[It's time for Thursday's reader responses to Tuesday's reader questions in this special holiday edition of Rumblings and Bumblings. Got a question yourself? Curbed elves at tips@curbed.com await your email.]
No takers for questions about Chelsea or Little Chitaly, but some good scoop on other queries:
1) East Village: Regarding the scaffolding up at 351 Bowery near the Tower of Bowery, a Curbed reader emails, "Three-building development site, with frontage on Bowery and 4th Street (I assume the residential entrance will be on 4th). HK Organization on the deed. I assume condos. Looks like demolition is starting soon." Adds another tipster, "The sidewalk shed is in conjunction with a new building to be put up. The shed must be there during demolition. Sidewalk shed and an increase to the parapet to 8 feet; one can only assume for the revenue created from illegal signage. Yay!"
2) Upper West Side: Regarding the Equinox club being razed for condos at Amsterdam and 76th, Braden Keil had the word earlier this month: "The two companies [Related and Equinox, which are now under same ownership since Related bought out the gym] have a luxury condominium project in the works together at 76th Street and Amsterdam Avenue—the site of Equinox's first club—where a new 35,000-square-foot club will reopen in its place." No more details on the condo plan, though. (Additional details welcome.) Notes another tipster, "After construction is completed, it will be the new 'flagship' Equinox." So there's that.
4) West Village: A commenter fleshes out the luxe (is there any other kind?) residential development rising on Waverly: "147 Waverly is within the Greenwich Village Historic District and got permission for some minor changes (like changing bulkheads at the top of the building, removing the water tank and making changes to the ground floor level) over the summer. But other than that the outside of the building should remain the same."
5) Lower East Side: Regarding the clandestine goings-on inside the abandoned Essex Street Retail Market on Essex between Stanton and Rivington (photo, top), a tipster has some awesome scoop: "I've been inside and the place is enormous, it's half a block long. The guy who owns it apparently owns half the neighborhood and doesn't really do much with it. There are piles of wood everywhere and the place has a leaky roof, so there are random buckets around collecting water. He lets some friends use the place as a workshop and he lives in another part of the building that I did not see but other than that it doesn't seem to have much of a purpose. I wouldn't imagine anything gets built or opens in this spot in the next five years. It's a rather bizarre anomoly in New York real estate. Maybe the owner is waiting for some sort of real estate boom to happen and then sell it."