Financial District

After a lengthy legal fight, ravenous hotel developer Sam Chang has apparently given up his plan to tear down the old Pussycat Lounge at 96 Greenwich Street.

Mr. Chang has agreed to sell the ancient, circa-1799 building to Pussycat owner Robert Kremer for $2.5 million, according to city records -- that's $1 million less than Mr. Chang paid for it in 2005.  read more »

Ravenous hotel developer Sam Chang continues to devour buildings in the Financial District.

Just a month ago, 99 Washington Street, site of Mr. Chang's forthcoming 350-room Holiday Inn, was still standing--albeit shrouded in a death-black curtain (pictured left).Over the past several weeks, crews have dismantled almost the entire building (right).

Next up to come down: 50 Trinity Place, just one block away, site of an unnamed 186-room McSam hotel. (The demolition permit was issued Jan. 12.)

Both hotels are scheduled for Mid 2009 opening.

The Financial District has been in the news a lot this week:

• First, Merrill Lynch hinted strongly that the firm would move from there to midtown.
• We wondered what that would do to the Hotel Pennsylvania.
• The Downtown Alliance had a lot to say on the move, too.
• Israel's biggest builder bought the building at 87 Chambers, probably to build a hotel.
• And then Michael Shvo announced today he'd start selling the District's newest condos early next month.
• We'll be watching...

And so will others. The Observer's print edition on Wednesday had a story by Lysandra Ohrstrom on the city's plans to install 3,000 surveillance cameras below Canal Street.

We just got an email from Shvo, the marketing firm run by the redoubtable Michael Shvo, to say that the condos inside the future W New York Downtown will go on sale Nov. 7.

The Observer broke the news in March of Mr. Shvo's work on the tower at 123 Washington Street, which is being developed by Joseph Moinian. The tower will include 222 condos and 217 hotel rooms.

Shvo is also marketing the condos at 20 Pine The Collection, another financial district creation that's helping change the neighborhood, for better or for worse.

The full flowering of the financial district’s success since Sept. 11, 2001, can be smelt within the Broad Street Hermès store, which had its first full day Friday.

To be amongst its $1,250 t-shirts, $520 belts, $5,750 leather jackets and $810 handbags is to feel the full braggadocio of capitalism in Manhattan—Power! Money! Stephen Schwarzman!—and it felt pretty good, though a bit disquieting. After all, the prices!  read more »