By Patrick Hedlund
Rich zips
The median price of a home in the West Village is slightly more than $3.5 million, making the neighborhood’s zip code the third priciest in the country, according to a report by Forbes.
The 10014 zip code — stretching from just below Houston St. up to W. 15th St. from about Sixth Ave. to the Hudson River — ranked as the nation’s third-most expensive behind Atherton, Ca. (No. 2), outside Palo Alto, and Alpine, N.J. (No. 1), located across the Hudson from Yonkers.
The median price of a home in 10014 came in at $3,521,514, a 24-percent drop from last year, the report stated. Other Downtown-area zip codes to make the list were Tribeca’s 10013, 10007 and 10282 (Nos. 18, 28 and 70, over all), Soho’s 10012 (No. 24), the East Village’s 10003 (No. 30), Gramercy’s 10010 (No. 34) and Chelsea’s 10011 and 10001 (No’s. 61 and 72).
Tour bus ‘respect’
Tour buses traveling through the West Village will start adhering to “neighborhood respect protocol” after operators agreed to muffle the noise given off by their vocal coaches.
Gray Line New York Sightseeing tours, which runs double-decker bus tours through the neighborhood along Greenwich Ave., reached an agreement with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to reduce the amount of noise coming from tour guides using loudspeakers. The tours have been a longstanding annoyance for neighbors in the area, resulting in a route change for some buses from Bleecker St. to Greenwich Ave.
“… [Y]ou will be pleased to know that we have directed our tour guide assigned to this neighborhood to treat this area with a neighborhood respect protocol,” read a letter from Gray Line President Tom Lewis to Quinn’s office. “We will have a trained dispatcher on location, monitoring and reporting on Gray Line New York Sightseeing employees operating company vehicles. Additionally, we are even going a step further and taking disciplinary action against any employees not adhering to the neighborhood respect protocol.”
Lewis added that the tours have proved mutually beneficial for the neighborhood by bringing additional business to the area.
“It’s not surprising that tourists would want to come to the Village when they visit New York City,” Quinn responded in a statement. “However, we cannot allow the quality of life to deteriorate at the expense of the residents who have made the Village the cultural icon it is today. I am pleased that Gray Line Tours has taken this step, and look forward to new, quieter buses along Greenwich Avenue.”
Chain gangs
For New Yorkers looking to get their fast-food fix at Dunkin’ Donuts, Subway or McDonald’s, the East Village has become one of the top neighborhoods to find one of these restaurants’ thousand-plus outlets citywide.
According to the Center for an Urban Future’s “Return of the Chains” report — an analysis of the spread of national retailers throughout the city — the East Village’s 10003 zip code counts a total of 151 chain stores, making it the second-highest location for such outlets in Manhattan.
Borough-wide, Chelsea’s 10011 zip code ranked sixth over all for chain stores, with 120, and the Village/Soho’s 10012 came in eighth, with 94 locations. Murray Hill’s 10016 and Gramercy’s 10010 ranked ninth and 10th, respectively, with 91 and 87 chain outlets.
Dunkin’ Donuts had the most locations of all chains citywide with 429 (up from 341 last year) and Subway came in second with a staggering 361 locations, outdoing 258 for McDonald’s and Starbucks, and 229 for Duane Reade.
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