It Happened One Weekend: Improving Advertecture Hits New York

Monday, January 22, 2007, by Scott

1) The crackdown on advertecture has forced developers to get creative, and this time its not so bad. Ad guru Itamar Cohen designed a scaffolding cover at 141 Fifth Avenue that is a full-size print of what the restored building will look like when the massive cleaning and restoration wraps up. Historic buildings in Paris, Rome, Florence have used this technique, which appealed to Cohen, who says, “We didn’t want to have that ugly black mesh here." [Big Deal/Josh Barbanel]

2) The ritual of selling an apartment isn't easy. Sellers put up with weeks and sometimes months of staging their apartment to entice buyers to make an offer, attempting to make each open house resemble a Pottery Barn catalog by removing all personal touches like photos and traces of life. Handling the disappointment of multiple open houses, repeat visitors and the eventual price chop just make the process more painful. But when that offer finally comes in, the effort and 'light living' is so worth it. [The Home That You Can’t Call Your Own/Teri Karush Rogers]

3) When quadruple-threat Richard E. Waits found out his long time roommate decided to stop paying rent, he knew it was time to get a place of his own. He put off a long planned trip to Paris to pay the brokers fee and wound up with a $775 studio in Hamilton Heights. Despite the broken elevator, dirty hallways and urine odors, Richard is happy to have found a home of his own, saying “It is my place to lock out the world and regenerate, and each day it becomes a more beautiful apartment." [The Hunt/Joyce Cohen]

4) The East Village Noise War rages on above Heathers, a more than just a bar on 13th Street, which hosts art exhibits and performances while serving up food and drinks. Despite installing 14 inches of fiberglass wool insulation, two fire-coated layers of plasterboard and two suspended layers of heavy-duty soundboard, the building's second floor residents still hear noise and constantly complain to 311. Heathers was able to get a license in the face of community Board 3 opposition, but with the number of complaints and the need to renew after just one year, the future prospects of staying open seem bleak. [NY Times City Section/Noah Marcel Sudarsky]

Filed under Manhattan: Above 96th St., Manhattan: Chelsea, Real Estate Brokers, Real Estate Development, Real Estate Miscellany,

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