Yorkville Blog
Upper East Side New York City

They mystery over the space formerly occupied by DTUT has been solved. And it's opening Monday.

Cafe Notte is set to continue the free wifi hangout, but a bit more upscale. Expect a greater emphasis on the wine and food.

Today, more information on the building that Georgica, the cantilevered condo building, surrounds. The owner of Baraonda, Per Lei, and Bella Blue is opening a new restaurant named Ciabella.

The restaurateur said he hopes that Ciaobella's décor will attract young Yorkville residents; a red mosaic bar, dark wood floors, and a red crocodile-patterned ceiling adorn the new space.

It is by far one of our least favorite names for a new condo development. According to the banners hung around 305 E 85th st, the cantilevered building The Ascend Group is developing will be called "Georgica".

The website is quite vague at this point
http://www.georgicalife.com/

Based on the page's HTML description it seems they are looking to target families.

The new luxury Upper East Side development. This is Georgica. Residential couture. Contoured to the modern family. Spacious, expansive, multidimensional. The new Upper East Side.

A little bit of construction porn for all the UES real estate fans out there. The Brompton and The Lucida are competing to be the new condo diva of 86th st. These two lux condos are going up only one block apart from eachother. We checked in on them to see how they are shaping up.

The Lucida

They've dug deep for the foundation of The Lucida. Counting the layers of scalfolding in the pit, it seems to be about 7-stories down. Room for underground parking perhaps?









The Brompton

Based on construction progress alone, The Brompton has a clear lead in this race. Crews are finishing up the 6th floor of concrete.

Say it ain't so! The latest case of a Manhattan favorite losing its lease is DTUT in Yorkville. The coffee shop on 85th and 2nd seems to always be full despite the large space. Folks come for the great coffee, good beer selection and fun desserts, but mostly because its a great place to lounge around and work or chat.

Now DTUT is closing its doors. Signs around the coffee shop announce that this Sunday, June 24th, is their last day open. They seem to have lost their lease.

Hopefuly, the nearby M Rohrs coffee shop on 86th (between 2nd and 1st) survives. While not a perfect substitute for the beloved DTUT, Rohrs also offers a comfortable coffee shop with an indy vibe.

Leave a comment if this saddens you as much as it does me.

I don't like the sour taste of their frozen yogurt, but now there is another reason not to like Pinkberry. Eyewitness News caught mice red handed running aroung the shop's 82nd st location

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=local&id=5398637

Heidelberg, the German bar on 2nd ave and 86th, seems to have quite a film crew outside it today.

Anybody know the scoop on what they may be filming?

The Second Ave subway is perhaps the single most important project on the Upper East Side right now. It will shape the character of the neighborhoring businesses, the value of real estate and residents' overall quality of life. And unlike many transportation projects, this one seems to be right on schedule -- occasionaly early even.

Tonight (March 27) at 7pm the local community board has another meeting to discuss plans for the new line. They will be covering:
- A general project update
- 63rd st Station
- The contractor
- Impact to neighboring businesses.
More details

After much extremely scientific analysis, here's what we've decided are the top spots in Yorkville. What do you think are the best places in the neighborhood? Your comments are always welcome.


Entertainment

• Comic Strip Live [1568 Second Ave]


• City Cinemas [210 E. 86th St]


• AMC Loews Orpheum [1538 Third Ave]


• UA East [1629 First Ave]

Food

• Pio Pio [1746 1ST Ave]


• Poke [305 E 85TH St]


• Zocalo [174 E 82nd St]


• Beyoglu [1431 3rd Ave]


• DTUT (Actualy, it's a coffe shop) [1626 2nd Ave]

Bars

• Brandy's Piano Bar [235 East 84th Street]


• Heidelberg [1648 2nd Ave]


• The Auction House [300 E 89th St]


• Uptown Lounge [1576 3rd Ave ]

Yuck! Inside Edition went patrolling the streets of New York looking for rats in city restaurants. According to Gothamist.com, the cameras found them at a bunch of restaurants including Papaya King, the popular Upper East Side hotdog joint on 86th and 3rd.

http://www.gothamist.com/2007/03/20/forget_the_doh.php

Papaya King's President, Daniel Horan, told INSIDE EDITION that mice are a
citywide problem that restaurants grapple with everyday. He adds, "During
seventy-five years in business, we have continuously maintained and exceeded all
city health requirements," and says "food is kept in secure storage facilities
that is safe and sealed from all contamination. To this end, we stand by the
quality and safety of our restaurants."

http://www.insideedition.com/ourstories/reports/story.aspx?storyid=672

Is this really just a common problem we should all just accept?

The Lucida, Excell Development Company's new building on 151 E 85th st now has a website: www.thelucida.com. "A new vision for modern living on the Upper East Side"

The site doesn't give any new details. Just a registration form.

Labels: Lucida

The New York Post has a story with a nice overview of all the recent construction in the neighborhood. They paint the landscape of all the buildings going up in the Yorkville area. Here's our bullet pointed version...

First, the ones we have posted about already:

• Lucida on 86th and Lexington. Built by Extell.
• The Brompton on 86th and 3rd. Built by Related.
• Cantilevered L-shaped property on 85th and 2nd. Sold by Eastern Consolidated.

And the ones we haven't yet discussed here (but should):

• Legacy on 84th and 3rd. Built by Core Development Group.
• The New Yorker on 83rd and 3rd
• Maison East on 81nd and 3rd
• 300 E 79th on 79th and 2nd

There's definitely a lot going on. The real question we have is how the new construction plus the existing landscape will add up into some sort of neighborhood character. Will the area be defined by simply having shiney new buildings with big box retailers underneath? Or is there a way to incorporate something uniquely Yorkville into all this? Perhaps some sort of hint of the nabe's Eastern European roots.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03082007/realestate/the_eastern_block_realestate_katherine_dykstra.htm?page=1

Take that naysayers. The T line is coming soon.

AM NY is reporting that the MTA is expected to sign the first contstruction contract for the new 2nd ave subway line on March 29th. And work is going to start immediately after that. Huzzah!

Yorkville residents, however, better brace themselves for major construction disruptions.

Two lanes of traffic on Second Avenue between 96th Street and 92rd Street will be closed to vehicles while workers relocate utility pipes and cables, according to Mysore Nagaraja, president of MTA Capital Construction.

Then six to eight months later at 93rd Street, workers will dig a massive hole to lower a tunnel boring machine 70 feet down. All the while, trucks will be delivering supplies such as steel, timber and cement while hauling away tons and tons of dirt and rock.

Aboveground work is authorized between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. while tunneling will continue 24-7 below ground.

AMNY

We're expecting the T line to have a real positive impact for real estate prizes east of 2nd avenue.

Looking for a bar, restaurant or shop in Yorkville?

Here's an easy way to find them:
AskCity for Yorkville. Just type in what you're looking for in the box on the left. Example: Sushi

Ask.com has a new feature that lets you search within a specified area of their maps. So you can click on the link above to search just within the outline of Yorvkille in Manhattan's Upper East Side.

New York Magazine highlights a UES one-bedroom in their Daily Intelligencer. The pre-war co-op just dropped 20% to $985,000. Lack of a second bathroom could be the reason:

"So why have buyers given it the cold shoulder all this time? A few light-deprived rooms and just one bathroom could be a deal-breaker for families"

New York Magazine (spotted by Curbed)

The New York Times has an article on the real estate section today on the history of Gracie Square. The building was built to look from the outside like a set of individual buildings.

What purchasers got on the outside was a single structure so variously adorned that it looked like half a dozen. The Gracie Square side is an interlocking puzzle of vertical runs of quoining, horizontal courses of stone, irregular balconies and oddly placed moldings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/realestate/04scap.html?ref=realestate

Here are photos of the construction in progress for Extell's new luxury condo buliding at 86th and Lexington.



I don't know much about the building yet, but there was an article about it some time back:

Extell Development’s luxury condominium at 150 East 86th will offer shiny new retail space of 100,000 square feet, 30,000 of which will be taken up by a new branch of Swedish clothing retailer H&M. Barnes & Noble—which plans on closing two nearby stores—will claim 55,000 more square feet, for a store only slightly smaller than the behemoth in Union Square. The new location will be one of the “real motherships for the company,” said Mitchell Klipper, the book chain’s chief operating officer.

from The New York Observer

Labels: Lucida