Monday, November 11, 2024
Sunny. High 67 degrees.

While it rained on Sunday night, there is no more precipitation forecast for the week.

Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.

Monday is Veteran’s Day.

Upper West Side News
By Gus Saltonstall

In the face of possible closure, an Upper West Side private school launched an effort last week to sell its building, as first reported by Crain’s. The Manhattan Country School listed its 40,000 square-foot property at 150 West 85th Street, between Columbus and Amsterdam, for $39.8 million, according to Denham Wolf, a real estate developer overseeing the sale.

The school purchased the 85th Street building in 2015 for $28 million, property records show. The six-story building contains 20 classrooms, a gymnasium, and a library.

The decision to sell the building comes after Flushing Bank filed a lawsuit against the Upper West Side school at the beginning of October claiming that it owes the lending company $2.9 million.

Christopher Turner, a managing director at Denham Wolf, said in a news release that there has already been “interest from several potential buyers.” Roxanne Elings, the chair of the Manhattan Country School Board of Trustees, added in the news release that the intention of the sale was to help the school “financially thrive for many years to come.”

Manhattan Country School, which has a sliding-scale tuition structure that has students pay an average of $22,000 a year, also owns a farm upstate that it uses to help incorporate environmental science and climate justice into the curriculum. The school opened in 1966 with a guiding principle of “radical love” and a mission of providing its students with academic excellence, intellectual freedom, social awareness, confidence, and firsthand knowledge of the natural world.

Manhattan Country School previously told the Rag that it has no plans to close, but it is unclear where the school will welcome students next year, if the Upper West Side building does sell. The school did tell Crain’s, though, that is open to doing a sale and lease back of the building, which would keep the community in the same space.

You can find out more about Manhattan Country School on its website.

You were not imagining things, if you smelled smoke on the Upper West Side this weekend.

Smoke traveled across the five boroughs, including in our neighborhood, after brush fires broke out on Friday in Prospect Park, the Bronx, and New Jersey. Multiple people reported on social media waking up in a panic to the smell of smoke after falling asleep on Friday night.

The smell remained for the majority of Saturday on the Upper West Side, before fading, but not disappearing, on Sunday.

Wildfires rarely take place in or around New York City, but the city is currently in the middle of a drought.

Firefighters in New York and New Jersey are still working to contain the flames, specifically in Passaic County, New Jersey, where the blaze has moved across 2,500 acres. It remains uncontained as of Sunday night.

Unfortunately, the quarter-to-half-inch of rain that fell overnight is not expected to make a significant impact on the drought conditions. October was the driest month in New York City history, and it is the first time the city has been under a drought watch in 20 years.

Over the weekend, Mayor Eric Adams announced a ban on grilling in the city’s parks and urged New Yorkers to conserve water.

You can read more — HERE.

Eduardo Diaz, the disgruntled employee who shot his former boss Thursday on the Upper West Side, will remain behind bars as he awaits his trial, the New York Post reported.

Diaz, who shot Boris Shapiro Thursday morning near West 68th Street and Columbus Avenue, was arraigned on Saturday night, and is due back in court on November 14. He was remanded following the appearance, which means he will remain in custody until the next legal proceeding.

Diaz previously worked with Shapiro at Lincoln Business Machines on West 68th Street between Columbus and Broadway, and had been sending Shapiro threatening messages in the months since he was terminated, the Post reported.

You can read more — HERE.

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