Seen & Heard: Downtown Connection Changes Route to Thwart Scammers

••• And I didn’t know that Khe-Yo had been cooking without gas for the past year and a half. But now the gas is back on, so certain items it hadn’t been able to offer—crispy chili chicken, Brussels sprouts with chili caramel sauce—have returned to the menu.

••• At least two of Robert Janz’s street-poster collages are (were?) on view at Philip Williams Posters on Chambers.

••• From the Downtown Alliance website: “The Downtown Connection bus will be temporarily bypassing five stops adjacent to The Battery through the end of the summer season. This change is in an effort to prohibit the misuse of the buses by aggressive ticket sellers who have been taking advantage of visitors in the neighborhood.” The scammers have been selling tickets to tourists for the bus, which is free. (“That is one way to solve a problem—just avoid it,” says J., who noticed the announcement.)

••• “What’s going on with the penthouses at the Cast Iron House?” asks M. “My apartment faces them. They have been sitting vacant with no construction going on with a tarp around them for at least a year. Now the tarps have all shredded and are flying in the air over Broadway. There are no windows installed. Word is the developer is just in over his head on the project. Supposedly they started closings but I can’t imagine anyone would be living in a half finished building like this with no sidewalk and no lobby.” I have yet to get the official word back from the building reps, but the penthouse is still far from completed, and the sidewalk doesn’t appear to have progressed much. There actually is a lobby (last photo), however; it’s on Franklin, and it looks almost done.

 

5 Comments

  1. The scammers are a blight on the neighborhood. Please arrest them, drive them away, and re-instate our bus stops.

  2. Wrong solution. Arrest the scammers and fine them.

  3. Does anyone have more insight on the Cast Iron House?

    It seems like they have been stalled for 1+ year. Most notably the sidewalk has been gone that entire time which stinks.

    • ACRIS shows they consolidated some $35 million in mortgages in June 2018, so someone thinks they are viable going forward.

      They had changed contractors in 2017 and that stalled them.

      https://therealdeal.com/2017/04/10/the-dirt-gathers-rust-all-over-nyc-projects-are-in-limbo/amp/

      “There’s also Knightsbridge Properties’ Cast Iron House at 67 Franklin Street, a 13-unit condominium where sales launched in 2014 and a sign reads, ‘Anticipated completion: June 2015.’

      “Knightsbridge CEO Jourdan Krauss said his firm spent three years renovating the building’s exterior, including re-casting 4,000 pieces of decorative cast iron. The firm, which paid $15 million for the building in 2002, encountered unexpected snags, such as discovering cracks in the building’s support columns. Then in March, after contractor Foundations Group walked off the job (claiming it was owed $2.1 million), Knightsbridge filed a lawsuit alleging Foundations’ failure to complete the work cost the developer $1.5 million.

      “‘It has taken longer, in all truth, than we initially hoped,’ Krauss told The Real Deal early this year. ‘You put together a time schedule and say, ‘OK, this is if all goes well.’ He said the project’s model residence was just completed and all of the units will hit the market by the spring. The building is ‘very close’ to obtaining its certificate of occupancy, according to Krauss.

      “‘We’re calling it immediate occupancy,’ he said.”

  4. Philip’s Poster Museum showing Janz torn street poster collages. All needed now is a poster for the occasion.

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