Here’s some great tourist advice – hop aboard the New York Water Taxi and check out “the historic, artsy and vibrant neighbourhoods of Brooklyn including DUMBO and Williamsburg…”
Better pack a sandwich or two, though – the Water Taxi won’t be stopping in DUMBO or Williamsburg until July.
Bruni has a wonderful reminiscence of Florent, and by extension downtown and New York before it was all business class. I first went to Florent in the late 80s, probably after a night downtown. When we moved to Hudson Square (nobody called it that then) in ’89, Florent was a frequent dinner or breakfast choice. It wasn’t exactly nearby, but everything west of Greenwich felt like the same neighborhood.
I spent most of the ’90s tending bar on Spring Street, and after a good night, we’d head to Florent for breakfast – usually around 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning, sometimes later, rarely earlier. After mediocre nights, we’d hit the Waverly Restaurant for cheap eats, but whenever possible, it was to Florent for steak and eggs (and more drinks). (After slow Sunday shifts, I’d usually hit Blue Ribbon and spend my shift pay with Alonzo at the raw bar, but that’s a different story.)
Hetero, homo or trans, Gansevoort has been over for close to a decade now (ditto “Hudson Square”, or that part of Spring west of Hudson). And no, its not the fault of Sex and the City – that was but one symptom, never the cause. I really hope that Florent got a good settlement out of his landlord.
The line up of movies at McCarren this summer includes Rushmore, Virgin Suicides and Mean Streets (featuring New York the way it was).
Curbed has dug up some Gene Kaufman renderings of the proposed Rose Plaza project at the Certified Lumber site (just south of Schaefer Landing). As one commenter noted, this design won’t be winning anyone the Pritzker prize.
In the silver lining department, the application at City Planning was filed by Gruzen Samton Architects. Either Kaufman is showing an earlier concept, or Gruzen is only responsible for the master planning, not the architecture.
Very sad news – I hope its not as bad as they say. But I’ve thought that about others before.
207 Grand Street (proposed), via Gowanus Lounge.
Via Curbed and GL, a rendering has surfaced of a proposed commercial building at 207 Grand Street (northwest corner of Driggs). The project is build to suit, which basically means nothing will get built unless a retail tenant comes along. Still, its interesting to see that retail is alive and well on Grand Street (contrary to what anti-context advocates have said). In fact, retail is so strong that developers are willing to forego (future) residential FAR in order to construct retail.
The design, by Karl Fischer Architects, is not bad. Its relatively simple (sometimes, as here, that’s a good thing), uses red brick rather than the now-standard black/gray, and even includes some corbelling details at the cornice. Of course its easy to see how an owner could dumb this down pretty quickly with just a little value engineering.
