Email from a Curbed reader: "Grand and Mercer looked like checkpoint charlie Friday night. No getting by. Cops were afraid 74 Grand was going to collapse with the rain. Did it?"
Er, not yet! So says Curbed correspondent Higgins, who files a report from the red zone. (Beware the kicker after the jump?a poignant real estate anecdote that may reduce you, as it did us, to tears.)
Had dinner with pals who live on the block and took a look at the building last night. Wow. They're still barricading the intersection of Wooster and Grand, trying to prevent people from even walking down the sidewalks on the **opposite** side of the street.You definitely can see gaps where the iron facade is pulling away from the building. They've completely filled the construction pit next door (the original cause of the problem), but the damage is done...
But collapsing buildings are no impediment to the downtown crowd. Even though a cop stands guard, a British woman ducks under a barricade to cross the intersection. The cop keeps telling her to go back; she snaps that she had to get to her car down the block and won't walk around the block. As they quibble and he whipped out his ticket book, both the cop and the Brit are oblivious to two other pairs of people ducking under and strolling across the intersection. I keep waiting for the woman to yell, "hey, well you're not stopping those people," but she never seems to notice. Amusing. And there's a guy apparently from an insurance company stationed in an SUV in the parking lot across the street. Looking to document the final collapse??· 74 Grand: Put a Fork In It [Curbed]Word on the block is that one woman closed on buying an apartment in 74 Grand just 10 days before the rain. She must be beside herself. The sell must be deliriously happy.