Pearl Street -- Revitalization in the Seaport District

The new Rockrose building going up on Pearl Street (I understand that it's going to be a hotel) is really moving along. They have been completing at least two floors per week on this building. An astonishing construction schedule. I wouldn't be surprised if this building opens for business by the end of the summer.

Taken at the end of November 2007, when they had just poured the foundation:


Taken on January 2008, when they started pouring the reinforced concrete supports on the ground floor:

The first few floors took much longer to build, but once they finished the third floor, they've been knocking off at least a floor every few days.

Here's a photo from 3/7/08--building out the sixth floor:

Further Evidence of Enormous Opportunities in Lower Manhattan

As further evidence that there are opportunities all over the place in Lower Manhattan, you need go no further than Maiden Lane, just a couple blocks west of the Seaport.

1) A new Gristedes supermarket, which is about 2 months old:

This now means that this area--now that it has three separate grocery stores in a three block radius--is officially residentially friendly.

2) A new Chipotle, which has been packed every day at lunchtime from the day it opened about four months ago. Today was a slow day: the line only extended out the door by one or two people.

As far as I know it's now the second Chipotle down here; the other is over on Broadway near the Bull.

New Condos in Lower Manhattan

One of the things that accompanies a neighborhood renaissance like we’ve seen over the past few years in lower Manhattan is the influx of new condos and condo conversions. Buildings that were once full of commercial tenants (so many of whom left after 9/11) are now being converted into residential housing.

Here's 75 Wall:


And here's 15 William Street, otherwise (and borderline inappropriately) known as the William Beaver House:

A quote from the New York real estate gossip blog Curbed puts it best:

"The [William Beaver House] sales office, slated to open November 20, will serve up apartments from $890,000 for a one-bedroom to $2.5 million for the penthouse with terrace, which if you're going to be serious about this whole impress-your-junior-Goldman colleagues thing, is really the only way to go."

What a flawless way to put it.

It’s almost laughable to see so much new building and so many conversions down here. And I'm not even counting all of the new buildings going up west of here in Battery Park City. It seems like every third building is doing a conversion. And of course, this being the Wall Street area and all, these conversions are all going high-end, usually with trendy (and deliberately poorly-lit) lobbies like this:

This neighborhood used to have fairly reasonable rents at least for Manhattan. But even the more affordable buildings down here (for example, rents at 2 Gold Street are up some 30-35% from when the building first opened to tenants back in 2005) are quickly catching up to the rest of the city.

Another example of what I’d call the wrong kind of gentrification.

The East Village: An Oasis of Non-Gentrification

In our prior discussions of New York City gentrification, we’ve mourned how the rundown old bars we frequent are losing ground to too-trendy hotspots filled with banker types.

Well, we were thrilled to go back to the East Village and find that it was still fairly hip. Somehow a couple of years had slipped by since the last time we had been around that particular portion of the Village, and as we approached the neighborhood (on our way to Dallas BBQ’s), we feared the worst.

We were expecting it to resemble the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal. This is where the guidebooks tend to place the so-called "heart" of Greenwich Village, and as a result, the place is overrun by tourists. Huge tour buses now pass through seemingly every few minutes. Worse, the last generation’s colorful residents are slowly, inexorably, being replaced by Wall Street types.

Fortunately, the East Village, especially the area on St. Mark’s Place between say 3rd Ave and Tompkins Square Park, seems to have kept its tattoo and body piercing stores, and there was hardly a banker anywhere to be seen. Sure, there were tourists, but at least there weren't any tour buses.

Uh, it's spelled "Henna."

Thank goodness: a tiny oasis of tradition in an inexorably gentrifying city. We'll see how long it lasts.

The Downside of Gentrification in Lower Manhattan

We've already talked about the amazing transformation of both the financial district and Seaport district of Manhattan since 9/11. But there's a downside to gentrification too.

Of course it's just a fact of life that neighborhoods change and evolve. And yes, this area used to be pretty dumpy, so I'm not complaining.

But I'd like to see the right kind of gentrification. Maybe New York already has enough trendy bars filled with bankers and Wall Street people.

Really great neighborhood pubs like Jeremy's are starting to lose ground to places like this...

...replete with trendy yellow chairs like these outside on the sidewalk:

As well as places like this, where all the wait staff is obligatorily hip and wears all black:

It may not look "Wall Street banker-filled" now, but wait until the sun sets.... :)

Even Carmine's repainted their sign!! Here's the old look for you nostalgia buffs out there:


By the way, this place makes a mean lasagna, and (at least for now) it's very pleasingly unpretentious. A soon-to-be dying breed throughout Manhattan.