NOHO—The erector set on Lafayette and Great Jones (above), once a mystery and then the support for a giant iPod billboard, has reverted to its ad-free form. Says our photographer, "A very expensive week for Apple and their advertising solutions provider." [CurbedWire Inbox]
WEST VILLAGE—As we await the Chumley's resurrection, a reader wonders whether the whole block isn't doomed. He writes,
[T]he poor place still has police barricades around the sidewalk with plywood loosely boarded up around the entrance. It looks like it was bombed from the outside. All of 86 Bedford is being held together by steel and wire supports. What's strange is that all permits for the scaffolding for the adjoining buildings have expired and no work has ever been done since the scaffolding went up. I'm not talking about Chumleys either. The whole side of that block is starting to look like a crack house. Yet the side door to the apartments upstairs of Chumleys is sometimes left wide open and sometimes it's closed. God only knows what is actually going on in there? We certainly don't know, but we do miss those burgers. [CurbedWire Inbox] MIDTOWN WEST—Amidst all the downtown hotel buzz, an uptown joint may have slipped under the radar. A tipster writes, "There was a big truck outside the former Empire Hotel across from Lincoln Centerthis morning unloading brand new mattresses into the the building....Anyone know if there's a new hotel going in here now that the whole condo thing went out the window?" Yes! 440 new luxury rooms. [CurbedWire Inbox]