Stephen Rex Brown

The new owner of the building that houses Cabrini Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation has failed to come to terms with a  potential new operator of the nursing home, increasing the likelihood that it will close when its lease expires in April.

Kenneth Fisher, an attorney representing Magnum Real Estate Group, which bought the building at Avenue B and Fifth Street late last year, said that negotiations to resell the building to a for-profit nursing home operator fell apart earlier this week. “On Sunday, we believed there was an agreement on the price,” he said. “On Tuesday, they had walked back from the agreement.” He added, “We’re disappointed that the transaction wasn’t reduced to a written contract.”

Michele deMilly, a consultant for Cabrini who is authorized to speak for the company, confirmed that a deal is no longer in the works: “Yesterday we heard that Magnum, meaning Ben Shaoul, was no longer negotiating with the prospective new operator of the nursing home facility on that site – he had terminated all negotiations –  and that Cabrini was going to proceed with their closing plan.” Read more…

Daniel Maurer A 7-Eleven is said to be opening in
the former porn shop next to IHOP.

Back in November, Amber Tamblyn told The Local that she and her fiancée, comedian David Cross, planned to leave the East Village for Brooklyn. Last month, Mr. Cross, who had previously bemoaned the arrival of a Subway on Avenue B, complained to Gothamist about the neighborhood’s new 7-Eleven and IHOP (that was before news broke, today, of another 7-Eleven.) This week, The New Yorker tags along as he makes the big move to – wait for it – Dumbo.

In the Talk of the Town piece, which is available online to subscribers only, the comedian reiterates, “I’m really not one of those whiny, annoying people who complain about any change, but there’s a 7-Eleven and an IHOP in the East Village now. It could be a suburban mall. Also, I was a younger man when I came here, doing younger-man things.” He clarifies: “I’m trying to be classy about saying ‘I don’t go out and get laid anymore.’” Read more…

Courtesy of Daniel Squadron Ms. Spink with State Senator Daniel Squadron

Mary Spink, a member of Community Board 3 recognized for decades of community activism, including work on sustainable and affordable housing, died yesterday morning at around 12:30 a.m. after struggles with liver and kidney failure. Her colleague at the Lower East Side People’s Mutual Housing Association, Rona Clemente, said Ms. Spink was 64. The news was first reported by The Lo-Down.

In an e-mail to The Local, Susan Stetzer, the board’s district manager, wrote, “Mary was a good friend and a hero in the community. Many people talk about making change — Mary made things happen.”

“Mary was [a] comrade in everyday battles to work for the Lower East Side and she was friends/family with many people in the L.E.S.,” Ms. Stetzer added. “She was on many boards dedicated to working for people in the community — such as the Girls Club (until very recently) and the East Village Community Coalition, as well as the Community Board — and there were no boundaries between this work and her everyday life. Mary is much loved and will be very missed.” Read more…

Noah Fecks East 10th Street. The second building from the right was approved for a rooftop addition only hours before the street was designated a landmark district.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission approved a historic district on a block of East 10th Street along Tompkins Square Park today, though a controversial rooftop addition that led to the expedited hearing also got the go-ahead literally hours before the vote.

With the designation, the exteriors of the 26 buildings between Avenues A and B will essentially be preserved as-is. But at the meeting the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Andrew Berman, revealed that developer Ben Shaoul’s plans for a rooftop addition to 315 East 10th Street had been approved by the Department of Buildings.

“It reflects poorly on Shaoul and the city agencies that they couldn’t get their act together,” said Mr. Berman. Read more…

Daniel Maurer

Some folks get prickly about discarded Christmas trees littering the street well after they were due to go to the evergreen graveyard (MulchFest was a week ago!), but those rogue conifers are more or less invisible to us: See, we’re fixated on some unsightly leftovers from All Hallows’ Eve. On East 12th Street between First and Second Avenues, inside of a fenced-in lot behind P.S. 19 Asher Levy School, about ten pumpkins have been squatting on a bench and a table – ever since Halloween, presumably. And as you can see from our close-ups below, these pumpkins are in desperate need of chunkin’. We’re about to roll up our sleeves and get to the gooey, seedy bottom of this mystery, but in the meantime: is anyone else similarly vexed by this? Can someone from Liquiteria, the Juice Press, or Rawvolution walk a few blocks over and juice these suckers already? Read more…

Handsome Dick Manitoba, the owner of Manitoba’s bar on Avenue B, appeared on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” last week to promote his Throbblehead doll, his upcoming reunion show with the Dictators, and his radio program. Mr. Fallon is a big fan of the jukebox at Manitoba’s, which he calls the “best in any bar in New York City.” A bold claim considering The Library, Double Down, Mona’s, Sophie’s, Doc Holliday’s, B-Side, International Bar, and Mars Bar all have fine jukes (to name just a few). What’s your favorite in the neighborhood?

Eater has a look at the menu and the interior of the Bowery Diner, the “haute diner” that Mathieu Palombino of Motorino opened just below Houston Street on Sunday.

Tim Schreier

Six protesters were arrested yesterday during Occupy Wall Street’s “Occupy the Dream” protests held at Union Square, reports The New York Observer. About 150 protesters marched around Union Square before entering several stores, according to AM New York. Around four protesters were arrested after being warned to leave a Bank of America lobby. The Wall Street Journal reports that protesters marched from the African Burial Ground to the Federal Reserve in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. “He set the benchmark,” protester Ted Actie said. “He set the blueprint as far as what Occupy Wall Street is talking about.”

In The Daily News, two Alphabet City moms sound off on Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to grade teachers. “A lot of the teachers are acting like the children. You can tell there are teachers who shouldn’t be teaching yet, and I think it should be known who they are,” Tracy Gomez, who has an 11-year-old at P.S. 34, told the paper. Yvette Hernandez, whose 6-year-old daughter attends Success Charter School, disagreed: “They shouldn’t be graded. They know what they’re doing. It’s not always the teacher’s fault.”

The Daily News also gives a shout out to Yerba Buena on Avenue A and Indochine on Lafayette Street as spots to hit up during Restaurant Week. Read more…

Tomorrow, a public hearing by the Landmarks Preservation Commission will determine the future of East 10th Street along Tompkins Square Park. Over the weekend, The Local spoke with Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, about the history of the strip.

293 East 10th Street

G.V.S.H.P. 293 East 10th Street

This building, like a lot of buildings in the East Village, shows in a very material way the evolution of the neighborhood from a place of single-family homes for the merchant class to the locus of immigration to New York City. It was built at the corner of East 10th and Avenue A in 1845 for James French, a boot-maker.

Only five years later it was sold to a gentleman named Joshua Varian and a Haraim Chandler leased it from him. Chandler lived with seven other families. This building very quickly became a multi-family home, or a tenement. By the late 1890s it was owned by Charles J. Smith, whose name still appears on the top left-hand side of the building. The top floor of the building was probably added by Smith as part of the tenementi-zation of it.

Interestingly, we know that Chandler worked for the N.Y.P.D. very early in its existence; it was only founded in 1845. Chandler worked as a detective and was injured during the 1863 draft riots. He died in 1881.
Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba The new signage at the Thai restaurant.

An outpost of Lantern Thai Kitchen, which has locations in Gramercy Park and Brooklyn Heights, opened last Thursday at 85 Avenue A, the former home of Cafetasia, another Thai restaurant.

Lantern co-owner Chris Sirisunat, 33, said that changes were in order. “I think Lantern is a better fit for this neighborhood, and the food is tastier. We have a new chef — he’s very Thai. We have more authentic Thai food.” His partner in the new restaurant also happens to be a partner in a Cafetasia location in Greenwich Village.

Still, the overhaul made sense to Mr. Sirisunat, who was actually helping manage the location before he re-christened it Lantern. “I run two other Lantern locations, and I know the food very well,” he said.
Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba A police car at East Fourth Street and Avenue D.

Two gunshots were fired in the Lillian Wald Houses at around 2:45 p.m., a convenience store employee told The Local.

“I didn’t see anything other than people running when they heard the shots,” said Mohamed Sidi, who works at 33 Best Deal on Avenue D. “People were scared.”

A pair of police officers were lingering at the entrance to the Lillian Wald complex at East Fourth Street at around 4 p.m., but would not comment, citing an ongoing investigation. An employee at the nearby Ave. D Candy Store, Ahmedou Ould-Dahya, also told The Local he heard a pair of gunshots.

A spokesman for the police department did yet not have any information on the possible incident.

Eater has a write-up of one of The Local’s favorite watering holes, Lucy’s. The article examines the revered bartender who has gotten plenty of attention on this site, but it’s the photographs that caught our attention; has Lucy’s ever been so…bright? It appears likely that the photographer brought in lights for his shots, giving the dive a whole new look. Regardless, it’s a timely primer for happy hour, which is just around the corner.

Ken Collins Ken Urban, the man behind “Fizz Play.”

Even playwrights have to take a breather every once in a while.

Six writers working intensely on full-length plays over the course of 18 weeks will relax on Monday through freewheeling 10-minute productions riffing off of the word “fizz.”

“We find that everyone has a good time taking a break in their full-length play process and quickly conceiving these 10-minute plays. It’s like a writing exercise where you get a prompt and just go with it,” said Jessi Hill, who is directing the aptly titled “Fizz Play” by Ken Urban.

Each year, the terraNova Collective selects one word from a long list of homophones and gives it to their playwrights-in-residence. Last year, the word was “bug.” In 2010, it was “speed.”
Read more…

The neighborhood is getting a new fried chicken joint, and this one has a colorful past that goes far beyond secret recipes. Pudgie’s Famous Chicken, which EV Grieve noted is replacing the shuttered King Gyro on First Avenue between Third and Fourth Streets, was once run by a former chairman of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce who was accused of embezzlement. The New York Post reported in August of last year that Jeffrey Bernstein abruptly resigned his post at the Chamber after he was accused of embezzling more than $2.3 million from the non-profit Albert Ellis Institute while serving as its president. In an article from 2003 in Chain Leader, a magazine for restaurant executives, Mr. Bernstein was described as a “turnaround artist” who bought the troubled Pudgie’s chain and made it profitable.

3rdTiger A scene from the Lower East Side.

Mehdi Kabbaj, the owner of 20 Peacocks, a men’s clothing boutique on Clinton Street, died yesterday after being struck by oncoming traffic on the F.D.R. drive on Wednesday night, The Daily News reports. The paper writes that Mr. Kabbaj, 45, was drunk, got out of the cab in frustration at gridlock and was struck by a minivan.

The cabbie accused of raping a 26-year-old East Village woman at knife point on May 6 has “no idea” how his DNA was recovered from the woman, writes The New York Post. According to statements read at Gurmeet Singh’s Brooklyn arraignment on Wednesday, he initially told cops he “never” had sex in the back of his taxi, but then said, “Sometimes I pick up women, call girls, off the street and have sex with them.”

The Villager reports that local advocates are pushing to have the trials of soldiers accused of abusing Private Danny Chen held in the U.S. A coalition including Councilwoman Margaret Chin and Mr. Chen’s parents are in discussions with the Army to suggest reforms to its diversity training and recruitment policies.
Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba A chef and his puddin’.

A week after opening, Puddin’ by Clio has already shut its doors – temporarily. A sign in the window reads: “Closed until Friday 4 p.m. We are cooking and cooking…good ole’ pudding.”

“We are slammed,” explained Clio Goodman, an owner and the executive chef. “It’s been the craziest couple of days ever. We sold out in an hour and a half on our first day.”

Hevra, Clio’s mom and sous chef, said her daughter was already considering opening a second production kitchen. “Because we’re so tiny, we’re limited in how much we can produce here,” she said. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown The owner of Ame Ame, Teresa Soroka.

A new store on Ninth Street takes the term “specialty shop” to the next level.

Ame Ame caters to the stylish New Yorker caught in the rain who also happens to have a sweet tooth. The name for the store comes from the Japanese word “ame,” which means — that’s right — both “rain” and “candy.”

“I want to put an end to those disposable, cheap, ugly black umbrellas,” said owner Teresa Soroka, 30, who opened the store on Nov. 16. “They’re bad for the environment, and in a fashionable city they’re a disgrace.”

So, why all the candy? “What’s better on a rainy day than a bag of candy?” Ms. Soroka explained. “I wanted a colorful, cheerful experience when shopping.” Read more…

Vivienne Gucwa East River Park

During football season, Julian Swearengin’s Downtown Giants have three practices each week at three different parks: Chelsea Waterside Park, the Battery Park ball fields and Pier 40. Games take place at East River Park on Saturdays. Confused parents frequently end up at the wrong location and players complain about the hectic schedule. Just to add insult to injury, Mr. Swearengin sees a solution to the problem most nights from his apartment with a view of East River Park.

“There are many nights when soccer and football fields are empty. On the same night, my kids are wedged into a corner on Pier 40,” said Mr. Swearengin, the founder of the team for kids up to 15 as well as a former coach. “There’s certainly an overall frustration that there’s no consistency with the permits.”

But soon, the system that maddens Mr. Swearengin and many others will likely be reformed. For the first time since 1999, the Parks Department has proposed changes to its permit system, raising hopes that the vise-like grip many leagues have over coveted ball fields may be loosened.

If the laws are approved, youth leagues applying for new permits will be given priority over all other applicants. The Parks Department will also have the right to reduce the hours of field time for adult leagues that dominate a particular park.

The proposals are in part a response to complaints from an assortment of league administrators at meetings around the city. In Community Board 3, around 20 league operators have bemoaned a permit system that they described as obscure and ripe for abuse. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown The electrifying scene at last night’s meeting.

The always-colorful Community Board 3 liquor license committee recommended on Monday night that one of its more outspoken critics not be allowed to serve beer and wine at his restaurant.

The board denied the beer-wine license for Keith Masco’s 24-hour B.A.D. Burger, citing the proximity of other booze-selling establishments, similar restaurants that operate without licenses, and “consistent community opposition.”

“B.A.D. Burger, bad neighbor. Deny them,” said Shawn Chittle, who lives above the restaurant at 171 Avenue A.
Read more…