SWEARING IN WILL BE UNDERGROUND
Streetsblog reports that Zohran Mamdani will be sworn in tonight at midnight inside the old abandoned City Hall subway station. (I will have a post on it tomorrow! It’s an amazing tour, only accessible through the New York Transit Museum.) From Streetsblog: “Mamdani said he views the station as a symbol for the aims of his upcoming administration, including the transformative politics that built the subway in the first place. ‘When Old City Hall Station first opened in 1904 — one of New York’s 28 original subway stations — it was a physical monument to a city that dared to be both beautiful and build great things that would transform working peoples’ lives,’ Mamdani told Streetsblog in a statement.”

BAD YEAR FOR COUNTERFEIT VENDORS?
Gothamist did a story on the Canal Street counterfeit vendors (they interviewed me — which was weird!) and reported that business is down for vendors — a surprise for me since I thought it looked packed over there. The reported interviewed four vendors, including Jikhaje Oma, who was selling knockoff Fendi bags, who all said business was worse than last year’s holiday. The story added that year-round tourism this year is “effectively flat over 2024, according to New York City tourism officials, with a modest projected uptick in holiday season visitors.”

NATIONWIDE BOOM IN COMMERCIAL CONVERSIONS
The Wall Street Journal has a story on the nationwide boom in commercial to reisdential convesrions, noting that NYC is of course the epicenter. From The Journal: “Over the past two decades, developers in New York have converted nearly 30 million square feet of office space into residential living, with the pace of transformation picking up in recent years. Most office buildings were considered too wide and mechanically complex to repurpose into apartments with kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms. But New York developers are solving those problems with new architectural hacks—cut-through notches, carved light wells, and strategic wall-offs of interior cores that create space for new residential floors.”

‘THE HUNT’ IN BATTERY PARK CITY
The New York Times did one of their “Hunt” features with a couple who wanted a one-bedroom under $600K in Battery Park City. They landed at Liberty View, at 99 Battery Place near the bottom of South End Avenue, paying $555,000. “I never thought we would have central air in New York or a balcony,” Eileen O’Connor told the paper. “These are things we didn’t expect but are thrilled to have.”