In the News: Lawsuit Over Franklin Place

••• “Third Nature, a Danish architecture firm, designed a solution for the modern-day urban issues of flooding, parking and lacking green spaces with their project, Pop-Up. A stacked green space, car park, and water reservoir, from top to bottom respectively, POP-UP uses Archimedes’ principle to store water and create floating space to store cars.”  This would theoretically happen in the sad waste of a circle created by the Holland Tunnel off-ramps. —Arch Daily

••• “Police looking for this suspect in gunpoint robbery at FiDi Santander ATM. Reward offered.” —Tribeca Trib

••• “How Savannah Guthrie, of the ‘Today’ show, spends her Sundays.” (She lives in Tribeca.) —New York Times

••• “A day spent hanging out—and smoking weed—with Rohan Marley, the entrepreneur son of reggae legend Bob Marley.” One of the ickier ledes in recent memory: “Entering the tony Tribeca apartment of Rohan Marley can be a bit unnerving. For starters, it’s one of those terribly posh pads whose elevator inserts you directly into the place, like a rectal suppository.” —Daily Beast

••• Streetsense, a new tenant on the second floor of 102 Franklin, calls itself an “experience-focused strategy + design collective,” but Crain’s calls it “a Bethesda, Md., commercial and retail real estate brokerage firm.”

••• The New York Times loves the new building at 529 Broadway, where Nike’s store is.

••• The Real Deal: “Arthur Karpati, producer of the immersive Macbeth theater performance Sleep No More, is […] suing the Department of Transportation for attempting to regulate traffic in an alleyway he claims to partly own. The alleyway in question [Franklin Place] runs between Franklin and White streets in Tribeca and has been used by residents and businesses for parking and deliveries for over a century, according to Karpati’s lawsuit which references historical documents dating back to 1913. This longstanding history made the ‘No Standing’ signs, which appeared early this summer, an unexpected surprise for Karpati and his neighbors.” Karpati owns 70 Franklin, and I thought it was settled that the street is private. UPDATE: A very interesting comment from James:

The letter posted at the link indicates the City has a public easement over this street. Privately-owned streets and sidewalks whose owners do not periodically exercise domain over the street by closing them to through-traffic can risk the loss of the street to the City. That is why Rockefeller Center closes its private street with a chain and sign once per year. See, for example, The New York Times: Closing for a Spell, Just to Prove It’s Ours: “Owners of some properties close them annually to protect themselves against any possible claim of ‘adverse possession,’ a concept with ancient roots.”

 

3 Comments

  1. When I looked quickly at the homepage and read the synopsis of each new posting I could have sworn the description included for this post said “… Savannah Guthrie spends her Sundays smoking weed with Rohan Marley…” LOL

  2. The letter posted at the link indicates the City has a public easement over this street.

    Privately-owned streets and sidewalks whose owners do not periodically exercise domain over the street by closing them to through-traffic can risk the loss of the street to the City. That is why Rockefeller Center closes its private street with a chain and sign once per year.

    See, for example, “The New York Times: Closing for a Spell, Just to Prove It’s Ours

    “Owners of some properties close them annually to protect themselves against any possible claim of “adverse possession,” a concept with ancient roots.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/nyregion/lever-house-closes-once-a-year-to-maintain-its-ownership-rights.html

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