Depot measures Hudson drapes
Home Depot is finalizing its lease with Trinity Real Estate for 345 Hudson St., a spokesperson for the chain told UnderCover. The new store hopes to open between King and Charlton Sts. next October. That means that next holiday season, mom-and-pop averse Downtowners will finally be able to participate in an age-old Christmas tradition: buying a loved one an expensive set of tools that he or she will never use.
Guilty Pleasure Alert
Two years ago, www.fundrace.org gave Internet busybodies the luxury of tracking the political affiliations and donations of their neighbors. Now Luxur(n)y, at www.kushaldave.com/luxurny, lets data voyeurs see exactly how much those neighbors — at least the ones Downtown — are paying for their upscale apartments.
The brainchild of Google software engineer and blogger Dave Kushal, Luxur(n)y maps the prices of luxury apartment rentals onto a layout of Lower Manhattan. Kushal started the site after getting the run-around from salespeople during his own apartment search.
The listings on the map are sparse for now, but UnderCover has no doubt that the real estate junkies at Curbed.com (which recently profiled the site) as well as general dot.com timewasters will have Luxur(n)y bursting with info in the near future.
Sex and the Piers
In her new bimonthly report on Hudson River Park affairs, Connie Fishman, the Trust’s president, reports that two site tours have so far been given to potential bidders to redevelop Pier 40, the 14-acre pier at W. Houston St. Also, the trapeze school — yes, the very one of (gasp!) “Sex and the City” fame — will be required to vacate from its current space in the park at Desbrosses St. in Tribeca around the end of November; the trapeze will then relocate to the rooftop of Pier 40 next to the pier’s rooftop soccer.
And while we’re talking about the Tribeca waterfront, we hear advocates were disappointed with the chairperson of the Trust’s community advisory panel Arthur Schwartz a few weeks ago when he did not stick up for the River Project and ask the Hudson River Park Trust’s board of directors about its possible plans to select another operator to run a river study center on Pier 26 — three years before the pier is ready to reopen.
Board flips on Factory
First a correction: Last week’s UnderCover item on the Knitting Factory should have said that Peter Braus, not Allan Tannenbaum, supported renewing the Factory’s liquor license on the basis that the rock club had taken steps to address complaints about noise and wandering clientele.
However, Braus and other Community Board 1 members withdrew their support for the license renewal at the board’s monthly meeting when it came to light that Leonard St. residents are still livid over the late-night activities outside the club.
It turns out that residents had been registering their complaints with 311 and with C.B. 1’s Quality of Life Committee and that their concerns were never passed along to the Tribeca Committee, which reviewed the license renewal application. Once all the feathers hit the fan, the full board overwhelmingly voted to deny the application.
Whether or not the State Liquor Authority gives C.B. 1’s opinion any weight remains to be seen. As Tribeca Committee chairperson Rick Landman quipped Tuesday, “The Knitting Factory probably already has its renewal license hanging up behind the bar.”
