Curbed is the flagship of the Curbed Network, a collection of neighborhood blogs. Our other sites are Curbed SF and Curbed LA; the restaurant blog Eater; the retail and fashion blog Racked; and, during the summer season, The Beach, which covers the Hamptons.
Tle leaves are falling off the trees, meaning one thing and ONLY one thing: The shopping season is upon us! (Right? That's what it means.) So if you're out and about in the New York City real estate market this weekend, let us know what you're seeing out there: crowd sizes, market conditions, great or gruesome finds, and, of course, any hidden reserves of that sweet sweet candy corn. Your thoughts in the comments, if you please.
A tipster wrote in earlier this week to let us know that move-ins at Avalon Fort Greene -- one of the poster children for DoBro's advancing rental apocalypse -- have been delayed. According to our tipster, residents who were originally supposed to move in this week and next haven't been able to, and they also haven't had a firm occupancy date for setting up their cable and getting their furniture delivered. Distressing! We checked with the folks at Avalon Fort Greene's parent company, AvalonBay, who told us that "construction delays" had pushed back occupancy. We were in a servicey mood, so we nailed down some move-in dates: anyone whose move-in has been delayed can occupy their apartments on the 14th and 15th. Everyone else can move in starting on the 17th. And the cable guy is now standing by for your calls.
· Avalon Fort Greene coverage [Curbed]
While waiting amid the clog of cars coming out of the Holland Tunnel down in Tribeca, take a look at the skeleton of steel that's gone up at 52 Laight Street. This one has been kicking around for a while, but its time has finally come. Developer Kengo Watanabe is the man with the money and his cohort is architect German Longoria of Suellen Defrancis Architecture. When it's complete there will be five full-floor condos and two duplex penthouses up top. Soon it will be covered in appropriately historic looking brick and limestone, with some added bits of faux-historical fibreglass (rendering in the gallery above). If all goes well it will blend right in with the bevy of beauties lining this block. Here's a plus for interested buyers with teenage daughters: It's just a short shot to the Pearline Soap palace over on Washington Street, where there's more to be found than mere soap in that box.
· Tribeca garages likely to go condo [Downtown Express]
· Landmark permit issued for 50-52 Laight Street [EveryBlock]
Sure we've already had our epic interior reveal of Thom Mayne's new Cooper Union building on the Bowery, but that only touched on the big ideas: the atrium, the spider webs, the views, etc. What about the building's secrets? The stuff we've yet to see, like the crumpled wire mesh (above) on the ceiling of the cellar auditorium. And the urinals! Plus, let's not forget the symbols of a Cooper Union education, like occupied artists' studios and creepy heavy machinery. Well, thanks to Greepoint blogger Musings on 'point—a Coop alum who recently got a tour of 41 Cooper Square—all that stuff is now on view. Check out the gallery for some new looks inside the mothership, and then click through for more meshy mindfuck action.
· 41 Cooper Square [Musings on 'point]
· Bowery Blockbuster: Inside the New Cooper Union Building [Curbed]
· All Cooper Union coverage [Curbed]
For the past month or so Park Slope has been under assault by a guerrilla marketing campaign asking, "What's 21123?" The question appeared on sidewalks, on stickers and, most amusingly, on rollerbladers cruising through the neighborhood. Those looking to solve the riddle where directed to a website with a mysterious countdown. Well, the secret has been revealed: It's 211 23rd Street, a new South Slope/Greenwood Heights condo building that once wore the mark of Robert Scarano, but now lists architect Michael Muroff on permits. The building's new website ("Live like a celeb!") has all sorts of construction shots and info, including that the large studio and 1BR units are priced from $563,000 to $756,000. Oh, and about those ads. They'll soon be erased off the face of Brooklyn.
The developer and ad firm responsible will clean up after themselves:
Leewood and Pier 41 are conscious of their civic responsibilities and are arranging to send street teams in not only to clean up after the campaign, but to clean up other stickers and posters as well, leaving the neighborhood cleaner than before the campaign started. There were no complaints made to the street teams and residents seemed to enjoy the campaign, especially the rollerbader tricks, T-shirt giveaways and, of course, the mystery of it all. The objective was to create a buzz and get noticed in a world deluged with advertising messages.
More buzz from the press release: "21123 is design, 21123 is high tech, 21123 is luxury." 21123 is hot cocoa on a nippy evening. 21123 is a winning lottery ticket found on the sidewalk. 21123 is your father telling you you're no longer a failure. 21123 is, well, you can fill in the blank.
· The 21123 [Official Site]
We weren't alone in wondering what a crazy bird habitat proposed for a Battery Park City rooftop would do to the windshields and umbrella sales of Lower Manhattan, but little did we know that the neighborhood is already caught up in a shitstorm! An "immature black-crowned night heron," the Broadsheet Daily reports, has apparently taken up residence on the Battery Park City esplanade just outside, heh, Steamers Landing. Very immature, it seems! More ornithology:
Previously Battery Park City bird watchers had spotted an adult black-crowned night heron fishing on the bow line of a yacht in North Cove Marina. At that time, there were heavy deposits of guano outside Steamers Landing, and some people speculated there was a nest hidden in the linden trees. The guano is still there, with fresh deposits daily.
It used to be that Battery Park City residents only had to worry about stuff falling on them from the new Goldman Sachs HQ. Now, well, look out above! Everywhere!
· Downtown wildlife: Big Bird [Broadsheet Daily]
This week's top dish from Eater, Curbed's restaurant, bar, and nightlife blog...
1) Miami: Miami? Miami! Eater Miami launches with word of Danny Meyer's Shake Shackextending its burger benefits to Lincoln Road in Miami Beach. According to reps, Shake Shack South will open in spring 2010 and provide the famed burgers with a setting including "lush water gardens." Also new in the Eater family: Eater Portland!
2) Greenpoint: Finally, Greenpoint gets the old-timey piano bar it was in desperate need of. And it's pretty! Say hello to the Manhattan Inn.
3) Midtown: Prolific cheftrepreneur Jean-Georges Vongerichten is shuttering his 18-year-old Southeast Asian restaurant Vong tomorrow. What'll take its place? Another branch of Wolfgang's Steakhouse. But Jean-Georges isn't giving up on Vong. He may reopen it in a different space.
[PriceUpper at the Dusenberry estate, via Corcoran]
1) Late ad legend Phil Dusenberry's North Haven home thudded onto the market in late October to the tune of $18 million. But instead of making like the market and PriceChopping, it upped its price today to $25 million. The listing for the 6,800-square-foot, 5BR, 6.5BA home advertises its pool, positioned so that the resident won't have to look at it during the off-season.
2) East Hampton's Swan Cove sold quickly this summer to investment banker Peter J. Solomon, who was rumored to have paid a bit less than the $22.5 million ask. The official docs are now out, and Solomon actually paid $19 million. Bar-gain!
3) Hamptons broker Tina S. Fredericks dished to the Star this week about selling Eothen, Andy Warhol's estate in Montauk, which Warhol and Paul Morrissey bought for $225,000 in 1971. Eothen sold in 2007 for close to 2007, but the juiciest detail in Frederick's interview is actually that Andy Warhol hardly ever hung out at the house. Why? "His toupé kept blowing away."
· Curbed Hamptons [hamptons.curbed.com]
When a flotilla of steroid abusers carrying a large gold trophy slowly makes its way up Broadway while being cheered by hundreds of thousands of maniacs throwing garbage in the air, it's only natural for the construction crews charged with assembling Lower Manhattan's many infrastructure projects to stop and take a look. But not everyone is happy about the workers taking a timeout to cheer on the Yanks' 27th World Series championship. NewYorkology points out that the Deutsche Bank demolition, which only got restarted this Wednesday after 873,000 delays, was briefly put on hold again. And then there's the Curbed reader who sent us the above photo of the Fulton Street Transit Center, which also has sprung to life lately. Commence rant!
Yankees, come thru, all work stops! Workers are all lined up against the wall watching the parade...on the clock! Now it'll take longer because they need to hire additional men to clean up the ticker-tape paper. Gotta love union labor!
C'mon, Mets fans, this is no way to vent. Give 'em a break!
· No surprise [Twitter/@NewYorkology]
[This week, Curbed graph guru and podcaster extraordinaire JonathanMiller brings us some inventory analysis (and tries to break Curbed with graphs).]
[Click to expand!]
Although I've been tracking Manhattan inventory on a monthly basis for about a decade, I began to collect information weekly last fall when the wheels were coming off our economic wagon. Since I have been remiss from contributing to Curbed as of late, I thought I'd provide a 5-fer. I wanted to look at weekly inventory trends by a bunch of classifications over the past year.
The surge of sales over the summer had the effect of working off a bunch of excess inventory, but it still remains about 20% above historical norms. The expectation for this fall (post-summer sales boom) was a slow down in sales activity and a corresponding jump in listing inventory. Inventory usually increases after Labor Day weekend and this year was no expectation. However, expected rise in inventory in October didn't occur.
[Click to expand!]
Some basic observations:
This rise in 1-bedroom and 2-bedroom apartments (the largest market segments)after Labor Day leveled off in October.
Pre-war and post-war saw the same pattern of decline in inventory over the year with a modest bump up in the fall (a 2 to 1 ratio of post-war over pre-war).
The regions showed similar declines from the spring, with the East Side showing the least decline. (Uptown was too small to show a pattern.)
Inventory units in doorman building fell more than non-doorman, suggesting more demand.
Re-sale showed a sharp decline in listings while new development was relatively stable; meaning limited demand and not a reflection of shadow inventory.
A tipster wrote in earlier this week to let us know that move-ins at Avalon Fort Greene -- one of the 
