New York University announced today that it would not demolish the Provincetown Playhouse, but build above it, preserving the theater’s original structural walls, footprint and volume, following a mini-public backlash.

University spokeswoman Alicia Hurley said “demolishing the theater was never a proposal,” just “bad information in the atmosphere.  read more »

"This is an awesome space, an awesome location," chef Scott Conant said, during a packed-house grand opening party at his new digs in the meatpacking district--er, at least, sort of in the meatpacking district.

"It's not really in the meatpacking, it's on, you know what I'm saying?"

The former L'Impero and Alto cook's latest restaurant Scarpetta opened Monday evening in the former Gin Lane and old Village Idiot space at 355 West 14th Street, just east of Ninth Avenue.

"A lot of the core clientele, a lot of Upper East Siders and a lot of people from Uptown, they're not going to be kind of spooked by going too much into the meatpacking. Too far inside of it, it might scare 'em off. But because it's on it, they feel comfortable coming down.

"I looked everywhere," Mr. Conant said. "But I really wanted it to be a West Village restaurant. It's probably one of the last neighborhoods that is pure New York."  read more »

“I personally think this will destroy N.Y.U. and the Greenwich Village community—and I’m being nice,” said Ruth Rennert.

A handful of seniors clustered around her shook their heads in agreement.

Ms. Rennert, a resident of Greenwich Village for the past four decades, was speaking to a conservatively dressed young woman wearing an N.Y.U. name tag during the university's fifth Expansion Open House on Wednesday evening.  read more »

Boozehounds are often warned about potential liver problems.

But recent patrons of Armin Amiri's trendy Socialista club may be at risk of something beyond cirrhosis: Hepatitis A.

The Health Department is advising as many as 800 Socialista patrons to get vaccinated, after a bartender at the Greenwich Village hotspot was diagnosed with the contagious liver disease, according to the Wall Street Journal health blog. (Free shots are available at P.S. 41 this weekend.)  read more »

The first public hearing on the Rudin Management Company's plans for the site of St. Vincent Hospital in Greenwich Village will be this evening at 6:30 at P.S. 41 at 116 West 11th Street. Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, emailed us the announcement on Monday night.

He called Rudin's plan "almost unprecedented in its scope, especially in the Greenwich Village Historic District."

Rudin last year bought eight buildings at 12th Street and Seventh Avenue that St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers is vacating as part of a consolidation. Bill Rudin, president of Rudin Management, talked to The Observer's John Koblin in June about the plans, which would include an apartment complex on the east side of Seventh:  read more »

In the current issue of New York, art critic Jerry Saltz reviews the new Urs Fischer exhibit at Gavin Brown's gallery in Greenwich Village.

The installation is described as "[a] 38-foot-by-30-foot crater, eight feet deep," which "extends almost to the walls of the gallery, surrounded by a fourteen-inch ledge of concrete floor."

It took 10 days to "build," as Mr. Saltz reported, costing the gallerist Mr. Brown roughly $250,000.

Wow!

"Heaven only knows what his landlord thought of it," quipped Mr. Saltz.

According to PropertyShark.com, the gallery building at 620 Greenwich Street is owned by Patrick La Frieda.

"CAN AH GETTA SHAIKH-ALLUJAH?!?!"

No, Astor Place isn't getting another Starbucks. Yet.

Actually, the Reverend Billy and his "Church of Stop Shopping" choir were rallying yesterday in support of a retailer: the longstanding Thompson Newsstand near the corner of Thompson and West 3rd streets.  read more »

After racking up one of the city's worst health-inspection scores so far this rat-crazed year, the original Papaya King outpost at the corner of Third Avenue and 86th Street is once again grilling its trademarked "Tastier Than Filet Mignon" franks.

The Health Department shuttered "New York's First Juice Bar" two weeks ago, after the TV program Inside Edition aired footage of rodents at the Upper East Side sausage factory--a situation Mr. Horan downplayed as "an isolated incident."

That's 19 points worse than the infamously rat-infested KFC-Taco Bell in Greenwich Village, which remains shuttered, but still 49 points behind Manhattan's most recent high scorer, Cafe Fonduta, which, like Papaya King, has since reopened.