Soho

In an interview with New York magazine today, Rockstar Games mogul Dan Houser talks about his inspirations for the godly New York video game Grand Theft Auto IV: "You've got the angry sleeping-pill-popping sort of Sex and the City type woman, you know, whose looks are just beginning to fade ... The people in Soho are expensively dressed and into shopping and vacuous in their own way."  read more »

Embattled Soho restaurant Lola will just have to make do without live music, the State Liquor Authority informed the eatery's owners on Thursday.

Proprietors Tom and Gayle Patrick-Odeen have said that their business—which has been the subject of a nasty, three-and-a-half-year legal dispute with neighbors, who have protested the place's right to sell booze—is "struggling" without live performances.

The couple recently told The Villager that they were "hanging on by a thread."

Live music had been a staple of the drinking and dining experience at the couple's prior location on West 22nd Street. But upon moving to the corner of Watts and Thompson streets, the duo initially applied to play background music only.

The owners insist that this was a clerical error and that the application was later "orally amended" by the SLA.  read more »

Donald Trump shares how he won the battle to build the Trump SoHo condo-hotel at Varick and Spring streets in his new book, Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges Into Success (out about six weeks ago from Wiley).

Mr. Trump recounts how he marched against a rabble-rousing minority:  read more »

It's barely two months into 2008, and the Trump SoHo condo-hotel on Spring and Varick streets has already weathered a fair share of obstacles and still managed to sell over half the units. First, one of Donald Trump's development partners was implicated in some shady financial dealings. Then construction worker Yuriy Vanchytskyy died in a tragic accident at the building site only a month after opponents of the 44-story tower had railed against the pace of construction.  read more »

Just shy of a year since it went to contract, SoHo's 600 Broadway closed for $71 million--more than $1,000 a square foot. We broke the news last year that a group of investors lead by Alex Adjmi bought the six-story home of Pottery Barn from Enterprise Assett Management, and today the Jan. 16 deed was filed in city records.  read more »

I decided to do a little recreational house-hunting on Sunday afternoon to see if the Manhattan housing market is really as resilient as it's cracked up to be.

My experience hunting for a rental apartment downtown in August had been thoroughly depressing—I did not see a single inhabitable apartment for under $3,000 a month and even then, the choice was between living in a shoebox or in a grungy, amenity-free condo. After reading all the 2007 year-end market reports released by the brokerage firms during the past few weeks, I braced myself for the house-hunting malaise familiar to most New Yorkers. But it never came.  read more »

If all the neighborhoods below 100th Street in Manhattan competed for an annual prize of best rental market (from the landlords' perspective), the 2007 winner would clearly be the Lower East Side. There, a spate of luxury residential development drove the average rent of a studio apartment in a doorman building up 32.8 percent to a peak of $3,034 in the fall, according to a report from brokerage The Real Estate Group New York.

Rents in all doorman apartments increased by at least 10 percent on the Lower East Side, but there are still bargains.  read more »

Sean Sweeney isn’t planning on dining at Lola anytime soon.

“I don’t want spittle in my grits,” he said.

Indeed, Mr. Sweeney probably would be persona non grata at the controversial soul-food restaurant at 15 Watts Street in SoHo, which finally opened for business, much to his chagrin, nine weeks ago.

Mom-and-pop proprietors Tom Patrick-Odeen and Gayle Patrick-Odeen have told The Observer that their longtime neighborhood activist foe would be treated like any other customer—if, that is, he ever dared to tiptoe through the front door.

But, at this point, choking back spit would require some serious self-control.

After more than three years of costly legal bills and contentious hearings—at times intensified by racially charged rhetoric (“They tried to portray us as a hip-hop club,” Ms. Patrick-Odeen has claimed)—the bitter standoff continues.  read more »

The SoHo Alliance isn't done fighting the quick-to-rise Trump SoHo. The watchdog group has filed a request with the city's Board of Standard and Appeals to revoke Donald Trump's Department of Buildings permit to construct a condominium-hotel at 246 Spring Street, said Sean Sweeney, the director of the alliance.

Mr.  read more »

In New York, the culture wars aren’t over abortion and gay marriage—we are far too sophisticated to disagree about those sorts of issues!—but over 46-story condo-hotels in SoHo.

Specifically, the one that was officially unveiled to reporters Wednesday at a heavily guarded and extremely lavish press conference (picture red carpets; chandeliers large enough for any room at Versailles; gold-plated utensils; and a peculiarly lissome black-clad catering staff at a construction site), while a crowd of earnest, sandal-wearing demonstrators across the street waved hand-lettered signs bearing such slogans as, “Value of Land: Millions. Defending our Neighborhoods: Priceless” and “Zoning Laws Trump Trump.”

The Trump SoHo Hotel Condominium, slated for completion in the spring of 2009, would be the tallest building between the financial district and the Empire State Building. Part condo, part luxury hotel, the glassy tower with panoramic city views will undoubtedly be opulent—some might even say garishly so (with cause: the top floor will house a members-only club called “SoHi”).

It’s no surprise that the building has detractors among the NPR crowd, people for whom a genuine concern for historic preservation coalesces with an equally genuine distaste for unabashed materialism (a.k.a., the cornerstone of our capitalist economy). What was particularly impressive about the 50 or so protesters who showed up yesterday was their diversity—that is, their chronological, not ethnic or racial, diversity. Twenty-somethings in nerd glasses—the This American Life crowd—waved their placards next to gray-haired devotees of Isaiah Sheffer.  read more »

Oh, baby! Get those picket signs ready, protesters!

Donald Trump--along with Donald Jr., Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, Julius Schwarz and Alex Sapir--will host a RSVP-only media reception and press conference to launch the Trump Soho Hotel Condominium on Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2007, according to press release. The festivities will take place at 246 Spring Street, the site of the much-talked about luxury development.  read more »

Chef Laurent Tourondel’s new restaurant at the Trump SoHo Condo-Hotel is one step closer to becoming a reality.  read more »

The sale of 530-534 Broadway and 536-538 Broadway is now official, and so are $1,000- per-square-foot prices for Soho buildings.

The two connected buildings at the corner of Spring and Broadway, which total 190,000 square feet, sold for $190 million on July 19, according to city records. The Observer reported when this deal went to contract to a group of Israeli investors back in May.  read more »

David Slaven has sold the King of Soho just two years after acquiring the landmarked building.

Mr. Slaven’s Red Brick Properties recently unloaded 72-76 Greene Street for $28.15 million, according to city records. Mr. Slaven purchased the 45,000-square-foot property in September 2005 for $23.5 million with the intention of converting it into condos.  read more »

Andrew Buckler's flagship New York City store opened at 13 Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District (where else?) in April 2005. So, it was really only a matter of time until the British designer invaded Soho with his high-end menswear line.

Well, that day has come. Buckler recently signed a 10-year lease on a space at 93 Grand Street, according to Sinvin Realty. The location between Greene Street and Mercer Street will be the designer's second outpost in the city.  read more »

It’s officially a trend as retail rents play larger role.  read more »

Donald Trump has his condo-hotel. After a year-long debate, the city finally approved construction plans on Monday for the 45-story Trump SoHo Condo-Hotel at 246 Spring Street.  read more »