The tiny holdout building in the middle of Macy’s is back in view
ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com
ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com
In September 2021, Macy's accused the billboard's owner Kaufman Realty of negotiating to lease the space to an online retailer before Macy's most recent lease expired that August. Macy's claimed that the lessee was almost certainly Amazon and filed for an injunction preventing Kaufman from leasing the space to a competitor. Macy's claimed that a 1963 agreement prohibited such a lease "forever" and that an Amazon billboard would be highly visible during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
The case was 655669/2021 in the New York County Supreme Court (the Supreme Court is the name for the first-tier courts in NY state).
Docket: https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/DocumentList?docketI...
The parties were in settlement talks and postponed the hearing on an injunction and then settled and dismissed.
https://old.reddit.com/r/SpiteHouse/comments/of5cqh/in_the_c...
EDIT: got a great view of it. Fascinating that this dilapidated structure has just been hiding in plain sight all these years.
As the other commenter discovered, the tax rate is very significant for this property.
But the core proposition doesn’t make sense, either. A land value tax wouldn’t force a property to be used for a less profitable use case. A LVT forces the property to be used for the most profitable use case because the tax would prevent people from using it for less profitable activities because that’s the only way to pay the high LVT.
Naturally people dislike this because using land for less than economically optimal uses is usually desired by the landowner and taxing improvements means that someone with a more economically optimal use makes them less of a competitor for the land than the present owner.
The example above shows that pure LVT would have the inverse effect: If the land becomes valuable for something other than housing, the taxes rise to the point that the only logical conclusion is to use it for commercial activities.
It’s at this point that the conversation turns to carving out land value tax exceptions for the 80 year old grandma in her forever home, which turns into more exceptions for normal homeowners, which slowly gets us closer and closer to our current system where we’re not ruthlessly taxing properties based on the value of the land alone.
Basically I see it as a way to get closer to the ideal of making land speculation no longer a thing. Regular homeowners included.
If you buy a home for $100k, in theory after you adjust for inflation it should sell for less due to depreciation of the structures on the property. The fact we assume a home is an investment is the root of the evil.
Of course this does not mean LVT is the only way to make this happen. It just seems the fairest to me. I still want people and corporations to be incentivized to develop and improve land - just not rewarded for sitting on it forever. The standard objection of 80 year olds in forever homes sitting on prime real estate better used for young professionals with families who still need to commute to work is exactly the sort of folks who should not be rewarded for such behavior.
It's the implementation that can be evil.
Also, I initially thought that large store building was not historical, but a modern one because its style doesn't look classical and rather as a parody to the classical buildings. I was surprised that it is more than 100 years old.
Also, small buildings sandwitched between large ones like that look cute.
99% Invisible.
I don’t know for sure, but I imagine usable windows are required for living spaces.
But in this part of town, the advertising rights alone probably vastly exceed any possible revenue from renting the building for residential use. It’s kind of like the tiny building in Times Square that has the ball on top. I don’t think people even realize there’s a building behind all of the billboards, but it was original New York Times building.
It was the second New York Times building! The original was on Park Row.
Renting any part of that building out is likely not worth the hassle compared to the ad revenue, as you noted.
I don't think you meant this as specific as it sounds -- I suspect this requirement applies to coops, condos, and maybe even if you want to get official permission to use it as an owner-occupied single-family dwelling.
I think there's actually a parallel rule that theoretically applies to owner-occupied buildings, but for obvious reasons there's a lot less enforcement. Beyond real estate agents not listing an illegal bedroom as a bedroom, for example, nobody is going to hunt you down for using a non-bedroom as a sleeping place.
My first instinct was perhaps they raised the ceiling in the first floor to occupy some of the second. But thinking on it more, high ceilings without windows to go with them usually don't make the space feel that much bigger. You can spend up to a couple feet on crown molding but beyond that you're well into diminishing returns.
Some other buildings in Times Square keep several floors empty to use for signage instead, a minimum of which is actually mandated by the city.
I can think of buildings in other cities in seemingly premium real estate, including the Chicago Loop, that are notably underutilized.
Old, cramped upstairs spaces in crowded, touristy commercial districts just aren’t that useful. A small business would rather just get an office in WeWork.
Converting to housing is going to be expensive and probably also not worth it. Tourist lodging might work, but the licensing can also be an issue and tourists can be weird — no matter how much you tell people a place like that is noisy and on one of the busiest corners in the world, you’ll get reviews complaining about the noise and chaos.
Though I have replaced pepper control arms on a vintage Mustang once. Rust does that.
The geniuses on all the various boards would block the Macys building on all sorts of asinine grounds because the carve out is odd and perhaps looks stupid. Or Macys would pay off the city to eminent domain the hold out.
Initial word of headline necessary for comprehension
sigh
- The Farm at the Javits Center (Hudson Yards) is a working rooftop farm, greenhouse, and has an orchard.
- On Randall’s Island there is a farm with raised beds, greenhouses, rice paddies, and also an orchard.
- Battery Urban Farm (Lower Manhattan) - not sure of this counts but its an operating educational farm that grows produce.
There are others.
Do you think Manhattan has always been skyscrapers?
I fear you doom yourself to misinterpretation by failing to properly or correctly describe your thought.
Why comment?
I'm lamenting the loss of farms in manhattan.
At least there’s Central Park, that’s several hundreds of billions of dollars of real estate set aside for public use.