The six-story building planned for 372 Lafayette Street is on its way, according to documents filed with the Department of Buildings. The application, filed on Tuesday, is for the demolition (with “hand tools only”) of the one-story garage, built in 1933, on the corner of Great Jones Street. Last November, the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved architect Morris Adjmi’s second round of plans for an apartment building on the site.

Stephen Rex Brown Dina Leor

After weeks of uncertainty, Dina Leor, the owner of La Sirena, has learned that she’ll face a 42 percent rent increase if she decides to stay in her Third Street store, Tower Brokerage president Bob Perl confirmed to The Local.

Last week, Mr. Perl — who is negotiating on behalf of Ms. Leor’s landlord, the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association — said the rent increase would likely be around 30 percent.

Currently paying $1,580 per month for her small Mexican folk art store, Ms. Leor had said she couldn’t afford the increase to $2,250 per month. But despite sending out an e-mail last week indicating she would close the store, she said today that she had no immediate plans to do shutter, since she didn’t have anywhere to relocate. “I’m still in a kind of limbo. I’m not going to say I’m going to close my doors — I feel like something will happen to allow me to stay,” she said. She wasn’t sure what that would be, but floated the idea of a fundraising campaign.

With across-the-board rent hikes looming, other commercial tenants of the Mutual Housing Association worried last week that they too would face tough decisions.

Sarah Darville Postal and other businesses on East Fourth.

Store owners already struggling to get by are worried about a significant rent increase planned by their landlord, the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association.

The Local spoke to about a half dozen shopkeepers on Third and Fourth Streets, between Bowery and Second Avenue, who said they were grappling with a sluggish economy as well as challenges unique to their blocks. Some worried they would follow in the footsteps of La Sirena, which earlier this week announced that it would be closing, should they too face rent hikes of what is expected to be around 30 percent.

At Postal, a packing and shipping store on Fourth Street, owner Gary Patick said he alternates between busy days and days when “nothing happens,” and doubted he’d have any room to negotiate when his lease expires in two years. He described his profits, which in 2010 and 2011 were their lowest in a decade, as “a real roller coaster” and said that one-third of them go toward rent payments.  Read more…

Chelsia Rose Marcius

Mary Help of Christians may soon have a new owner, and the long-standing flea market next to the church is preparing to permanently fold up its tables.

John Matcovich, the manager of Immaculate Conception Parish, which has overseen the church on 12th Street since 2007, said that a couple of months ago the Archdiocese of New York found a buyer for the church as well as the adjacent school building and parking lot; the deal is expected to be made official in September.

Joseph Zwilling, director of communications for the Archdiocese, declined to confirm that a contract was in the works, citing a policy of not discussing real estate dealings until they are finalized. “The process is not over with Mary Help of Christians,” he said. Read more…

Architects tackling Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s challenge to design a livable 275-square-foot “micro-unit” apartment can take inspiration from James Hong. The East Village resident maximized the space in his 500-square-foot digs by using a sliding door, a custom tub and all kinds of other high-end renovations depicted in the video above. (Clearly, it helps to have some cash to spend.)

Of course, Mr. Hong isn’t the first to make the most of a small East Village apartment. Back in 2009 the firm Jordan Parnass Digital Architecture squeezed a home office into a small studio, thanks to stairs that doubled as drawers and an elevated bed built above a walk-in closet.

On Friday, The Local noted the sale of three buildings on East Third Street whose tenants had protested the non-renewal of their leases. Now Commercial Observer reveals the buyers: according to a statement, brothers Graham and Gregory Jones have purchased the buildings for $23.5 million, with plans to turn them into “the most desirable walk-ups in the East Village” once the remaining leases expire.

Sarah Darville Sue Palchak-Essenpriess in her apartment.

Sue Palchak-Essenpriess caught a break in Housing Court last week.

The resident of 50 East Third Street, who along with her husband organized fellow tenants against the landlord who refused to renew their leases, defiantly stayed two months past the expiration date of her lease. That caused her landlord, Abart Holdings, to file suit for $2,400 on top of the rent she had paid for the two extra months, as well as for legal fees. On Friday, those demands were dropped, Ms. Palchak-Essenpriess said, and the parties settled for the amount of their security deposit and a month’s rent.

Now Ms. Palchak-Essenpriess is packing up and preparing to move to a new apartment in Washington Heights. “If you were to think of the stress arc, I guess this is the peak of it. The uncertainty is over, but now the devastation of the change is settling in,” she said.

Actually, there’s still one bit of uncertainty: Who owns 50-58 East Third Street? Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Andre Balazs speaking to East Fifth Street block association.

That book nook isn’t the only new development at The Standard, East Village: hotel higher-ups are moving forward with plans for a overhaul of the ground floor, and according to Department of Buildings records, initial construction will cost over $3 million.

Last week, The Standard filed two applications for construction work and zoning changes to 25-33 Cooper Square. The first, requesting permission to modify egress on the first floor as well as other general construction, estimates a price tag of $2.4 million. The second, for similar work, predicts an additional expenditure of $610,000.
Read more…

Sarah Darville Donna Schaper, Senior Minister of Judson Memorial Church, at left.

Local residents and N.Y.U. faculty members gathered this evening in a garden that will be demolished if the university’s expansion plan is approved. During a mock funeral scheduled a day before a critical City Council hearing about N.Y.U. 2031, they lamented the loss of trees and the displacement of wildlife due to construction, and shared memories of a leafy retreat where they had meditated and played with their children.

Tucked between the two towers of the Washington Square Village superblock, Sasaki Garden has a low profile in the neighborhood. That lends itself to peace and quiet, neighbors said — but it also makes their fight to save the park more difficult.

Jan Blustein, professor of health policy and medicine at N.Y.U., was saddened at the prospect of the destruction of what she said had been a “beloved resource” for her and her family. “I had such a great experience living here and being a young faculty member here, and I’d hate for faculty to not have that opportunity in the future,” she said. Read more…

The Villager scored a tour of the five-story mansion that accommodates one lucky family at 47 East Third Street, and boy does it sound like a palace. Where once were 15 rent-regulated apartments, now sits a two-story “airy living room,” a wrestling room, a room for a live-in nanny, a room for the building’s security system, and “an upside-down river” of re-purposed wooden beams that serves as a ceiling sculpture. Even Mosaic Man plans to do one of his signature designs on the exterior of the building. The Economakis family waged a controversial battle to oust tenants in the building beginning in 2003. Eventually, nine holdout tenants took buyouts that averaged $70,000, according to the paper.

Sarah Darville Sue Palchak-Essenpreis

When Council Member Rosie Mendez joined the residents of three buildings on Third Street last month to protest the non-renewal of their leases, Sue Palchak-Essenpreis vowed to stay put past the end of her lease on May 14. And she did just that: her one-bedroom apartment is still jam-packed with bookshelves, and plants are perched on almost every windowsill. But last night, she signed a new lease for an apartment in Washington Heights. On July 4, she’ll move out of her third-floor apartment at 50 East Third Street. But first, she has an appointment downtown.

On Friday, she and her husband Greg Essenpreis will appear in Housing Court in hopes that a judge will keep them from having to pay the legal fees of their landlord, Abe Haruvi. That would mark the end of the high-profile protest against the owner of 50, 54, and 58 East Third Street, who did not renew the leases of some 17 tenants whose contracts with his company, Abart Holdings, were running out this summer. After a few months of outcry, most of the buildings’ residents are now moving on.

Since Ms. Palchak-Essenpreis began organizing tenants, she said, there has been more fleeing than fighting. “There has been a different moving truck in front of the building almost every day for the last two weeks,” she admitted. “After I sent off the e-mail – ‘We’re going to court!’ – it was like a cartoon: everyone ran off.” Read more…

Yesterday the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Andrew Berman, shared the history of six buildings that may soon be part of the proposed East Village-Lower East Side Historic District. Before this afternoon’s critical hearing, he’s delving into the history of six others.

G.V.S.H.P. 68 East Seventh Street

68 East Seventh Street, built in 1835. This row house at 68 East Seventh Street was built speculatively in 1835 by Thomas E. Davis. Sometime in the 1850s or 1860s, the original Greek Revival façade was updated with Italianate details that include the triangular and segmental window pediments and the frieze located below the original cornice. In 1882, the house was sold to the Protestant Episcopal Church Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews, which occupied it until 1904, when the house became a Jewish religious school operated by the Machzikei Talmud Torah. It was then subsequently a synagogue. The house was returned to private residential use in 1960. Read more…

Followers of the Occupy East 4th Street blog may have noted Friday’s report of a woman injured at 86 East Fourth Street after a stairwell landing partially collapsed due to construction in the building. A spokeswoman for the Department of Buildings revealed today that the victim, who is in her 30s, had non-life-threatening injuries. The incident occurred between the third and fourth floors and inspectors hit the owners with a violation for failing to maintain the building. Further details were not available. A resident in the building said that earlier today a temporary stairwell landing built by the Fire Department was still in place. Gatsby Realty, which has been the subject of several tenant harassment complaints, did not respond to a request for comment. Last year EV Grieve reported that the new owners of the building were not renewing tenants’ leases.

On the eve of a critical hearing regarding the proposed East Village-Lower East Side Historic District, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Andrew Berman, shared information on 12 of the more compelling buildings within the footprint. Here’s a look at the first six.

G.V.S.H.P. 101 Avenue A

101 Avenue A, now the The Pyramid Club. Built in 1876 by architect William Jose.

Although little is known about William Jose, a German-born tenement-house architect, his buildings are often some of the most unusual and intricate in their neighborhoods. His Neo-Grec design for 101 Avenue A is no different, with an unusually ornate cornice, florid fire escapes, and deeply incised window hoods.

The building housed several tenement apartments on its upper floors, while its ground floor long served as a hall where locals would gather to eat, celebrate, mourn, or discuss labor issues and neighborhood gossip. Kern’s Hall was the first to open in 1876 and was followed by Shultz’s Hall, Fritz’s Hall, and most famously, Leppig’s Hall.

John Leppig and later his son, also named John Leppig, both served as the unofficial “Mayor of Avenue A.” Leppig’s closed in the 1930s, and by the 1960s the space was home to a series of performance spaces and cultural centers, which reflected the East Village’s evolution from an ethnic enclave to a worldwide center of cultural ferment. It was also at this time that underground music icon and Warhol superstar Nico lived upstairs at 101 Avenue A, while she was performing with the Velvet Underground.

In 1979 the present occupant, the Pyramid Club, opened in the space. The Pyramid Club had a profound impact on the downtown art, music, and performance art scene. The Wigstock Festival is said to have begun there, as well as politically-conscious drag performance in the early 1980s. In later years it became a showcase for up-and-coming artists, including Madonna, RuPaul, Nirvana, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown The door to Martha Fedorko’s apartment.

East Village landlords often make for easy villains. Just ask State Senator Thomas Duane about Benjamin Shaoul, the Shalom family, and Alistair Economakis. But the residents of 510 East Sixth Street face a particularly vexing situation.

Stephen Rex Brown 510 East Sixth Street.

By most accounts their landlord, Martha Fedorko, was once a generous owner and accomplished doctor who helped out tenants when she could. Luc Sante wrote all of “Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York,” in the building, and thanks her in the acknowledgements of the book published in 1992. “She was absolutely the best landlord I ever had,” said Mr. Sante, who now lives in Kingston, N.Y.

But residents say that as she has grown old, Ms. Fedorko has started cutting their electricity for no reason, telling them to vacate their apartments at random times, menaced one of them with her cane, and left inscrutable letters in the hallway. Read more…

Ray LeMoine

Bret Easton Ellis is renting his condo in the American Felt Building. For $5,000 a month, any ol’ chap can live in the loft that spawned Patrick Bateman, the banker/serial-killer protagonist of “American Psycho,” a Wall Street satire that many never saw as a joke, despite all the mentions of Genesis, moisturizing, sit-ups and Vidal Sassoon.

Mr. Ellis announced the rental of apartment 2D, purchased in the ’80s, to his nearly 300,000 followers on Twitter.

But don’t get too excited: though his bed remains, the writer himself hasn’t lived at 114 East 13th Street for six years. Posters and first editions of his books decorated the walls when it was first rented out, but they’ve since been moved, according to Miles Chapin, who showed the loft over the weekend. Read more…

Evan Bleier Patricia James in her former home.

With the help of over $14,000 in rent that she withheld from the New York City Housing Authority because, she said, it didn’t make repairs to her apartment in the Two Bridges complex, a lifelong New Yorker has left the city’s public housing for suburbia. Now, instead of complaining about rodents, Patricia James is dodging ducks in her parking lot. She even has a fireplace.

In March, the 67-year-old grandmother said she didn’t want to fork over a check for over $14,000 in back rent and fees until the housing authority assured her in writing that it would let her stay in her $517-a-month apartment. In April, a Housing Court judge ruled that she must leave her apartment of 37 years, but gave her permission to stay until July.

The judge, said Ms. James, offered her a “settlement that would give me an opportunity to find a place to live and some money to move. It gave them possession of the apartment, and me the money.” Read more…

Sarah Darville Tommy McKean in the air shaft of his building.

This feud over an air conditioning unit certainly isn’t cooling off.

Employees of a Hamptons Market Place at 356 East 13th Street switched off power to their entire building this morning, leaving 16 apartments without electricity for about an hour. Outraged tenants said it’s only the latest disruption that has been inflicted on them by the deli, which installed an air conditioner and ventilator unit on the roof that has bothered them to no end.

The owner of the deli, who has grown weary of a year of noise complaints, is so fed up that today he raised the possibility of a harassment suit against the tenants.

“I can’t get a psychiatrist to come into their apartments but I wish I could,” the owner, Victor Nagi said, later adding, “The tenants are harassing me. They’re complaining every other day and getting me these fines.” Read more…

Martine Mallary An actress plays Evangeline Cory Booth at the Markle’s 80th anniversary in 2010.

The Salvation Army’s Markle Evangeline Residence for Women, which celebrated its 82nd anniversary yesterday, is one of the last of the city’s “girls’ homes,” and an odd bird: incoming tenants pay $1,650 to $1,735 a month for a single room that comes with perks like weekly maid service, two meals a day, and access to a rooftop lounge with sweeping views of the Manhattan skyline. At the same time, they’re forbidden from having alcohol in their rooms, or bringing men back to them, and the building is run by staff members with titles like major and lieutenant colonel.

General Evangeline Cory Booth, daughter of the Salvation Army’s British-born founder, envisioned the residence as a safe haven for young single women of modest means. When the cornerstone of the 17-story art deco building at 123 West 13th Street was laid in 1930, one of its first residents beamed, “already it has the atmosphere of a real home. There are 325 girls overjoyed to be living here.”

But as the Markle observed its anniversary yesterday in a basement space that once held a swimming pool and is now used as a dining room, not everyone was so overjoyed. Last month, Marion Jeeves jumped from the window of her small apartment and died at the age of 57. Friends said she was a poet who had been depressed over long periods of unemployment and financial difficulties.

Others have left the building under less tragic but still bitter circumstances, complaining that the residence no longer caters to those of modest means. Read more…