Photo by Gretchen Berger on 75th Street.
July 10, 2017 Weather: Partly cloudy, with a high of 85 degrees.
Notices:
Learn about lots of great things to do this week in the parks and more local events on our calendar.
The A, B, C and D trains will be suspended in sections late at night this week for Fastrack train repairs.
Thanks for your patience last week. We’re back from vacation and feeling (somewhat) energized!
News:
The city sued “Hank Freid, the founder and chief executive officer of hospitality company Impulsive Group, on Wednesday for allegedly illegally converting 250 affordable rentals into three Upper West Side hotels. The suit alleges that three buildings Freid owns—the Marrakech Hotel at 2688 Broadway between West 102nd and 103rd Streets; the Royal Park Hotel at 258 West 97th Street between West End Avenue and Broadway; and the Broadway Hotel at 230 West 101st Street between Broadway and West End Avenue—were illegally turned from residences into hotel rooms.” A lawyer for Fried claimed that SROs can be used for hotels, according to the Observer.
A school bus driver got six months in jail for “putting a 6-year-old child in a headlock and punching him outside the boy’s Upper West Side school. Michael Bradley had pleaded guilty in connection to the shocking attack on little Amari on March 3 on the bus which was in front of The Ideal School on W. 91st St., giving the student a bloody nose before the start of the school day.”
You too can live in Joe Dimaggio’s old penthouse pad, asking $4.5 million. “Joltin’ Joe lived in the classic six pad at 400 West End Avenue [79th Street] from 1939-1942, during his brief marriage to actress Dorothy Arnold, as well as his record-breaking 56-game winning hit streak.”
Parents have filed a complaint with the state claiming it has not followed state law to reduce class sizes. About a third of NYC students are in classes with 30 or more kids, according to Leonie Haimson, founder and executive director of Class Size Matters.
New York state voters will get to choose this year whether to hold a constitutional convention. Despite pushback from various groups, here’s why it could be a good idea.
Wasn’t a 56 game “winning” streak.. It was a 56 game hit streak….
Thanks, good point! That was in the article we linked to. We fixed it. WSR
Welcome back WSR – missed you! Hope vacation was fun!
It was, thanks!
The tourists that have been staying at these hotels have been great for our area, frequenting our local coffee shops, restaurants, and other businesses. Nice mini-melting pot of German, Japanese, and French being spoken on the streets. The last time the city got involved in this sort of nanny-state nonsense resulted in the SRO’s on West 95th Street turning into dangerous homeless shelters, the effects of which we are still living with today. Would hate to see that happen again with these buildings.
Come on, Paul. These buildings are zoned as SROs not hotels. SROs are a vital need in the neighborhood for people who live here and are trying to get back to having a full-time residence. Tourists have plenty of other legal hotels in the neighborhood to pick from.
It’s propaganda for PaulRl to keep insisting that w. 95th street between west end and riverside has taken a “huge dive for the worse.” Property values and rents continue to skyrocket.
But don’t let facts stand in your way.
Propaganda? Tell that to the Pomander Walk super that got stabbed, the SRO residents that were threatened by their new neighbors, the cops who raided Freedom House and found numerous residents with outstanding arrest warrants, the folks whose cars keep getting broken into, and all of us that have to dodge ever-aggressive panhandlers, more garbage on the sidewalk, and everything else that clearly marks a decline in our quality of life. Why don’t you also ask Helen Rosenthal why she’s in the process of changing operators for Freedom House? Do you think she has nothing better to do?
I know you like to paint yourself as a protector of the poor and dispossessed, and that’s a noble cause. But it’s a shame that it’s made you deaf, dumb, and blind to what’s happening around you, and has stopped you from caring about the safety and welfare of your other neighbors as well.
By the way, I think one of the Marks has a copyright on the “Don’t let facts stand in your way” line. You may owe him a royalty!
i have to correct he record on an accusation that Paul Rl makes, which he must know is not true. this is that I “downplayed the rise in the rape statistics.” An absolute falsehood.
Some commenters were complaining about the terrible, out of control rise in crime on the West Side. So as usual i went to the Compstat NYPD web site and pointed out that this simply was not true.
that year, there was a small increase in the number of reported rapes. i think it went from 2 to 4, or from 4 to 6, or some such. So these same people — i can’t recall if it was Paul or one of his co-thinkers — made a big deal of this. “Look, rape is up by 100%!” or something like that.
now, as anyone who deals in actual social statistics knows, with numbers that small, any change creates a huge percentage difference. but most likely doesn’t represent any trend but rather random statistical noise. And i pointed that out.
So forever after, Paul has accused me of “downplaying” rape.
Sad!!!
Jeez, Bruce, for a guy that likes to play judge, jury, and executioner, it’s funny how you can’t take the heat, even when you bring it upon yourself.
Re: The Williams Residence, unless you are adding mind-reader to your portfolio, please don’t tell me what I knew or didn’t know at the time. Everyone is welcome to go back through these pages and see our call-and-response posts from yesteryear. Perhaps they will also see the post where you called folks ‘wusses” for being outraged that children had their sleds stolen in Central Park, the post where you downplayed the rise in rape statistics, and the numerous posts in which you continue to attack and denigrate anyone who has a thought that differs from how YOU believe an Upper West Sider should think. In the future, try having a little respect for those around you and perhaps you’ll get some in return.
You asked me where I stand on the supertall building on West 68th Street. If there are illegalities concerning the air rights or zoning, then of course it should go back to the drawing board and I stand with those that are opposed to it in its current state. Aesthetically, to me it looks like the building is lopsided – I don’t like the non-setback side.
Oh please, Bruce. Get off your cross.
More personal attacks from Paul Rl.
Every single argument you make is specious. The “rise in panhandling”? Freedom House was cut in half — one building instead of two — about Year and a half ago. The rise in panhandling continued. Obviously, zero correlation.
You know nothing about this block but you want to continue to disparage it. My neighbors well being? Crime on this block is low, just as it is throughout most of the UWS. We all have the good luck to live in an exceptionally safe area in an exceptionally safe city.
It’s interesting that you criticize every time UWS residents get together to defend their well being, the most recent case being your diminishing the efforts to stop the super tall building in the w. 60s. But then you have the chutzpah to accuse me of being a profiteer.
Should I bring up again how you actually urged UWSers to LOBBY for the Salvation Army to be allowed to sell the Williams,forcing hundreds of seniors out? And please don’t repeat the tired old wheeze about how you wanted those seniors “grandfathered” in.there was no such possibility,and we all knew that,including the Williams residents.
They asked publicly for our support, and you decided to lobby against them,and urge other todo the same.
The opponents of the super. Tall building have asked for all of our support. It affects their well being. Where do you stand?
Bruce, the stabbing of the super was directly related to the shelter, so making a point that it happened a half-block away is silly. And you know full well that complaints about aggressive panhandling and other issues have been on rise since the SRO’s were converted to shelters in 2012.
What’s fascinating to me is that it seems you could care less about your neighbors’ safety and well-being as long as you have an increase in property values to hang your hat on. You may feel differently, but in my opinion we all have a right to raise our families here in our own neighborhood without worrying about bad city policy – or blind-eye neighbors like you – compromising our safety and quality of life.
Paul has been using the stabbing of the super from pomander walk — which took place on west end and not on w. 95th street — for several years now. Crime on the block is actually very low.
A neighbor of mine in my building just listed her apt, and it sold within days for 6% above asked. A week rarely goes by when I don’t get a cash offer for my apt.
Paul is blaming the increase in panhandlers on freedom house? Maybe if the increase took place 7 years ago, when freedom house started,
Paul really wants to see the UWS become a gated community… and won’t rest until that happens.
95th between W.E. and Riverside has been a block to avoid since I was a kid going to school in the W. 90’s.
That is unless you wanted to buy drugs because that was the local drug dealer block. Anyone who has been here since the 1970’s can back me up on this. Don’t know what it’s like today because I still avoid it (out of habit I guess).
These are facts too. Also, the increase in property values doesn’t really make your point. The area is just being helped along by the neighborhood and reaping the benefits. Which leads to a lot of unhappy residents who bought or signed a lease and THEN found out about the neighborhood….UWSHebrew, back me up on this…hahaha:)
My sister lived on that block for nearly a decade until moving (to buy an apartment) two years ago. I was on that block all times of the day and night and the only thing that ever gave me pause were the cars speeding off the WSH.
I lived on a block that was full of drugs in the 80s , but that was 30-ish years ago. Times change. We moved because we were priced out with two incomes.
For serious. I think the biggest source of foreign visitors up here is probably the hostel on Amsterdam, anyway. Landlords can’t just ignore zoning.
Jay, to your point (and I’m sure you know the history), the buildings on West 95th were also SRO’s. The landlord rented some rooms out as “hotel” rooms until Gale Brewer and Linda Rosenthal introduced legislation to halt the practice. The result? The landlord inked a sweetheart deal with the City which converted the buildings into the homeless shelter known as “Freedom House.” Most of the remaining SRO residents were either prodded out or left due to the horrible conditions that ensued there, and the immediate neighborhood took a huge dive for the worse. What’s to stop that from happening to these buildings?
I agree with you on this PaulRL.
I agree with you on this Jay.
What does the photo taken on W 75th street have anything to do with this article?
We publish a recent neighborhood photo with all our morning bulletins. It’s generally not meant to connect to the articles.
This “illegal hotel” BS is always a hoot.
These buildings are official listed and zoned as Single Room Occupancy Hotels. If the rest it to the city for 3K a month so they can put a homeless person in it. Yes that is what the city pays, and that’s per person two to tiny room. Or they rent it to tourist from Demark for $99 a night they are still HOTELs.
Which option would you rather have?
Anyone have any ideas how we can get rid of the living room in front the old Europa on 93rd. It is starting to turn into a real eyesore.
This is one of the many downsides of all of the empty storefronts in the neighborhood – many are turning into homes for people. And deBlasio refuses to police this. There has to be a better option for both the homeless people and our neighborhood than having them sleeping in front of stores.
Police people just trying to live? Not only should this not be thought of as a problem to solve, but it most definitely should not fall to the hands of the police to deal with. Their track record of dealing with disabled and marginalized folks is abhorrent.
How can you support and encourage this type of living by these struggling and often mental ill or drug addicted people??
You think it’s OK for them to just set up little shanty towns in the middle of the UWS? this is an acceptable quality of life for them? And what about the residents of the neighborhood and the people trying to do business there?? Did you think about what you wrote at all??
Why not think before you spout all this supposedly “liberal” nonsense that even the staunchest homeless advocates disagree with?
Frank D’Onofrio, who owned at least 3 barbershops in the area of Columbus and W. 74th Street, and lived for decades at 61 W. 74th Street, proudly told me he cut Joe D’Maggio’s hair.