did Bouley learn to clean up after himself on Duane Street?

or did the rental market improve on its own?
One implication of an item from yesterday’s New York Daily News Best Places Voyeur is that restaurateur David Bouley has cleaned up his act; another may be that lawyers who use a public pen to make a stink may find that the stench is hard to cover up in the Era Of The Google. The lawyer owns a townhouse (not a loft) on Duane Street (a very loft-y street, so one always on the Manhattan Loft Guy radar). The lawyer is offering his “3,500 sq ft” townhouse for rent for $35,000. The lawyer got the attention of the Daily News Best Places Voyeur, who offered a bare-bones description of the space but did, after all (a) feature the rental as ‘news’ and (b) put it in a “Best Places” feature.

Nice pub for the lawyer.

The townhouse is pretty distinctive (and lovely!) and sits in a prime Tribeca location. People who know the area, and people who know about The Famous Restaurant Guy Next Door, will remember that the lawyer generated a lot of publicity a few months ago by suing TFRGND for being … well … a bad next-door neighbor. The lawyer writes a nice (compelling, detailed, vermin-filled) complaint. Here is the New York Post version of the story back in April. (The Daily News also covered that story, not as a real estate feature, but as news.) More nice pub for the lawyer.

Back then, per the lawyer, he could not rent the place for $30,000 because of TFRGND (it was “an unrentable paradise for bugs and vermin”, per the Post). Now it is offered for $35,000.

One assumes the nasty stuff in the complaint has gone away, so that the place is now (more than) rentable. It is nice when neighbors make up.

(h/t The Real Deal for yesterday’s Daily News link)

© Sandy Mattingly 2011