maybe they are diversifying down?
Gothamist is calling the new nabe Extell-land, referring to the East Village area bounded by 10th and 14th Sts, 2d Av and Av B, since the Extell Development Corporation bought 17 buildings in that grid. The NY Post has the detail that the buildings were bought for (only?) $72.6mm from a single landlord, and consist of 253 rent-regulated apartments in the four and five story tenements.
(per Gothamist.com)
let’s just say that Extell did not make its name collecting controlled rent
Extell was the developer recruited by Ratner’s Atlantic Yards opponents who bid a basketful of money (pun intended!) for the right to develop the Atlantic Yards, and lost to ForestCity’s smaller basket. Extell is building the twin “Ariel”s on the Upper West Side, where most apartments are going from the high $1s to the low $4s (that’s millions, of course). Then there is the condo conversion of the Stanhope Hotel across from the Met, where the “smaller units” (everything is relative) run more than 4,000 sq ft and go for $10mm+.
what would Bert & Ernie say (or sing)?
I really don’t remember my CTV enough to know who sang“one of these things is not like the other”, but if Bert, Ernie, Oscar or any of the Muppets looked at (a) Atlantic Yards, (b) Ariel East or West, (c) the Stanhope, and (d) the East Village (pick a block) even a stick and cloth figure would recognize that Extell is probably not going to engage in regulated tenement rentals for long.
how do you stop a developed from developing? Cooper Sq Comm is trying to find out
Something about this is coming up at a Community Board meeting on September 19.
Steven Herrick, executive director of the Cooper Square Committee, is no Muppet, but he can sing the song:
"This type of acquisition, tenement housing, is a big departure from what Extell has done before"…
and
"Luxury development is unacceptable in our community, which has historically been primarily the working poor," he said [in the Post].
same plan, different class, 60 years later?
StuyvesantTown and PeterCooperVillage may be one thing (PCV is across 14th St from “Extell-land”); Alphabet City is quite another. Indeed, as I blogged a week ago, “Extell-land” is what Stuy Town and PC Village used to look like, before Met Life assembled, demolished, and developed those middle class havens. The current Alphabet City is more “working poor” (according to un-Muppet Steven Herrick) than the same area sixty years ago (according to Prof. Zipp). Whether it remains that way, remains to be seen.
Of course, things just don’t stay the same. But this should be a donnybrook. Tune in after September 19….
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
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