November 2008

From The Daily News:

Skip the holiday gifting anxiety attacks this year and head to the Union Square Holiday Market, now in it’s 13th year. There’s plenty of hand-made jewelry, clothes and other items as well as organic and free-trade finery. Saturday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Sunday, 11 a.m.-7 p.m; free admission. Union Square Park, E. 14th St. and Broadway. For more information, go to: www.nycgovparks.org.

From the current issue of The Villager:

When Danny Meyer opened the Union Square Cafe 24 years ago, area rents hovered around $8 per square foot. Today comparable space could rent for up to $400 per square foot.

The business dilemma of astronomical rents was one of the issues under consideration on Mon., Nov. 10, at the Union Square Partnership Fall Forum titled, “Spotlight on Commercial Diversity in Union Square.”

A panel of four experts joined moderator William H. Kelley, the Partnership’s director of economic development, in a roundtable discussion of the area’s commercial landscape.

More than 75 residents and local business owners attended the forum in the Union Square Ballroom, in what one participant described as an attempt to “think outside the box and look forward.”

Kelley explained the motivation behind the forum:

“In its heyday, Union Square had this wonderful gathering of mom-and-pop businesses,” he told The Villager. “Recently, the area has become an international gathering of businesses.”

Forum participants debated if this evolution was an inevitable result of growth or if there were there any tools the Union Square area or even city government could employ to create a more stable mix of large and small businesses.

“I think Union Square is fascinating,” said panelist Larisa Ortiz, of Larisa Ortiz Associates and a co-author of “Real Estate Redevelopment & Reuse.” “It’s a model and a template that other cities have followed,” she said, noting the presence of iconic restaurants and the Greenmarket.

According to an examination of gentrification trends by New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, the number of businesses in the Union Square area rose almost 20 percent from 1990 to 2000, and have grown an additional 8 percent since 2000.

Of those businesses, 11 percent represent food services and “accommodations.” The largest number of retail businesses — 23 percent — are clothing and accessory stores.

Ortiz was concerned how the neighborhood could maintain its character when park-fronting property is privately owned and rents are set by overheated market forces.

“Let’s help interesting speciality business and restaurant spaces on the side streets,” she suggested.

To gauge interest in topics for the forum, the Partnership sent out a questionnaire in September to more than 3,500 local residents and businesses. A question asked what the most important issue facing Union Square is.

The survey drew almost 300 responses. Topping the list of concerns, 43 percent of respondents said pedestrian congestion and safety are of primary importance. Another 24 percent believed addressing the neighborhood’s changing character was paramount. Six percent saw completing reconstruction of the square’s north end as important.

Exciting new for the neighborhood that proves that the 14th St. shareholders live in an important building: our neighbor at number 22, namely the Duane Reade building, has been landmarked by the city for its historical significance. This action protects it in perpetuity. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation gives us this historical background:

“The Baumann Brothers Furniture and Carpets Store was built in 1880-81 for James McCreery (1826- 1903), a well-known textiles merchant of Scottish descent. It was designed by the architectural firm of D. & J. Jardine, whose principals, David and John Jardine, were brothers also of Scottish birth. One of the more prominent, prolific, and versatile New York firms in the late-nineteenth century, D. & J. Jardine executed designs for a wide variety of building types, including a number of notable cast-iron fronts, in contemporary styles. The wide cast-iron front facade of the Baumann Brothers store is one of the firm’s and one of the city’s most inventive, unusual, and ornamental. Built toward the end of the heyday of cast-iron fronts in New York and the flourishing creativity in that material, the Baumann Brothers store is also a signal achievement of Aesthetic Movement design. An amalgam of ornamental influences, including neo-Classical, neo-Grec, and Queen Anne styles, is embraced to achieve a decorative overall composition. Another designed, though simpler, facade on 13th Street is clad in brick and stone with a cast-iron ground story. The building’s prime location was in the midst of Manhattan’s primary retail shopping district, which included 14th Street, Union Square, and Ladies’ Mile. From 1881 to 1897, it housed Baumann Brothers, a furniture-manufacturing company established c. 1870 by Albert and Ludwig Baumann, Bohemian Jewish immigrants. By 1884, the firm occupied the entire structure and billed itself as “the largest and most complete furnishing establishment in America.” A painted sign advertising Baumann Brothers is still visible on the building’s western wall. For eight decades, the ground story contained 5-10-and-25-cent stores, beginning with the fourth Woolworth store in Manhattan (1900-28), acclaimed at its opening “the largest ten-cent store in the world.” This space was later a store for F. & W. Grand, H.L. Green, and McCrory. The upper stories were leased for over eight decades for show rooms and manufacturing by various firms related to the textile and sporting goods industries, as well as a gymnasium and classrooms for the Delehanty Institute (1930-63), which trained candidates of the Police and Fire Departments. The building currently contains a drugstore, while the upper stories are used as an annex to the Parsons School of Design.”

Comparing 3rd quarter 2007 to 3rd quarter 2008, real estate prices around here have actually done pretty well, according to the Times.

Neighborhoods that experienced price drops include the Lower East Side and the East Village, where median prices fell 5.5 percent; and Carnegie Hill, where co-op prices decreased 7.2 percent. Median prices in Hamilton Heights and Morningside Heights dropped 30 percent, with sales decreasing to only 19 from 67 in 2007. In Washington Heights, median prices went down 6.3 percent, but the number of sales increased to 24 from 18 in 2007.

The neighborhoods that fared the best through the third quarter included Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue from 59th to 96th Streets, where median prices went up 35 percent. In Lincoln Square, an area between 57th and 72nd Streets from Central Park West to the Hudson River that is home to high-priced apartments in 15 Central Park West and the Time Warner Center, median co-op prices went up 18.6 percent and median condo prices went up 25 percent. Prices also rose in Lenox Hill, where median co-op prices went up 19 percent; and Chelsea, where median co-op and condo prices went up about 6 percent.

Other neighborhoods that experienced increases include Greenwich Village, where median prices for co-ops went up 3.9 percent; Union Square and the Gramercy area, where co-op prices went up 3.3 percent and condo prices went up 2.6 percent; and the Upper East Side, where median co-op prices went up 2.3 percent and condo prices went up 9.1 percent.

A few co-op residents were spotted among the mostly NYU throng that congregated in Union Square last night to celebrate Obama’s victory. Want to watch a bit of video capturing the excitement? Click here. And also here.