orchard street
Construction Turns Orchard Block Into 'Ghost Town'
What used to be a Lower East Side destination has become a no-man’s land of rats, dirty streets and prolonged high-rise construction projects.
“People look down here and see a ghost town,” said a man who works on the block of Orchard Street just south of Houston. “And they just keep walking.”
The block had been a quintessential part of the reincarnated neighborhood. Its designer fashion boutiques, old-world fabric store, discount retailers, bars and restaurants reflected the gentrifying of the neighborhood at a tolerable pace. On Sundays, the street closed to cars to create a pedestrian mall, with many of the stores setting up displays in the middle of the street. In the summer, the block hosted the occasional food festival or local band.
But much of the sound on the block the past three years has been the noise from the construction of Jason Pomeranc’s 19-story boutique hotel at 200 Allen Street (the back of which sits on the west side of Orchard); and of developer Morris Platt’s 26-story condominium almost directly across from the hotel on the west side at 180 Orchard Street. More than three years ago, both developers bought up several one-story commercial buildings and razed those to make way for their projects. read more »
