Washington Heights

A Washington Heights church has divined the gospel of real estate, selling a portion of its land to a developer, who, in turn, will help build a new church three times the size of the old, dilapidated one.

Of course, the developer gets something out of this, too – in this case, the land on which to build a 16-story residential high rise with 75 units; 20 percent of which will be affordable housing.

North Manhattan Development LLC is now in contract to buy the land from Rocky Mount Baptist Church in Washington Heights for approximately $6 million. That’s a 4,286 percent appreciation since 1980, when the church bought the spot for $140,000.

“We had no idea our church was worth that kind of money,” said Rev. Eugene Hudson in a statement.  read more »

Junkies just don't loiter around the Jou Jou Cafe the way they used to.

“People were lying around, nodding off," as co-owner Edin Musabegovic told The New York Times.

Nowadays, the indie java joint in Washington Heights is dealing with a far more pesky brand of retail parasite -- Starbucks, which moved in two doors down this past September:

“I can’t believe they opened in our own building,” said Mr. Musabegovic, whom the Times credited with making "the neighborhood safe for coffeehouses."  read more »

Four apartment buildings in Washington Heights with 87 apartments total have gone on the sales market for an asking price of $11.25 million. The sellers have owned the five-story buildings at 575-587 West 177th Street for over 20 years, according to a broker with Marcus & Millichap, the firm handling the sale.

Is it any wonder they'd want to sell now?

Discount sale in Washington Heights!

Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services announced today that they have the exclusive listing for what they are dubbing the “Washington Heights Co-op Package.” The package consists of 84 co-op apartments in five walk-up buildings.

The big news here is the price tag: $16 million for all five buildings. That boils down to $190,476 per unit. To put it plainly, it is a steal.  read more »

You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.  read more »

You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.  read more »

Before leaving a rally in Washington Heights yesterday, Eliot Spitzer insisted that there was "no cover up" by his campaign over the drunk driving arrest of his close campaign advisor Ryan Toohey.

"We have addressed it," said Mr. Spitzer. "We didn't know about it, we didn't know about it until two nights ago."

--Jason Horowitz

The densest census tract in the country is located in West Harlem, where a 1,190-unit former Mitchell-Lama building stands surrounded by numerous tenements (below). The two-block area has, according to the 2000 Census, a density equivalent to 229,713 inhabitants per square mile.

Sounds positively suburban next to the density envisioned by Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn (below): between 436,363 and 523,636 inhabitants per square mile (based on estimated population of between 15,000 and 18,000 residents over 22 acres). That is the density for the whole footprint, including the open space, the arena, and the office towers.  read more »

Today, Bill Clinton will be attending the groundbreaking for New York-Presbyterian Hospital/ Columbia's new heart center in Washington Heights.

The Pei Cobb Freed-designed facility will measure 142,000 square feet. The heart center is getting off the ground with the help of a generous $50 million donation from the Vivian and Seymour Milstein family foundations

- Michael Calderone

UPDATE: Lizzy Ratner, The Observer's medical beat reporter, offers this report from yesterday's groundbreaking.  read more »

During his days in the Oval Office, Bill Clinton would have been an unlikely poster-child for healthy heart habits.

But earlier today, the reformed donut-hound and fast-foodie-in chief trekked up to the airy reaches of Washington Heights to deliver a talk on cardiac health -- and to help celebrate the groundbreaking for New York-Presbyterian's new cardiology palace: the Vivan and Seymour Milstein Family Heart Center. Mr. Clinton, of course, became the hospital's most famous cardio patient nearly two years ago when he underwent quadruple bypass surgery there. He is now the honorary chair of the steering committee for the new heart center.

Looking trim and, we have to admit, a little bit orange, the former president spoke for roughly ten minutes, during which he "confessed" that he had eaten a bran muffin for breakfast (low-fat, however) and warned against the "explosion of obesity" in this country and New York's "virtual epidemic of diabetes." He also took a few minutes to wonk out on health care policy -- that famously missed oportunity of his presidency.

"I think it's important that we realize that the medical professionals who labor here will, unless we change our ways, labor under enormous burdens because of the complexity and cost of the system we have constructed in America, which leaves huge numbers of people without insurance, spends 34 percent of all health care dollars on administrative costs, doesn't have electronic records, and, as a result of that creates all kinds of financial squeezes for every single serious healthcare provider," he told the crowd of doctors and donors. "No other country in the world spends 16 percent of its income on health care. Indeed, no one spends more than 11 percent, and yet others get as good or better outcomes as we do, because they don't finance their system in the crazy way we do. And we have to do something about that."

Mr. Clinton didn't get to offer much in the way of solutions during his address, but he did make a point of plugging some of his wife's work in this area -- namely, her Electronic Records Bill. Mrs. Clinton recently introduced it alongside another presidential hopeful, Bill Frist.

-- Lizzy Ratner

Eliot Spitzer kept out of the West Side Stadium fight last year, telling reporters he couldn't talk about it because his office might wind up litigating.

But at a breakfast up in Washington Heights this morning, he broke his silence:  read more »

"I didn't think it made a lot of financial sense to give a way a piece of real estate that's worth a few billion dollars to a football team for a hundred million dollars," he said. "That's their fiscal determination thus far - maybe not down the road - but it didn't make sense to me."

After the event, Spitzer said he'd expressed his reservations privately to Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff and others.

When hipster protest candidate Christopher X. Brodeur picked up 3.5% of the vote in last month's Democratic primary, there was much mirth at the expense of City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, whom Brodeur actually beat in the Bronx.

And there were some theories floated to explain Brodeur's success: His name makes him sound Haitian; his name makes him sound like a Black Muslim; he has a higher profile than we'd realized.

Brodeur declared amused victory: "You may have heard that I was responsible for the biggest upset in political history," he wrote in L Magazine after the election, adding, "I've never visited the Bronx in my life!"

But a closer look at the numbers suggest we owe Miller an apology, and that the Board of Elections owes us an explanation. The result seems to have less to do with Brodeur than with the mechanics of New York's creaky old voting system and voters' interactions with it. And, ironically, the protest candidate does seem to have demonstrated deep flaws in the city's political system, if not the same ones he spent his campaign denouncing.

The returns show a striking correlation between Brodeur's votes and Freddy's. In Assembly Districts where Ferrer romped, Brodeur picked up as much as 10% of the vote. In areas where Ferrer was badly beaten, Brodeur hardly showed up.

(A statistical analysis of preliminary data at the finest, election-district by election-district, level, done for The Politicker by CUNY's John Mollenkopf, showed a .229 correlation between Brodeur's votes and Freddy's, which Mollenkopf called "strong". (That's .229 on a scale of -1 to 1.))

Brodeur, astonishingly, won more than 10% of the vote in three election districts, all heavily Hispanic and all among Ferrer's very strongest:

In the 84th Assembly District in the South Bronx, which is represented by Carmen Arroyo, Ferrer won 72.4% of the vote; Brodeur won 11.2%.

In the nearby 86th district, represented by Luis Diaz , Ferrer won 72.4%; Brodeur won 10.5%.

And in Adriano Espaillat's 72nd district in Washington Heights, represented by, Ferrer won 66.9%; Brodeur won 10.4%

Meanwhile, Freddy's worst districts were also Brodeur's worst. Out in the 26th AD in white Northeast Queens, Freddy picked up a scant 21% of the vote, and Brodeur came in with 0.8%.

How do we explain this? It's very hard to imagine that 10% of the people in overwhelmingly Hispanic Bronx neighborhoods decided to vote for a guy they'd never heard of.

The simplest answer is the design of the ballot. Candidates names appear in alphabetical order, with the first position rotating in each election district. (That is: In one district the order would be Brodeur, Ferrer, Fields, Miller, Piccolo, Weiner; in the next it would be Weiner, Brodeur, Ferrer, Fields, Miller, Piccolo.)

That means Brodeur's name appeared on the ballot next to Freddy's in most districts, because they're next to each other in alphabetical order. So the simplest explanation is that most of the Brodeur votes are errant Ferrer votes.

That's a strong explanation, but a partial one. Brodeur appeared on the ballot in most places between Ferrer and Weiner. The other obscure candidate, Arthur Piccolo, appeared between Miller and Weiner. Brodeur wound up with more than 8.6% of the combined vote of his neighbors on the ballot. Piccolo got 4.1% of his neighbors' vote.

So perhaps there's another factor at work there -- those misled Haitians, or black Muslims -- though there's no evidence Brodeur performed better in, say, Flatbush.  read more »

More likely, this is striking evidence of something civil rights advocates have long argued: that poor, less-educated voters are relatively less likely to get their votes counted. Who takes the blame for this is an interesting question for another day, and one that people are often squeamish of discussing, because of the possibility that poorer, less-educated voters are more likely to err.

But the evidence suggests that thousands of Hispanic New Yorkers lost their votes, and that what should have been Freddy's convincing primary victory turned into a squeaker, and was cast under an unnecessary shadow as a result.

...The Politicker brings you some holiday call outrage (this is how New Yorkers celebrate our holidays, no?), having been forwarded an email from E.M. Prentiss: As a New Yorker, I'm am shocked by the latest faux pas by the Bloomberg campaign. Tonight, when Rosh Hoshana began at sundown and whatever night it is of Ramadan, I just received a call in a southern accent asking if he can count on my support on election day. My response was why? I knew better than to try and explain why tonight was not a good night to be making these calls. UPDATE: Bloomberg campaign spokesman Jordan Barowitz says "We stopped our calls before sundown (EST) last night." But Prentiss, who lives in Washington Heights, stands by her account; she checked her records (she was online at the time, sending email) and said the call came in between 8:00 and 8:20 p.m., and the caller asked whether "Mayor Bloomberg can count on your support."  read more »

Jerry Skurnik, who keeps better track of this stuff than anyone else I know, emailed over some bits of analysis of the primary vote that caught his eye.

Here they are:

Either Ferrer & Weiner carried every Assembly District but 1.

Field won 70 AD (barely) over Ferrer. That's her home district. (And two others. Jerry corrects here.)

Miller came in 2nd in only 3 ADs - 65 & 73 (in his Council District) and 50 (Williamsburg-Greenpoint).

Christopher Brodeur finished 2nd in 72 AD (Washington Heights). He received 1,024 votes out of 9,860 cast. Ferrer received 6,596.

Norman Siegel won 3 ADs: 39 (Jackson Hts-Corona), 52 (Brooklyn Heights), 57 (Ft. Greene).  read more »

Joe Hynes won 12 ADs -- John Sampson won 9.

Scott Stringer won 4 ADs. Lopez, Moskowitz, Perkins & Espaillat each won 2.

We're not always a big fan of the Daily News's front-page editorializing, but we thought they had it just right this morning.

"Transit Authority President Larry Reuter yesterday predicted it will take the TA three to five years - that's right, three to five years - to repair the fire damage that's shut the C line and cut A service by two-thirds. He's got to be kidding, or he's got to be fired."  read more »

But while the News was on it, where were the guys who are running for mayor? If you live in Washington Heights in particular, the crippling of the A/C line is a major disaster. You might as well be commuting from Westchester.

Miguel Martinez, who represents Washington Heights in the City Council, told us he was also puzzled by the absence of Messrs Bloomberg, Ferrer, et al at his neighborhood subway stations this morning, where some politicians might have been found comforting commuters and calling for a quick interim solution. Bloomberg spent today in Queens and Staten Island, two boroughs barely effected by the mess; Anthony gave a speech on the West Side; and Freddy's due in Lower Manhattan this afternoon. "Nobody was there," Martinez said. "If I was running for mayor, that would have been an issue that I would have jumped on."

It's safe to assume that Marc Racicot, the Montana-born chairman of the Republican National Committe  read more »

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