The "Big Apple" REITs

Investing In New York City REITs

Excerpt:

New York City’s real estate market includes some of the most high-profile properties in the world. It is also one of the most expensive in which to invest (and why so many residents are renters). If you can’t afford to invest directly in New York City’s real estate market there are several publicly traded real estate investment trusts (REITs) that can give you exposure.

Comments: The stock symbols: NYRT, ESRT, SLG. Links to sites: Empire State Realty Trust, Inc., New York REIT, SL Green Realty Corp.

City Air

An expert finds New York City's air is full of foreign matter, including rubber and rust - Bits of clothing, fat, carbon, fungus and dead skin cells also flutter through New York's atmosphere

 Excerpt:

Big Apple air is a bizarre brew of bacteria, pollen, clothing fiber, fungus, tire rubber, dead skin cells, cooking fat and carbon emissions. The truth of exactly what New Yorkers breathe comes courtesy of air expert Bill Logan, who grabbed a “spore sucker” of his own design and joined the Daily News for a tour of the city. The results might surprise you. Yes, there’s the expected pollution in midtown and the South Bronx, and neighborhoods with lots of trees tend to have pollen and fungus in the air. But each breath you take — about 33,000 a day — also might include spores, bacteria, pollens, tiny bits of glass, starch and fat.

Comment: I love country air.

Win a Trip to New York City

Sweepstakes

Fact checking: “Whose park? Our park!”

Judge Backs Camping Ban at Protest Site

Excerpt:

The protesters, about 200 of whom have been staying in the park overnight, initially resisted with chants of “Whose park? Our park!”

What Occupy Wall Street Owes to Zoning

Excerpt:

The geographic center of the protest is Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, a one-block collection of trees and benches that is owned by an office landlord, Brookfield Office Properties Inc. Private ownership actually makes the space more accessible than public parks, many of which close at night.

As discussed in a Journal article Saturday, the city’s zoning code requires that many privately owned parks be open to the public at all times – one of the factors that made Zuccotti Park a hospitable venue for the protesters’s all-hours encampment.

Termed a “privately owned public space” — or POPS, in zoning parlance — these plazas stand at the intersection of capitalist instinct and public interest.

The zoning code puts restrictions on the scale of towers that developers are allowed to build. In an attempt to add public space in Manhattan without buying new parkland, city government allowed developers to build bigger structures if they set aside a plaza that remains open to the public.

While many of these are tucked away in the backs of buildings or in lobbies, Zuccotti Park turns out to be one of the most accessible POPS in the city. Of course, there is an irony that the space in which Occupy Wall Street has found a continued home is owned by the city’s largest landlord for financial services firms — the very industry they are protesting.

The rules governing POPS make them pretty accessible by design. At least half of the 500-plus plazas in the city must be open 24 hours, although the real-estate industry’s main lobbying group wants to change the rules so that they can close at night. Some owners have received permission to close theirs at night if they can make a convincing case that there is a security concern associated with 24-hour access.

Landlords are allowed to post rules that restrict people from some activities (such as skateboarding), and if a visitor breaks one of those rules, the landlord can ask the person to leave. At that point, a refusal to leave can be considered trespassing and the owner can ask the police to arrest the person, according to Gabriel Taussig, an attorney in the city’s Law Department.

When the protest began inside Zuccotti Park one month ago, there were few rules applied to the protesters. After people set up a camp inside the plaza, however, Brookfield posted new rules that prohibited camping, tents and “lying down on the ground,” among other rules.

Comment: More on Zuccotti Park

Manhattan shoebox apartment: a 78-square-foot mini studio

Comment: $ 800 per month with no bathroom. HT: Salon

Wells Fargo: Hello Times Square

Comment: Wells Fargo arrives in NY City

Wal-Mart in New York City?

Wal-Mart Tries a Refined Path Into New York

Excerpt:

A glossy brochure it mailed to thousands of city residents appeals to their sense of autonomy, declaring: “You don’t ask the special interests or the political insiders for permission to watch TV. So why should they decide where you’re allowed to shop?”

Stealing a page from the candidate playbook, the company has even taken to firing off rapid-response “fact-checker” e-mails to New York reporters to undercut its opponents.

“They look like someone driving toward Election Day,” said Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker. “They have all the things that are on your to-do list if you’re running a campaign.”

But what may be most remarkable about Wal-Mart’s bid is that it is happening at all. Just four years ago, the company proudly proclaimed that it had written New York off. Its chief executive then, H. Lee Scott Jr., said, “I don’t care if we are ever here.”

Comment: Image captured from NY Times article. I would like to see a Wal-Mart in Plymouth!

Far from the “holy huddle”

For Evangelical College, Home Is Where the Sin Is

Excerpt:

The King’s College was founded in the seaside town of Belmar, N.J., 70 years ago, before moving to Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., in 1955. The college closed after going bankrupt in 1994, and reopened five years later with 17 students after its backers raised enough funds.

Its setting, college leaders say, was a deliberate move. They wanted students to be exposed to new ideas and hone their intellectual chops far from the “holy huddle,” places that are religiously and ideologically sealed off from the rest of the world.

Comment: Better to have a Christian College in an urban center rather than deep in the woods!

Leaky water

Plumber’s Job on a Giant’s Scale: Fixing New York’s Drinking Straw

Excerpt:

All tunnels leak, but this one is a sieve. For most of the last two decades, the Rondout-West Branch tunnel — 45 miles long, 13.5 feet wide, up to 1,200 feet below ground and responsible for ferrying half of New York City’s water supply from reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains — has been leaking some 20 million gallons a day. Except recently, when on some days it has lost up to 36 million gallons.

Comment: Worthwhile read if you are interesting in civil engineering projects