Mt. Sinai gets H.I.V. clinic:
Mt. Sinai Medical Center will operate the St. Vincent’s H.I.V. Center beginning May 28, and will keep it in Greenwich Village, a Mt. Sinai spokesperson confirmed this week. For the time being, the outpatient center, pioneered by St. Vincent’s during the early days of the AIDS health crisis in the 1980s, will be located in St. Vincent’s O’Toole pavilion on the west side of Seventh Ave. at 12th St. St. Vincent’s Department of Community Health, which runs outpatient clinics in 30 locations in the five boroughs, will also be under the aegis of Mt. Sinai beginning May 28. The community health service will also be run temporarily from the O’Toole building. “We are looking for another permanent location in the same neighborhood with more space for additional services,” said Ian Michaels, spokesperson for Mt. Sinai. Mt. Sinai Medical Center officials will meet with St. Vincent’s H.I.V. doctors and staff on Wednesday evening May 19 at St. Vincent’s cafeteria at 170 W. 12th St. Dr. Barbara Johnston, medical director of the H.I.V. Center, said last week that the center’s 50 doctors and medical staff members are still serving patients. The H.I.V. Center service includes homeless people with AIDS. Dr. Russell Kellogg, director of St. Vincent’s Department of Community Health, said last week that the department sees about 10,000 visits annually at all of its locations.
Moto-cafe will try to muffle it:
The manager of the New York City Motorcycle Federation got back to us last week regarding the distressed complaints of a 101-year-old upstairs neighbor about noise from the hipster moto-cafe. Maria Sutherland said the band that recently played a special Saturday night show at the place, at 10 Downing St., was “a lot louder than we expected it to be.” Rockers Scott Liss and the 66 just brought a powerful sound system, she said. Sutherland said that the night of the show — which was a benefit for the Scleroderma Foundation — they realized it was too loud for the space, and right then decided they won’t ever have live music again. But they will continue to have their Friday evening “little gatherings” for their vendors and high-end clients, she said. “We do play music from our computers… at the regular tempo that we do all day,” for the gatherings, she said. She said they did get a phone call the night of the band’s show from one of the building’s residents, but didn’t know if it was the centenarian from the second floor. Sutherland said at the cafe — which is up for a renewal of its beer-and-wine license — they are willing to do whatever it takes to improve, and just want to be good neighbors. She said she’s genuinely sorry for the upstairs tenant’s being subjected to the noise from the rock show.
Economakis update:
Lower East Side activist Susan Howard told us that a friend of hers who lives near 47 E. Third St. — the East Village “mass eviction” building — hasn’t seen evidence of any work going on there for a while and thinks construction has ground to a halt. Last year, landlords Alistair and Catherine Economakis bought out the remaining holdout tenants in the 15-unit, rent-regulated building, whom they had threatened with an owner-occupancy eviction. Howard urged us to call Alistair and find out what’s up. “No, no, it hasn’t [stopped],” he told us on Monday. “Work is progressing. If you go by today, there’s a big container outside that just got filled up” with debris from the gut renovation. He said he doesn’t have a specific completion date for when the building will be ready for them to live in as their luxurious, single-family mansion. He said he and his family recently moved out of the place, and are temporarily living in Brooklyn until the job is done. “It came time we had to move out of there,” he said of 47 E. Third St. “Our bedroom’s gone — it was relocated to a different spot. The steps are being relocated. It was much simpler to just open everything up and build everything at once.” Economakis said all the building’s windows are boarded up on the inside, not because no work is going on, but to protect the windows while work is going on. Also he wondered how, with all the windows covered, Howard’s buddy could be so sure nothing was going on inside.
Museum on the move:
The Children’s Museum of the Arts will move to 345 Hudson St. in Hudson Square sometime next summer. The nonprofit museum is currently located at 182 Lafayette St. C.M.A. signed a lease with Trinity Real Estate last month. Lucy Ofiesh, the museum’s capital campaign manager, said designing the new space will be “a long process.” She happily noted that the “beautiful 11,000-square-foot space” is far larger than C.M.A.’s current 4,200 square feet. Founded in 1988, the museum’s goal is to “extend the benefits of the arts to all children and their communities and to secure the future of the arts by inspiring and championing the next generation of artists and art lovers.” Kids and babies are introduced to “playdough, paints, glue, and a variety of drawing tools” in the “Wee-Arts” program (ages 10 months to 3 ½ years old). C.M.A. also offers an after-school program for children ages 6 to 12 and “Film & Fashion @ 5,” in which teenagers are guided by professional artists and prepare portfolios for high school and college. Children can celebrate birthday parties at the museum with cake, Two Boots pizza and arts-and-crafts lessons. “We plan to be very involved in the community,” said Ofiesh. “It’s great to have them in the neighborhood,” said Tobi Bergman, a Community Board 2 member and president of P3, a youth-sports advocacy organization. David Reck, president of Friends of Hudson Square and a C.B. 2 member, said of the museum’s move, “This neighborhood needs more stuff — it’s great.”
