Clint McMahon Good morning, East Village.
The Local received a letter from a tenant mourning the loss of East Village native Andrew Kowalczyk, the landlord, super, and tenant of a building on East Seventh Street that has been seen in the “Godfather II” and other productions. EV Grieve also received the eulogy and reprinted it: “Andrew wasn’t a rich guy. He could have hiked the rents every time an apartment changed hands but he didn’t. A friend recommended us and that was good enough for him. ‘I just want local people we know,’ he would say whenever an apartment came up and we would get another friend in there.”
Speaking of landlords, The New York Post reports that an heir of William Gottlieb, “perhaps the biggest private landowner in Greenwich Village,” is selling off some of his property. Among his properties are an East 10th Street townhouse selling for $5.6 million and two vacant lots on East Houston going for $9.5 million. The sales could “remake downtown in the process.”
Save The Lower East Side rails against NYU’s plan to build in Community District 3, but is surprised to see the animosity against NYU: “Hasn’t NYU already transformed the commercial character and the residential demographic of the EV? Is there anything left to lose to NYU? NYU has already wrought its worst on real estate values and rents. What is the complaint against them? They are, on the whole, much more agreeable than the yuppies. They party less and they have more intellectual curiosity. What are East Villagers protecting?”
The Daily News reports that Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito is fighting to get bike lanes in East Harlem and that “the addition of protected bike lanes is nothing short of a social and environmental justice issue. Until recently, nearly all of the proposed locations for these lanes were in primarily white and higher-income neighborhoods — from the East Village to Chelsea to the upper East Side to Park Slope. But all along, communities of color like El Barrio/East Harlem have needed these lanes too.”
And if you happened to have noticed any straphangers riding in their skivvies yesterday, it was the annual “No Pants Subway Ride”, started by Improv Everywhere, a “New York City-based prank collective.” Nearly 4,000 New Yorkers were stripped down to their underwear this year.
