Babbo battle (Nuri’s nightmare): Nuri Akgul, who lives next to Mario Batali’s Babbo on Waverly Place, recently filed a $10 million lawsuit over noise and odors from the super-chef’s restaurant. Akgul told us that while Batali did succeed in getting a second variance for a 10-year extension for Babbo — which is located in a dubiously grandfathered commercial space — during that process Akgul discovered that the place doesn’t have proper permits for a slew of air-conditioning units on its rooftop. “There used to be two A/C units in the back,” Akgul said. “They removed them and put eight units on the fourth-floor rooftop — two of them are compressors and one is on 24 hours a day. They sit on beams and vibrate through the [shared] ‘party wall,’ which is my building’s wall.” Opponents, including Akgul and Doris Diether — the Village’s iconic “zoning maven,” who lives across the street — had caught Batali illegally using the place’s top floors for commercial purposes when they are supposed to be residential. Due to their complaints, which were backed up by Community Board 2, Babbo stopped using these floors — which now sit vacant. We called Babbo recently to ask about the lawsuit. After we briefly held through a stirring snippet of Italian opera, a woman who handles reservations answered and said, “The restaurant has no comment with regards to that.” “Could we talk to a spokesperson?” we asked. “This is what everyone has been told [to say],” she answered. Similarly, David Gruber, a spokesman for Batali and his partner Joseph Bastianich, who also is a defendant in Akgul’s suit, told the Daily News, “The B&B Hospitality Group has no comment on this matter.” Although the name is the same, this David Gruber is not the former C.B. 2 chairperson.
Umm…what did Groucho say? Former Community Board 2 Chairperson Jo Hamilton was wrong to have accepted a free 10-year membership to the swanky Soho House club, the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board recently ruled. Hamilton served on C.B. 2 from April 1999 to June 2014, except for a one-year hiatus from March 2005 to April 2006. The private-membership club opened in the Meatpacking District in 2003. Hamilton said that during her time on C.B. 2, as the COIB disposition states, Soho House came before the community board five times on State Liquor Authority licensing-related issues. “I never asked for or sought a membership in Soho House,” she told the conflicts board. “People employed by Soho House are personal friends of mine, and they offered me the complimentary membership, which I accepted, in 2003.” Hamilton told COIB that the club annually renewed her complimentary membership until 2013. “I understood their offer to be predicated on personal friendship, not my status as a member of C.B. 2. I now understand from information provided to me by [COIB], that Soho House provided me with complimentary membership for reasons related to my position on C.B. 2.” (For the record, according to the City Charter, “No public servant shall…accept or receive any gratuity from any person whose interests may be affected by the public servant’s official action.”) The annual rate for a founding member of Soho House in 2003 was $816, so Hamilton would have been charged that rate. As a result, she got a free ride to the tune of $8,160. Hamilton told the board that her husband, William Hamilton, was a founding member of the club and did pay full membership dues. She also averred that, during their decade-long membership, they both paid all charges for food, drink and services that they or their friends “ordered, consumed and/or used.” COIB concluded, “The Board is aware of no evidence that Respondent’s conduct in accepting the gratuity from Soho House was corrupt, or was undertaken with a corrupt intent, or resulted in an unwarranted advantage to Soho House.” In the end, COIB fined Hamilton $10,660 — including the 10 years’ membership, plus a $2,500 fine — which Hamilton agreed to pay. Hamilton, who is currently spending time in Florida, did get back to us, but she declined to comment for publication.
To barge or not to barge? A lot of people think Pier55, the planned $130 million 2.7-acre “entertainment pier” off W. 13th St., will be great. Of course, its construction will be about 87 percent funded by Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, who will then pay for all of the pier’s ongoing maintenance, operation and programming for the next 20 years. But what about Gansevoort Peninsula just a block to the south? Will there ever really be a marine waste-transfer station there for recyclable waste? That was Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s plan, and as far as we can tell, Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to carry through on it. Either way, the peninsula’s garbage trucks will be relocated to the newly built multidistrict Department of Sanitation garage at Spring and Washington Sts. And the word is that, starting in early 2015, the peninsula will then be cleared, and remediated of any toxic residues from its years of previous use as a municipal waste incinerator (a.k.a. the Gansevoort Destructor). But to allow the waste-transfer station, the state and city will both first have to sign a memorandum of understanding (M.O.U.) to agree to pay a reported $50 million to the Hudson River Park Trust as compensation for “alienating” part of the peninsula from park use to allow the trash-barging operation. However, the state reportedly wants the city to pay the full amount since the trash-transfer station is a city project. And another question does spring to mind: Imagine, say, Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy or Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” being performed on the future Pier55 as, a block downriver, bottles and cans loudly clank, clatter and crash as a garbage truck dumps them into a barge with its engines roaring and snorting, ready to make the trip to the new recycling plant in Sunset Park. It doesn’t exactly sound conducive to a world-class entertainment pier — but what do we know?
Tallmer memorial, take two: The memorial for Jerry Tallmer at Theater for the New City on Mon., Feb. 23, will not be open to the public, as incorrectly reported last week, but will be by invitation only, according to his widow, Frances Monica Tallmer.
