I had never been to her apartment before but visited about a year ago or so and honestly when I snooped and looked up their rent online (I wasn't about to ask but I was curious haha) I was expecting it to be more. It's 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, over 2,000 square feet on the top floor of a large building and has views of Hell's Kitchen, both rivers, a sliver of Central Park, all of Midtown, Downtown, the WTC, and even the Statue of Liberty in the canyon of the avenue it's on. It was insane. I guess when you and your boyfriend are both lawyers making 7 digits each a $7,900/month rent doesn't phase you anymore.

itsss happeninggg...!

 

from the real deal blog:

 

The Museum of Modern Art is pushing forward with plans to the city to tear down the former American Folk Art Museum to make room for an expansion of its own facilities.

 

The major alterations application, filed with the Department of Buildings last week, calls for a $1.6 million demolition job at 45 West 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues that will raze all the stories above ground. The sculptured panel facade, however, will (be saved in storage for now & will probably end up at storm king).

 

The 40,000-square-foot expansion will connect to existing galleries and three museum-owned floors of the Jean Nouvel-designed residential tower, Torre Verre, for which real estate firm Hines recently secured roughly $1 billion to finance its long-delayed construction, as previously reported.

 

 

 

more from the times:

 

 

 

 

432 park had a core jump yesterday to 899' its moving on up.

heres an unusual project near me that should be awesome -

the renovation of the abandoned marine aviation ' super pier' 57:

 

http://m.ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/01/17/onceneglected_pier_57_prepares_for_its_superpier_moment.php

 

Keep those updates coming mrnyc.

 

That crane photo you posted is amazing and has me all "vertigoed".

 

And that "Race To The Top" graphic reminds of the old Boomtown Dubai thread circa 2008.

heres an awesome renovation --

abandoned, historic 5 beekman downtown

is being renovated into a hotel +

with a new condo on the lot next door

its by the ace hotel people so it should be nice:

 

http://gothamist.com/2014/05/01/gorgeous_5_beekman_being_transforme.php

 

 

 

 

 

 

also 432 park ave core jump to 945' 6''

I wonder what's going on with the Empire State Bldg. I noticed the spire looks taller and brighter than I remember it. I figure mrnyc would know this :wink: I'm sure it's not an attempt to trump (no pun intended!) 1 WTC  :lol:

 

^ they better stretch it out - its going to be eclipsed soon:

 

432 park from a couple hrs ago

 

 

An obnoxious trendy/foodie restaurant (unaffordable for many New Yorkers) has taken over the pavilion of Union Square--a public park :x

Come on. That's not why you took that picture.

just stop it, and have some compassion for the poor! :wave:

An obnoxious trendy/foodie restaurant (unaffordable for many New Yorkers) has taken over the *fill in the blank*

 

saving this template for, you know, next week & afterward.

What's with all of the shopping bags?  It's easier online. 

^^what? I don't get it. What are you trying to say mrnyc??

 

^People in New York love to flaunt status-y shopping bags (though based on the picture, DSW--on the other side of Union Square, is hardly Prada). There's probably nothing even inside of them associated with the name on the bag. I once worked with a woman who would buy things from a odd-lot store but didn't want to be seen carrying their bag so she would put it inside a Saks bag when in public. :laugh:

^ we can use what you said for the next public site, old bldg, etc that is redeveloped into some restaurant or playground exculsively for the wealthy.

Some photos of one of the more extreme cantilever buildings in NY: http://www.scoutingny.com/the-giant-tetris-game-on-third-avenue/

^ yeah i really like that one. it was fun to watch it built too. i'm glad they backed off and didn't totally encase the townhouses as in the alternate plans.

 

 

432 park has 300' to go -- per ssp:

 

 

  #6083     

Posted Jun 30, 2014, 3:38 PM

sw5710 

Registered User

 

Join Date: Nov 2008

Posts: 1,392

Core jump. Apparent level 71 or 1,100'

Actual floor 66 for the core.

 

this is my pic from friday:

 

from monday, this is the baccarat tower on 53rd st across from moma:

 

 

 

 

interesting 432 park ave updates yesterday from our friend ccs77 at ssp:

 

 

The core has jumped up to apparent level 74 or 1,147' About the same height as the Stratosphere Tower in Vegas.

 

 

Some calculation

 

On april 28th, 72 days ago, the building was 930ft and 60 apparent levels high.

Today it is 1147 ft and 74 levels high. 14 floors more.

That gives an average of one floor every 5.14 days.

 

Using that average, with 16 floors more to go, it will need 82 more days to get to the top, so, around september 30th, it could make the last core jump.

To actually top out, it will take some more days, since the perimeter is usually two floors behind the core.

 

432 Park looked stunning this past weekend when I was in NYC. It already dominates the skyline of Midtown from many angles. I can't imagine how it's going to feel when topped out.

 

It sounds like it'll be surpassed by quite a bit though in the coming years with the Nordstrom Tower's 1,479' roof and 1,775' spire. The height wars in NYC are getting exciting.

checking in on the greenwich lane, fka st. vincents hospital, has a few facade saves:

 

http://m.ny.curbed.com/tags/the-greenwich-lane

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, over 2,000 square feet on the top floor of a large building and has views of Hell's Kitchen, both rivers, a sliver of Central Park, all of Midtown, Downtown, the WTC, and even the Statue of Liberty in the canyon of the avenue it's on. It was insane. I guess when you and your boyfriend are both lawyers making 7 digits each a $7,900/month rent doesn't phase you anymore.

 

That's a hell of a deal (and those bedrooms must be gigantic). That's a livable, safe neighborhood and IMO one of the best areas of Manhattan. My last place in San Francisco, we were paying $5200 for 950 square feet in the filthy ghetto of mid-Market (with a homeless heroin camp on our street numbering 30-50 on an average day- the whole place reaked like urine and there was human feces everywhere). It was originally a two-bedroom rent-controlled unit from 1916 that housed 5-6 of us with 1 bathroom. Sadly, friends from the Bay Area said what a deal we had due to excellent transit proximity (though no friends from New York ever said that). Our rent was nothing compared to a nice neighborhood in the city. 2,000 square feet in a neighborhood as nice as Hell's Kitchen with similar amenities would be about $10,000 to $20,000 a month after bid wars in San Francisco. Of course there are no neighborhoods with close to the amenities of Manhattan.

 

This place in North Beach (the closest equivalent neighborhood IMO) is barely half that square footage for about the same money:

 

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/apa/4555242133.html

 

Then this crap...

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/apa/4556118233.html

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/apa/4569573793.html

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/apa/4570610467.html

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/apa/4562759133.html

 

I'm shocked there is still stuff under $10,000 a month for 2,000 square feet in a centralized Manhattan location. No way would you ever find such a place in San Francisco that close to downtown in that safe of a neighborhood. That illustrates what a steal it is to live in New York and gives me serious rent envy. :oops:

 

I totally get why New Yorkers say we're getting scammed...that's an incredible deal for a place that big with those views! Damn you New Yorkers with your cheap rents, good transit, and high standard of living...

It might also need to be said that their rent is locked in as per their lease which they signed in, I believe, 2002 or 2003. I have no doubt it would go for a ton more than that now. But they're not interested in moving anytime soon since they do get such a good deal for so much space.

 

The bedrooms were pretty massive. Two had walk in closets and the one that didn't was used as a dual office and exercise room in addition to having a setup for guests. The living area was pretty massive as well. Set up a little odd but quite usable.

 

 

It might also need to be said that their rent is locked in as per their lease which they signed in, I believe, 2002 or 2003. I have no doubt it would go for a ton more than that now. But they're not interested in moving anytime soon since they do get such a good deal for so much space.

 

Yeah, that would make more sense. If the building is pre-late 40's, they probably have rent control. I have to imagine market rate is well over $10,000 a month with that location, space, and view.

The building is from the late 80s/early 90s. It's not rent stabilized but the lease they signed didn't allow for annual increases in rent for some reason. So basically the company that owns the building didn't bother to think about the possibility of people wanting to live there for extended periods of time and the possibility for a huge increase in rental rates in the city. What's the average rent per square foot in that area?

^Pretty naive building owners. :wink: And man, what a sweet lease!

 

They are in an awesome position and shouldn't move until they are forced to!

 

Manhattan is almost as much as San Francisco these days, so I imagine it's $5-$6 per square foot per month residential rents on the low end of the market (like the last non-gentrified blocks in Harlem). I bet that place could pull $12,000 to $15,000 a month!

If I had to guess I'd imagine that being two high-powered lawyers they were able to rework the lease terms in their favor haha.

for the record nyc doesnt even have the highest rents in the northeast, among big us cities it ranks 5th, just above seattle. its been like this for awhile too:

http://m.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/new-numbers-show-san-francisco-has-nations-highest-rents/Content?oid=2626465

another tall one for midtown. one vanderbilt base renders released. kpf is the architect. 1450'

 

 

 

 

for the record nyc doesnt even have the highest rents in the northeast, among big us cities it ranks 5th, just above seattle. its been like this for awhile too:

http://m.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/new-numbers-show-san-francisco-has-nations-highest-rents/Content?oid=2626465

 

Unfortunately, most articles focusing on census data leave out some important nuance.  60% of NYC rental units are either public housing or rent regulated, so of course the citywide median isn't very high.  Same is probably true in SF to some extent (I don't know what share of its units are rent controlled).

 

If you want to compare market rents (i.e., the costs someone moving to a city is likely to face), you need to look at an industry data source that focuses on market units, like Reis.  By that measure, NYC is still the most expensive housing market by far: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/02/us-usa-apartments-idUSKBN0F708620140702

 

But even that is misleading because industry data is populated mainly by large professionally managed buildings, which leaves out a large chunk of the housing stock.  So really there's no good metric to compare rents across cities. And even the question is kind of non-sensical because cities differ so much in size and housing stock composition.

another tall one for midtown. one vanderbilt base renders released. kpf is the architect. 1450'

 

And I believe this is still the current rendering:

 

http://newyorkyimby.com/

It's like Liebeskind's WTC and the BoA tower all together in a sleeping bag. 

for the record nyc doesnt even have the highest rents in the northeast, among big us cities it ranks 5th, just above seattle. its been like this for awhile too:

http://m.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/new-numbers-show-san-francisco-has-nations-highest-rents/Content?oid=2626465

 

Unfortunately, most articles focusing on census data leave out some important nuance.  60% of NYC rental units are either public housing or rent regulated, so of course the citywide median isn't very high.  Same is probably true in SF to some extent (I don't know what share of its units are rent controlled).

 

If you want to compare market rents (i.e., the costs someone moving to a city is likely to face), you need to look at an industry data source that focuses on market units, like Reis.  By that measure, NYC is still the most expensive housing market by far: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/02/us-usa-apartments-idUSKBN0F708620140702

 

But even that is misleading because industry data is populated mainly by large professionally managed buildings, which leaves out a large chunk of the housing stock.  So really there's no good metric to compare rents across cities. And even the question is kind of non-sensical because cities differ so much in size and housing stock composition.

 

yep and you have even left out other large swaths of housing, for example income adjusted. tons of even more specialized populations too, such as people currently living in shelters. this is a big number (55k). college population? i dk but its large. and rikers is the biggest jail/prison in the world, which is not even counting the other jails around town. (12k inmates at rikers, at $460/day, i can get them a better rate at the four seasons - ha). bring us your tired, your weary...yet otoh 1 in 25 new yorkers are millionaires and up, so they have no problem walking over this riff raff.

 

If you want to compare market rents (i.e., the costs someone moving to a city is likely to face), you need to look at an industry data source that focuses on market units, like Reis.  By that measure, NYC is still the most expensive housing market by far: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/02/us-usa-apartments-idUSKBN0F708620140702

 

But even that is misleading because industry data is populated mainly by large professionally managed buildings, which leaves out a large chunk of the housing stock.  So really there's no good metric to compare rents across cities. And even the question is kind of non-sensical because cities differ so much in size and housing stock composition

 

Professionally managed buildings are not a good way to measure rent. New York has way more large buildings that are professionally managed (that's in comparison to just about any city besides Toronto). SF is mostly 3-6 unit Victorian row rentals and landlords tend to be independents. By any price per square foot measure, San Francisco is now much higher than New York City. A quick pound-for-pound craigslist search will show you that, and New York media has been harping on SF's housing crisis and economic boom since 2012:

 

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment that San Francisco morphed into bizarro-world New York, when it went from being the city’s dorky, behoodied West Coast cousin to being, in many ways, more New York–ish than New York itself—its wealth more impressive, its infatuation with power and status more blinding. Maybe it was this past November, when New York elected a tax-the-rich progressive as mayor and, two days later, Twitter, a company that had been courted by San Francisco politicians with a Bloombergian combination of municipal tax breaks and mayoral flattery, went public at around a $25 billion valuation. Maybe it was when, after the crash, bonus-starved Wall Street bankers started quitting their jobs and heading to the Bay Area in droves to join the start-up gold rush. Or maybe it was when San Francisco became the new American capital of real-estate kvetching, thanks to supra-Manhattan rents and gentrification at a pace that would make Bushwick blush.

 

http://nymag.com/news/features/san-francisco-techies-2014-3/

 

Only Manhattan rents are even close to San Francisco, but bang for buck is higher in NY due to its superior amenities and transit. The rest of New York is comparable to Oakland or Berkeley (actually, everything but gentrified parts of Brooklyn is significantly cheaper and higher quality than the Bay Area save for the some of the higher-crime gang zones in East Oakland and Richmond). There is a lot of crappy housing in the Bay Area. Its suburbs are even lower quality than LA suburbs (Bay Area has no Santa Monica or Pasadena type of places, though Long Beach could be compared to Oakland). Another key difference is that New York is building all over the damn place while the Bay Area just has a few small areas with new construction (SOMA, Mid-Market/Tenderloin in SF, West Oakland, San Jose infill). This thread alone proves how much more progressive New York is and always has been. The goal of New York was never to be a city of just millionaires. They are allowing new housing development which helps stabilize prices. As a result, New York's population is far more diverse and still has a large middle class living outside of Manhattan. There are even some families in New York. You can have more baby sightings in one week in Brooklyn than one year in San Francisco! In 2013, I counted about 11 babies in San Francisco (haha, what would that be in Ohio- 1100?) I think I counted a few dozen babies in one day in Brooklyn in 2013.

 

At market rates, regardless of how many roommates you have, you will never find a bedroom under $1000 a month in San Francisco ($1500 is about the norm per person in a 3 or 4-bd place, but keep in mind those multi-bed units typically do not have living rooms or dining areas since they are bedrooms). Even in far flung Bay Area suburbia (or downright rural areas in cheaper Marin County), it is getting hard to find an open bedroom under $1000 a month. New York drops off much faster as you get away from Manhattan, and transit is far superior. That's the key difference. You have to live in Sacramento to really get down to Queens or Bronx rents. But then you'll spend hours in traffic...

 

http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2014/01/30/s-f-rents-up-more-than-3-times-higher-than-national-average/#20080101=0&20081103=0&20082105=0

http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Startup-dreams-meet-pop-up-rentals-4226675.php#photo-3986275

 

Any New York comparisons with San Francisco are only comparing Manhattan. When talking beyond that, SF and the Bay Area is way worse/more expensive. Even horrendous suburban areas with no amenities can get out of control expensive (look at much of Silicon Valley). The ceiling is much higher in the Bay Area. Wall Street ain't got nothing on tech...I even hear tech workers bemoan their "poor Ivy League friends slaving away on Wall Street."

 

At $2600 a month in Downtown Oakland for 1000 square feet (plus hardwood and tile), I am living the Bay Area dream. I beat out 400 people for an apartment before. I've seen open houses in the hundreds...New York can't compare to this level of competition, certainly not in marginal neighborhoods. I was going against millionaires, execs at Tesla, execs at Google, execs at Twitter, etc. These people shouldn't be looking to live with roommates. There is just hardly any open housing. One Tesla guy I interviewed for a roommate had lived in a motel for six months and made 300k a year. He is having no luck in the local housing market and is about to throw in the towel and move to Sacramento. In New York, he'd be living in a gorgeous apartment anywhere he wanted. BTW, living in Sacramento is like commuting to New York from Philadelphia. I've considered it myself before finding my current place. Sacramento is like a much more diverse Columbus and is better than the rest of the valley.

 

At my current place, I listed two open bedrooms on craigslist (it's a 3-bd, 1-bath unit). Within a week or so, I had over 200 applicants. Tech workers from Europe were willing to pay three months rent just to secure the place for fall move-in. People were offering more money once they saw the place and told me stories of how hard it was to find a place to live. Girls hinted at sexual favors. Supermodels applied. Tech executives applied. VC's applied. Former Wall Street execs applied. Managing engineers applied. Marketing directors applied. I was completely blown away by the applicant pool and it was not an easy decision. Tons of people were 1% crowd with some being .01%. I turned down the best-looking model/executive because I didn't want to have that temptation in a roommate. We hit it off a little too well and she was just too damn hot. I ended up picking two of the only non-white/non-Asian, middle class applicants. I figured we'd get along better since we had more in common.

 

I know New York can get expensive, but I doubt people there are as desperate as they are in San Francisco, let alone Oakland...I mean Oakland ain't exactly Nob Hill. I shouldn't have had these types of applicants.

 

Where do these types live in New York? It's not Queens or the Bronx, right? Actually, Newark is the better Oakland comparison...do Wall Street executives apply for housing in Newark? I've met tons of 20-somethings in New York struggling to survive. I think it's the norm there. The New York kids just don't seem to have the wealth and high-status jobs of San Francisco kids. In fact, a lot of the good jobs in New York seem to be held by people in their 30's and 40's- what are called "graybeards" in the San Francisco labor market. You notice the older age of workers in New York almost immediately. The whole concept of all these 25-year-old executives partying their asses off doing coke off of strippers seems to be more New York myth than New York reality. That's San Francisco reality. :wink:

 

The reason people in the Bay Area have New York rent envy (along with a whole host of New York cultural envies) is because New York does have a lot of high-quality, dense, urban, transit serviced areas that middle class people can move to. I've been blown away by how cheap the rents are in nice parts of Queens and the Bronx. I think the pro-development stances of the city are the reason New York rents are more sane and the city has maintained a good amount of diversity. New York is still the best model for an American city. It offers incredible bang for buck when you consider the quality, safety, and functional urbanism. It is wholly unique in the United States, and if anything, should be more expensive, certainly more expensive than the Bay Area.

 

Then again, that winter...it's shocking how little good urbanism there is in warm weather American cities. Most of our best stuff is in the Northeast or Great Lakes.

 

*I didn't mean to drag this too far off topic, but it's important to note that New York is no longer the most expensive housing market. Yet despite this, they are still building, which is great to see.

C-Dawg[/member] where did you get some of your information? For instance, "Newark is better than Oakland?"  Yes Exec's live in Queens.  Or the "coke myth"  :o :? ::) ::) ::) ::)

I have never lived in New York City, but I have to imagine that those subway and cab rides in from the Bronx and way out in Queens must get *very* old, *very* quick.  If you seek refuge from the rent in The Bronx and your college buddy is way out at the end of the subway lines in Queens, you're only going to see each other twice a year. 

 

When New York was the New York of Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, etc., the whole sphere of activity was from Canal St. up to Midtown, with an occasional sortie to the upper east or west.  That was an area measuring about 4 x 2 miles.  Subway and cab rides were rarely more than 20 minutes.  Now "New York" is a group of side-by-side 4 x 2 mile worlds, with an hour-long subway ride from end-to-end. 

I have never lived in New York City, but I have to imagine that those subway and cab rides in from the Bronx and way out in Queens must get *very* old, *very* quick.  If you seek refuge from the rent in The Bronx and your college buddy is way out at the end of the subway lines in Queens, you're only going to see each other twice a year. 

 

When New York was the New York of Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, etc., the whole sphere of activity was from Canal St. up to Midtown, with an occasional sortie to the upper east or west.  That was an area measuring about 4 x 2 miles.  Subway and cab rides were rarely more than 20 minutes.  Now "New York" is a group of side-by-side 4 x 2 mile worlds, with an hour-long subway ride from end-to-end. 

 

Untrue.  You do realize that Harlem is not in a bubble.  Warhol lived and worked on the Upper Eastside but hung out in the Village when it was crap and gridy.  SoHo didn't exist (as an entertainment district), it was just a empty warehouses that were formerly sweatshops or textile mills.  That industry moved toward Times Square or Canal Streets chinatown in the 80s.  The movie Ghost, with Whoppi Goldberg and Demi Moore was when SoHo started to take off.

 

People live in the far reaches of Queen, The Bronx or Brooklyn are unaffaced, they are accostomed to the commute. Also, about a third own a vehicle.  I could also throw in Norther Jersey, Westchester and Long Island folks.

 

Honestly, I think NYC was more neighborhood oriented before I got here.  As with most things, people center on the glitz and glamor of Manhattan, but neighborhoods were where things happened.  That is why there are so many older people in NYC that have never left Brooklyn or the Bronx. 

That commute in Queens or Bronx is nothing compared to what people in the Bay Area and LA area do. At least NY has serviceable transit and is approving large-scale developments in proximity to that transit. And it's important to remember New York transit runs later than in other cities, so it's very responsive to bar crowds. NY transit blows every other city in North America out of the water (though Toronto, Montreal, Chicago, Mexico City, and DC are also pretty good).

 

*I think Manhattan always was more transient in nature than the other boroughs due to its cost. Once you start thinking about where your money is going, paying that rent just isn't worth it. You can always go out in "the city" when you need a fix and have the ability to take transit. In that regard it is similar to San Francisco and its relationship to the metro area, with the key difference being BART has no late night trains and car ownership is much higher (and Lyft/Sidecar/Flywheel/Uber use is also much higher in the core of SF, OAK, and Berkeley). New York is still behind the curve on cab replacements, but it's not a big deal since NY cab service is much better than in other cities.

 

The crazy thing about commutes is that they do become tolerable to people after the initial shock to the system. I don't understand why people live an hour from work, but my roommates do it, and a lot of other people I know do it because they want an urban lifestyle while working in the suburbs. That's a big thing with Gen Y. The suburbs hold a lot of good jobs due to cheaper office space.

Yeah but waiting for the subway in NYC at 4am when you need to transfer at least once means you're going to be riding (but mostly standing around waiting for a train) for like 90 minutes.  It totally sucks.  Honestly owl hour bus service makes a lot more sense than trains, since the roads are generally empty and the traffic lights are blinking yellow, but people just plain don't want to stand around on a sidewalk at 3:30am for a bus.  They want to be in a station where they feel some sense of security, even though they might in fact be no safer, statistically.  I was living in Boston when they started the Night Owl bus service, where they ran bus lines over the subway routes, and it was a total disaster.  Nobody could figure out where to catch the buses. 

^ wow you must not have visited ny since the era of widespread smartphone internet service began.  :wink:  realtime station signage is improving as well. the top issue these days is crowding. that and in what geological earth epoch will 2nd ave come online - ha.

 

 

below are a few kind of random, representative developments.

 

 

first is the superbland replacement for 5pointz in lic, queens:

 

http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/07/31/meet_the_rental_towers_putting_the_nails_in_5pointzs_coffin.php

 

 

 

 

 

next is something more small potatos infill out in forest hills, queens w/a cvs at the base:

 

http://ny.curbed.com/tags/the-aston

 

 

 

and last is a nice one downtown i have not heard too much about called 50 west street. 783' and 63 stories:

 

http://ny.curbed.com/places/50-west-street

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

50 West Street looks great. Sleek, modern, but not overly flashy. It will fit in well there.

The pedestrianization of Times Square is being made permanent. I walked through earlier this month and it's looking good... or, it will when the three years of construction is over. I wonder if any of the other pedestrianized sections of Broadway will be made permanent, or if they will remain painted asphalt with planters for the foreseeable future.

I actually kind of like the "painted asphalt with planters and street furniture" thing most of the spots around the city have. The extension of Herald Square and the closure of Broadway as it goes by the Flatiron are my favorites in addition to the tiny triangle is DUMBO that always has interesting paintings on the ground. There's something nice about a simple, non-fussy solution that I like as it's obvious it can be implemented in so many areas. Places like Times Square make so much sense to do a full rebuild, but smaller spots don't necessarily need that to still be great places.

after two years (I think it's been that long) and millions of $$$ (courtesy of David Koch--yes, that's right, one of the fearsome Koch Brothers!), the Metropolitan Museum's redone plaza has been unveiled. I don't know what the point of replacing the existing fountains--longer and narrower, and more elegant--was all about. The new ones do nothing to enhance the space. There's maybe a bit more seating--

 

 

 

 

 

i see its screaming david h koch plaza.

 

eh. i dont use this area, but tourists certainly do.

 

if its more comfortable for them then ok i guess.

 

^I don't know if you mean you never go to the Met or you just don't sit in the plaza :| I don't know why they couldn't have just restored the old one. There was nothing wrong with the way it looked--I'm glad I got a couple of pictures before they ruined it

 

i think you need to think a little harder about that...

:wtf:^splain