In the News: Amish Market in Chapter 11

••• “The Amish Market grocery store at 53 Park Place in Tribeca filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Tuesday. […] The bankruptcy filing has no effect on the other stores, said attorney Stephen Kass, who is representing the Tribeca store. ‘The business itself makes money and is profitable,’ he insisted said. ‘The bankruptcy has to do with tax issues.'” I do not see how Whole Foods hasn’t been a huge factor here. (Crain’s)

••• The word was that Ed McFarland of Ed’s Lobster Bar on Lafayette—which had a lobster-roll cart on the World Financial Center plaza last summer—was opening a restaurant in the Donald Sacks spot. Well, he is, but it’s going to be a pizzeria. “The pizzeria, called Caravelli’s, will be a 150-seater in the World Financial Center that will ‘pop up’ around late March on a mere year-long lease, leaving McFarland free to keep scouting for permanent digs. The Ed’s Lobster Bar owner tells us the spot will be a ‘pizzeria meets focacceria,’ serving sandwiches and thin-crust slices in a casual setting. He’s looking forward to the venue’s 2,000-square-foot kitchen, a step up from the 400 square feet at Ed’s Lobster Bar, which will also give him some extra prep space for the nearby lobster-roll kiosk when that opens back up for the summer.” Focaccia? Meh. (Grub Street)

••• “At a town hall meeting Wednesday night […] Luis Sanchez, the DOT’s lower Manhattan borough commissioner, said he would begin working with the community in mid-April to identify specific sites for bus drop-offs and layovers.” (DNAinfo)

••• The New York Road Runners Club told CB1 that they’d make efforts for their half-marathon not to be too disruptive. (Broadsheet Daily)

••• “For nearly ten years, Chinatown residents have seen Lower Manhattan streets that were closed off after the 9/11 attacks re-open and roadblocks removed. The one street that is of paramount importance to them however, Park Row, remains barricaded. They hope a recent letter drafted by U.S. Congressman Jerrold Nadler and signed by other local elected officials will help to change that fact. The letter is directed to N.Y.P.D. Commissioner Ray Kelly. It is not the first letter that Nadler has written on the matter, but this time he hopes it is addressed to the right person.” No one wrote Kelly before? OK…. Reopening Park Row would also benefit southern Tribeca; right now we don’t have a lot of ways to get uptown. Hudson is constricted by construction—and blocked outright at Chambers—and Church/Sixth can get clogged by tunnel traffic. (Downtown Express)

••• Good stuff: “A New York Google executive who hails from New Zealand [and lives in Tribeca] has been using his high-tech skills to help anxious relatives locate loved ones in the earthquake-ravaged nation. Craig Nevill-Manning, 41, first created the Google Crisis Response website with colleagues immediately after the 2010 Haitian earthquake. It provided emergency alerts about the latest situation on the ground and a ‘person locator’ where people could post a message for a missing friend or relative.” (New York Daily News)

••• “We’ve heard great things about Tribeca—we’ll definitely be looking there.” —La La Vazquez, wife of new Knick Carmelo Anthony, told the Post.

••• “[Derrick] Wiggins is one of four homeless men who were given prepaid cellphones so that they could create a Twitter following, as part of a project started by three recent college graduates who are interns at the BBH advertising agency in Tribeca.” (New York Times)

••• The New York Times‘s Frank Bruni asked bartenders—including Eamon Rockey, general manager of Compose—to create drinks relating to Academy Award–nominated actors. And this is why columns are a dubious idea: No matter how much good stuff gets written, there’s going to be filler.

••• “After the bookstore giant declared bankruptcy last week and announced that it was closing three Manhattan stores, including the one at 100 Broadway, downtown residents suggested the space could become an annex for the overcrowded Millennium High School.” (DNAinfo)

••• Architzer mocks the brochure for New York by Gehry. (via Curbed)

 

1 Comment

  1. I like Amish market but it’s prices were always weird and it didn’t appear to change anything when Wholefoods entered the mix.