013: Evan Auto moved a block away
1/2013: Edge Auto Rental moved to Brooklyn
1/2013: Central Iron & Metal sold to Related for $65 million
12/2011: Brownfeld Auto pushed out by landlord
12/2011: Chelsea Mobil sold and shuttered for upscale retail
9/2011: Village Lukoil shuttered
9/2011: D&R Auto Parts reported 40% drop in profits since High Line opened
8/2011: Bear Auto forced out by landlord for upscale development
8/2011: Olympia Parking Garage closed when landlord quintupled the rent
6/2011: Poppy's Terminal Food Shop changed hands, later shuttered
6/2011: 10th Ave. Tire Shop pushed out for High Line development

Manatus

While chatting with a shopkeeper on Bleecker Street, I heard that the great Manatus diner is being pushed out. Said the shopkeeper, "Manatus has lost their lease. The space has already been rented out for a Calvin Klein store. Not sure how long they have left. Maybe a month."

Don't panic yet. That was a month ago now, and while I've tried to get something definitive, I have been unable to confirm the information. One person I spoke to at Manatus hesitated to answer, eventually saying, "Eh, well, not tomorrow, maybe in a year."



We've worried about Manatus for awhile. It's been around for decades--since at least 1985. They have long catered to a gay clientele, mostly older men, locals who eat in diners. It's also one of the last affordable places to dine in that part of town. (Read my previous post.)

At lunch the men come walking in, some limping and some using canes, singly or in couples. They're greeted by the hostess with kisses of hello. They are known. They have their favorite tables. One sits at the bar and takes a book out of his Strand shopping bag. He orders a cup of coffee and begins to read, to pass the time not alone. Now and then he gets up to stretch his legs. He helps himself to the mints. Another man sits by himself and sips a bowl of soup. A third butters his roll and reads the Post.

The radio plays Air Supply and Journey.

At dinnertime, a butch woman comes in to get her supper to go, dry cleaning slung over her shoulder, hanging out to chat a bit. An elderly man shuffles in and hands the manager some money, saying, "I owe you two dollars," before turning to leave.

It all feels steady and solid, but the tide of change is at the door. Small businesses on the block have begun to vanish.





The westernmost end of Bleecker Street has been hyper-gentrifying like wildfire for the past few years. In August 2011, I outlined the street's timeline of luxurification, and noted that this block, the western side of Bleecker between 10th and Christopher, "is looking very vulnerable." Then upscale perfumer Jo Malone moved in. That was, perhaps, the tipping point.

I went by recently and found that three more businesses on this side of the block have closed. From left to right: There's a For Lease sign in Pinky Otto (closed) and the Grand Cleaners (closed). The listing gives no asking rent, but you can bet it's in the tens of thousands. These spaces are, after all, "Situated on Manhattan’s hottest fashion corridor."

Your Neighborhood Office postal shop is safe, with a lease for the next 10 years. The Fabuless boutique has closed--the manager said the rent was hiked. Next, Verve looks okay, but they had a "Love NYC? Shop Small" sign in the window. Then it's Manatus, Marc and Max lingerie, and the Village Apothecary, which has been in business since 1983 and appears to be safe.

The shopkeeper I spoke to also claimed that, on the southwest corner of Bleecker and Christopher, the Spa Belles nail salon will become a Tiffany's. The nail salon did not confirm this information.



So, whether it's horrible truth or wild rumor, whether it's tomorrow or a year from now, go to Manatus. Because you never know. Their building is owned by Lloyd Goldman’s BLDG Management, who has been on a "pricey buying spree" lately.


Previously:
Lunch at Manatus
Bleecker Timeline
Bleecker's Luxe Blitz
Arleen Bowman Boutique

*Everyday Chatter

From blogger Cathryn Swan, check out Tales of Washington Square Park, "your official guide to that historic park by the editor of the Washington Square Park Blog." [Bgirl]

The Yippie Museum Cafe is closing this weekend. [EVG]

Luxury businesses cannot afford Soho anymore. [NYO]

"the MTA will vacate its headquarters buildings in Midtown Manhattan by the end of next year and award a long-term lease to a developer expected to demolish the buildings and redevelop the premier location with modern Class A offices, a hotel, residential tower, or a mixture of uses." [MTA]

The glory of 1980s Staten Island. [Slate]

Take a walk on the Crack Tracks of the Bronx. [JKM]

A Brooklyn alley is being revived as a hipster market--and somehow Vesuvio got stuck in there. [NYDN]

Say goodbye to those little metal tags at the Met. [NYT]

Looking at Stonewall's neon signs. [NYN]

A sad farewell to Blarney Cove. [GL]

A sad shot of what's become of Bleecker Bob's--"choke on your yogurt." [FP]

Death of a Block 4

That little block of mom and pops, on 9th Avenue between 17th and 18th Streets, is being gutted.



Reader Brad sends in a couple of photos and writes, "They have removed all signage and even kicked the Subway out to create one massive vacant space ripe for a bank and a Duane Reade!"



We've been following this story since it began back in 2008. Here's a quick timeline (for more detail, click here):

2008: Morris Moinian buys the building and prepares to remove all the small businesses, which included Tamara dry cleaning and tailor shop, The New Chelsea Barber shop, a couple of bodegas, Chelsea Liquors, and the Sweet Banana Candy store.

Weeks after that announcement, the community held a rally to save the businesses from eviction.

Months later, Chelsea Liquors was gone after 30 years in business, and the bodegas began to fall.

Then it got quiet.


2008

2012: Moinian sold the building to the Stonehenge Group, who promptly delivered eviction notices to all of the small business tenants that remained.

The New China take-out joint shuttered. The New Barber Shop shuttered. The tailor shop and Sweet Banana vanished. Places that mattered deeply to people, that helped connect them to each other and gave them safe places to land, were removed from their neighborhood.

The Stonehenge Group released a rendering of their vision, beige and bland, an image that belongs to the new city, the vanished city.




Look closer at what was lost:
Death of a Block
Death of a Block 2 
Death of a Block 3
Saving 9th Avenue
Sweet Banana Candy Store
New Barber Shop
Chelsea Liquors
New China

Whitestone Multiplex

VANISHED

The Whitestone multiplex cinema has shuttered after 30 years in business. It was purchased for $30 million last year by real estate development company the Lightstone Group, who will be turning the site into New York City's first outlet mall.

For their final marquee, a goodbye note:


from South Bronx Network's facebook page

The Lightstone Group is best known these days for its massive luxury development of Gowanus, but they have developed a number of outlet malls--full of typical mall chain stores. The one at Whitestone will be a chain itself--in the Paragon Outlets chain of outlets--and will "feature an open-air racetrack design and showcase over 100 global brands."

Last year The Observer noted, "New Yorkers, secretly covetous of the bland, sprawling suburban malls that can be found in the city’s hinterlands, are ecstatic...incredibly enthusiastic about the prospect of opening more places in New York that feel exactly like the soulless suburban tracts they left behind."



Of course, the multiplex is also a suburban invention--like the drive-in theater that preceded it.

Whitestone Cinemas opened in 1983, when its owner, media magnate Sumner Redstone, decided that an indoor cinema, with lots of screens, would be more lucrative than his father's old drive-in. Mr. Redstone credits himself with inventing the word "multiplex," which he trademarked it in 1973. He describes the eureka moment in his memoir A Passion to Win:

"I was sitting in my office one day trying to think of a word for a theater that showed more pictures than the number of screens without any specifics. The word 'plex' was in the lexicon and I worked with that. I didn't want to say eightplex or nineplex... Then it came to me. 'Multiplex!' I jotted the word down and said it out loud. That's what we had, a multiplex."

(Today, multi is not enough, and we have megaplexes. I suppose googleplexes will be next.)



The Whitestone Multiplex had at least one murder, a fight over popcorn, and as far as I know, the Whitestone Drive-In had none. Opened in 1949, the drive-in kicked off with the two movies Suddenly It's Spring and Caged Fury.

In October of that year, the New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" visited the drive-in (which they called "rather spectacular") and spoke to its manager, Mr. Harvey Elliott. He insisted that drive-ins were not a passing fad, saying, "This is a country on wheels. We like to eat on wheels, telephone on wheels, and listen to the radio on wheels. Why not see movies on wheels?"

Furthermore...



Mr. Elliott also took on the "ugly rumor" that the drive-in was a hotbed of neckers. "No such thing," he said, "not real necking." A police officer regularly roamed the amber and green-lit parking lot, checking cars to make sure.



Before the drive-in was built, the land was used as a dump.

And before the dump, it was swamp land.

10th and 4th

After years in flux, the southeast corner of East 10th Street and 4th Avenue has returned to the market. Massey Knakal just put up a pair of banners and listed the price for 71 4th Avenue at $24 million.



We started following this corner in 2007, when rumors circulated about the demolition of the block's historic artist studio buildings and the coming of high-rise construction. St. Marx Music (formerly a branch of the Atlas Barber School) and the Green East grocer were booted out.

The site was covered in plywood and neglected. In 2008, we learned the corner would be demolished to make room for a boutique hotel. It looked like the low-rise buildings would be coming down, but they didn't.

Since then, the only activity on this building has come from the Scribbler, a strange graffitist who regularly covered the plywood with his angry messages. But some time in the past year, the Scribbler stopped scribbling.

With the Death Star risen and the Hyatt Union Square just opened nearby, we may soon see another dull glass box for the neighborhood--on a sleepy block that was once the home of celebrated galleries and artists like Willem DeKooning.


rendering

Says the listing, "Plans exist for a nine story mixed-use building with 8 floor through apartments and a bi-level retail space with double height ceilings."

With all that glass, let's hope the Scribbler has his permanent-ink Magic Markers at the ready.


rendering


today

Last Call at Blarney Cove

On East 14th, the Blarney Cove is closing this week. On their Facebook page they write, "Final count down has begun. Last day of the bar is now June 25th--Tuesday night... I better see you in person before they shutter the doors."

They've been here a long time and every trip to the Cove is like walking into a Bukowski poem. I went in recently for what is likely my last drink. Here's some of what the regulars had to say.



"This place is closing. Fucking NYU bought the whole thing, from the corner on down. All these boys here gotta find another hole."

"How'm I doin'? Could be worse. Next week I'm getting a full-body everything. They're gonna look at my brain to see if I'm crazy."



"I'm so happy! I love you!" 

"All the old bars we used to hang out at are gone. The Ukrainian Club. That's gone. Verkhovyna. That's gone. Vazac's was great, but now it's been yuppified. Yuppies? I mean the hipsters. When they changed the Christodora to condos, that's when it all changed. Giuliani kicked 'em all out. And fucking NYU. Back when Giuliani was, whattayacallit, the mayor."



"The cigarettes make you more nervous."

"Since this place is closing, I'll probably end up at O'Hanlon's."

"Every day, a person has 20 minutes when they feel so tired they could drop right off to sleep."

"I like the International Bar. They got no televisions, which I like. They got kind of a liberal, independent crowd. And cheap beer."



"I shouldn't drink so much, but I feel good. I'm working out at the gym now. I'm so happy! I can look forward now!" 

"She's more dangerous than a guy. I'm more afraid of her than a guy."



"I started drinking way too much and then I went fucking crazy. If you don't have something to occupy your brain, you go crazy. And drinking doesn't help. Now I've got crossword puzzles. I'm up to five or six puzzles a day."

"Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy."

"The Japanese and the Irish eat the most seaweed in the world."