Yorkville Blog
Upper East Side New York City

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

Yesterday was a nice sunny day and a great opportunity to take some photos of the area. Here's the site of the Brompton condos on 86th and 3rd ave.

Labels: Brompton

And what is the cheapest we can find in Yorkville? According to Trulia, its this cramped co-op studio for $285,000.

The floorplan shows off its 8' x 6' cell of a "sleeping alcove" and the slightly smaller "dressing room".

Unfortunately its $842 maintenance is hardly cheap.










Now, StreetEasy finds cheaper. This oh-so-small $249,000 co-op is smaller and cheaper. And its small price tag is matched with an also low $539 maintenance fee.

Yet it actually has a bedroom carved out in the floor plan.

What does $16 million get you on the Upper East Side?
How about a 4-floor condo with private elevator, four bedrooms, six bathrooms and two patios.

The building appears to have belonged to P Diddy at one point. And international model Kylie Travis has been linked to an address in the building.

Penthouse listing: http://www.stribling.com/propinfo.asp?webid=950034&type=SALE

Building site: http://www.813parkave.com/

The headline "92nd Y is Tribeca Bound" scared me" until I read on and realized that it is an expansion not an abdandonment of their Upper East Side home. The 92nd st Y, the prominent cultural center on the Upper East, doesn't seem to be moving their main location. Rather they are moving some of their programs that are currently run in the Upper West to a nice new building in Tribeca.

http://therealestate.observer.com/2007/03/92nd-y-is-tribeca-bound.html