Wow, I am shocked, shocked that this is being allowed to happen!

OK, enough sarcasm. The New York Times has an article about Bukharans building McMansions in the Cord Meyer area. Thank you to Sarah on our forum for posting the link.

In typical New York Times fashion, by the time the story is covered, it is usually about 3 years too late, the issue is usually over, not trendy anymore or there’s nothing that can be done about it.

A sign of the times at the corner of Church Street and Warren Street in Tribeca, Manhattan.

“Would you like a large Slurpee, Mr. DeNiro?”

A report from the field, otherwise known as “my work neighborhood.”

This large commercial space has been empty since before Sept. 11, 2001. For a while, it housed a closeouts store and a temporary Chirstmas decorations store. Otherwise, this juicy piece of property right above a major subway station laid dormant for over eight years, in one of the hottest, trendiest, most popular neighborhoods in all of NYC.

During those intervening years, in addition to ever-increasing numbers of tourists, the neighborhood has experienced tremendous residential growth (mostly via the conversion of office buildings into luxury rentals), including a massive baby-boom enough to make the sole elementary school in the nabe dangerously overcrowded.

Now that Robert DeNiro’s brainchild, the Tribeca Film Festival, is “Tribeca” in name only, and the WTC site (sorry, “Ground Zero”) is considered “boring” by tourists because it is just a construction site, perhaps the “riff raff” felt they could finally move in. There goes the neighborhood!

Looks like somethin’s cookin’!!

According to an interesting-if-dubiously-sourced post on the forums, all the retail on the ground floor of NOVO 64 has been sold (leased?), an impressive feat considering the development’s not-quite-central location. The biggest news, of course, is that Starbucks, Starbucks, Starbucks may be moving in, which would be the–let’s see–four, five, carry the two–sixth Forest Hills location? I think it’d be the sixth Forest Hills location. Take that, everywhere else! The other prospective tenants are a “couple of medical offices” and a bakery. Whether that bakery will be hip or Russian is TBD.

If true, I find this fascinating considering that the Windsor, with its much better location, has been up for something like two years and still has most of its retail spaces vacant. The tanning salon that also has a location like three blocks away is there, and purportedly Cheeburger Cheeburger will open soon, though I’m starting to wonder when exactly that’s going to happen. Why did NOVO 64 do so much better? Probably rent that’s about a million times lower. Yeah, that sounds like it.

I considered the possibility that the post is from an undercover NOVO employee looking to stir up positive buzz, but somehow I feel like “killbyinches” wouldn’t be that agent’s screen name of choice.

Oh, hey there. How has your month been?

So. I’m not happy. As seldom as I’ve been posting here lately, I have continued to submit regular columns to the Forum West–but of course, you knew that. This week’s column, just out today, is about the upcoming Roger Staubach edifice at the corner of 70th Road and Austin, which will replace several stores you don’t care about but also Restaurant Row mainstays Rouge and Narita. Rouge–which I thought was overrated anyway–is already gone. Fearing the end of FoHi’s restaurant mecca, I implored NFL legend Staubach:

The future tenants of the new building should be businesses that will make us proud, and on 70th Road, they must be restaurants that will keep the street the attraction that it is.

Well, I finally went by today, and guess what’s in the window of Rouge? A bunch of for-rent signs, most of which clearly and brutally specify: “NO FOOD.”

Gotta love how the only type of business I want just happens to be the only type of business Roger doesn’t. Quelle coïncidence!

In other news, as first reported on the forums–which have been busier than ever in my absence, by the way; I love you guys–long, long, longtime 70th Road fave UJ’s Luncheonette has closed as well, despite not being threatened by the Staubach development. They simply ran out of cash. There’s a really nice sign in the window thanking customers and asking them to visit eatatujs.com, where they can sign the guestbook and even recommend potential smaller, cheaper locations. (Lousy old Brothers Coffee Shop in AQUA on QB and 77th strikes me as a great possibility.) You know, I never thought I’d really miss UJ’s, but looking in the window and seeing all the kitschy bric-a-brac, I’m reminded that it was a great neighborhood place. And I don’t think many would argue that it was the best diner in town.

You know what’d be nice? If the brand-new building housing Trader Joe’s wasn’t an architectural disaster.

A Queens resident recently wrote to real-estate doyenne Barbara Corcoran asking her if he should rip out his lawn to build a driveway, like all the cool kids are doing. Quoth Corcoran in her Daily News column:

Hey, a flower garden might look pretty and keep your wife happy, but the space in front of your house is worth a hell of a lot more as a driveway.

Lovely! I feel kind of ridiculous claiming I know more about real estate than Barbara Corcoran, who has become very very very rich selling it, but ripping out lawns to create driveways makes the neighborhood hideous, which, in the long run, decreases the value of the property. Corcoran implores the writer to hurry up and kill the lawn right quick, because the “city council of Queens” — we have a city council now? — is enacting legislation to ban exactly this sort of thing for exactly the reason I just described.

But! I do have one question. When Corcoran moves into a neighborhood, it’s a sign that the neighborhood is about to become hot. Corcoran has no operations in Central Queens. If she loves paved-over lawns so much, why not? She’ll find them here in spades.

Guess what, everybody? I wrote a column! Well, actually, I write a column every week in The Forum West (website still pending), but I’ve never posted them here. They’re usually not topical enough to pass blog muster–I tend to favor sweeping sociological observations over what happened at the latest community-board meeting. This week, however, I would have been remiss not to write about the phenomenon that is Trader Joe’s. I paid a little visit, as did many of you, and here’s my take, to be seen in bank vestibules everywhere this Thursday:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Daily News confirmed two more FoHi Starbucks today — we’ve previously reported the one in what is currently a gaping hole near Union Turnpike, but the big news is the pending location in the on-again-off-again shopping center on Metropolitan. The News seems to think it’s on again for good, and that’s good enough for me.

I don’t drink coffee and am genetically predisposed to hate soul-sucking chains like Starbucks, but like it or not, it is a prestige business for a neighborhood, and we’re not likely to get another independent coffeehouse anytime soon. I take it as a point of pride that this will be Forest Hills’ seventh Starbucks. (The News says fifth, but they’re oddly not counting the new Union Turnpike one that they themselves mention later in the story, and they’re also forgetting, I’d guess, the one inside Stop ‘n’ Shop.) Eat it, every other outer-borough neighborhood and Manhattan neighborhood above 100th Street!

The new shopping center, which is sure to be an architectural disaster but is still better than an auto-body shop, will also house “a well-known bank.” Thank God!

According to a reliable source, the long, long, long awaited FoHi/Rego/Glendale Trader Joe’s is scheduled to open on October 28 or 29.

Whoa, did I just scoop Forest Hills 72 on a Trader Joe’s-related item?