MORE COVERAGE OF OUR COUNCIL RACE
Crain’s covers our City Council race and notes that ranked-choice voting might allow the two challengers to get an edge on the incumbent, Chris Marte. “Marte has raised about $263,000 including matching funds, compared to $214,000 and $187,000 for Lee and Jung, respectively. Lee has picked up a couple of endorsements over the incumbent, including Citizens Union and labor unions for city employees and police officers.”

ETRUSCA HAS CLOSED PERMANENTLY
Etrusca, the modern Tuscan restaurant on Stone Street that Eater said was “worth the trip to Fidi” has closed after just six months, TimeOut reports. The restaurant’s website said, “Despite our best efforts and the support of our guests, unfortunately we are not financially viable. We want to thank Chef Elisa Da Prato and her staff for their wonderful creativity and tremendous effort.” I’m sorry I missed it.

CITY WORKERS CAN WORK REMOTE TWO DAYS
Adding this here since no doubt this will affect our neighborhood’s local businesses. From Crain’s: City employees will be able to start working remotely up to two days per week as part of a deal stemming from their new contract with the city, Mayor Eric Adams announced Thursday. New York’s tens of thousands of municipal workers have mostly been forced to commute to their offices five days a week since September 2021. Critics, including Comptroller Brad Lander, have blamed the strict policy for exacerbating the city’s worker shortage by lowering morale and deterring potential applicants.”

VALUING OLD OFFICE BUILDINGS
G. passed along this post from Wolf Street, which is generally above my pay grade but worth noting the main takeaway: that older office buildings are trading at as much as 50 percent off their pre-pandemic valuations. From Wolf Street: “In Manhattan, sales of office buildings have collapsed from $5 billion in Q1 2022 to just $489 million in Q1 2023, the lowest sales since 2009, according to MSCI, cited by the Wall Street Journal.”