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Monday, May 20, 2024
Sunny. High 73 degrees.
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Upper West Side News
By Gus Saltonstall
The new tallest building on the Upper West Side officially completed construction of its top floor last week at a staggering 775 feet in the air.
The 69-story residential tower at 50 West 66th Street, developed by Extell and Tennor Holding, announced on Wednesday that the new building would be ready to open for tenants at the end of 2024. Extell also held a ceremony to celebrate the completion of the structural phase of the construction work: making it to the top story.
The building will hold 127 condominium units starting at $4.6 million. The residential address will also have a bowling alley, pickleball court, and sunset bar.
“With little new construction inventory on the Upper West Side, and lack of buildings that speak to the caliber of 50 West 66th Street, we have filled a void in the market that is clearly resonating with buyers,” said Gary Barnett, founder and chairman of Extell Development Company, in a news release.
The 50 West 66th Street address now takes the title as the tallest building on the Upper West Side from 200 Amsterdam Avenue.
The construction of the Extell tower on the Upper West Side took six years to complete, and involved multiple legal challenges from the Department of Buildings and local advocacy groups.
You can read more — HERE.
An Amish farmer commutes six-hours a day to operate his storefront on the Upper West Side, as first reported by the New York Post.
Millport Dairy, an Amish dairy farm that sells cheese, eggs, milk, butter, baked goods, and more, opened at 2583 Broadway, between West 97th and 98th streets, on May 1. It is the first Amish-owned store in New York City.
The shop is managed by John Stolzfoos, who had sold his goods at GrowNYC Greenmarkets for the last 18 years, before deciding to open a business on the Upper West Side.
Stolzfoos and his family live at their farm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, meaning that he’s got quite the journey to make it to West 97th Street.
Each day from Wednesday through Saturday, Stolzfoos, 58, takes off from Pennsylvania at around 3 a.m., using a hired driver since the Amish aren’t allowed to drive cars, to make it to the Upper West Side by 7 a.m. to open the store.
You can read more — HERE.
An “unusual squirrel” was spotted over the weekend in Central Park.
West Side Rag reader George Grumbach Jr. emailed in a photo asking if anybody could explain a dark-colored squirrel he saw near West 94th Street within the park that still had a typical brown tail.
![](https://www.westsiderag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image-5-1024x683.jpg)
“Here are two photos I took yesterday of an unusual squirrel — body darker than typical but with a rufous tail,” Grumbach Jr. wrote. “Taken around 94th Street inside the Park. Maybe one of your readers can explain.”
While we don’t have a full explanation, we can offer some information.
In 2021, Untapped New York published an article entitled — “The Mysterious Black Squirrels of NYC.”
“The darker color of the black squirrel is due to a recessive gene that causes abnormal pigmentation,” Untapped New York wrote. “This gene doesn’t usually appear in large populations, so the squirrels tend to be found in areas where the population stays relatively contained.”
A black squirrel is typically found in populations at a rate of about 1 in 10,000, according to the publication.
A New York Times reporter also dived into the subject of black squirrels in the five boroughs in a 1993 article headlined, “More Black Squirrels Are Sighted in State.” You can check out that article — HERE.
Neither of the above articles mentioned anything about a black squirrel having a brown tail, though.
If anybody has more of an explanation, please let us know in the comments.
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Re 50 W. 66th Street: with units priced beginning at $4.6 million, this building will work wonders in helping us solve our affordable housing crisis.
But rich people pay a lot of taxes and services.
But maybe the tax money it brings in will?
It has not ever happened yet??
127 units are a drop in the bucket of what NYC needs to be building but every new apartment (even the extremely expensive ones) helps alleviate our housing crisis! Plus the property taxes on these new units help pay for needed teachers, police and sanitation workers.
And the shadow it casts over Central Park is really cool, too.
True, they should be digging down into the earth instead of building up.
Bad enough that there is another super-tall luxury building further cementing Manhattan for the very wealthy. This one will further slow the M66 bus
Yes. the block was far less crammed when it housed a small post office, a small synagogue, and the armory which was being used by ABC. The new monster has snarled transportation and gorged on traffic lanes since it was started. Extel is not your friend.
Nonsense. Some of the poorest people in the entire world are currently living in Midtown Manhattan.
And 66th Street is not, and has never been, Midtown Manhattan.
Amazing discovery, congrats.
I saw the same squirrel. Have pics.
The black squirrels we see are actually melanistic gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis). Same species, but they have a recessive trait that causes the pigmentation difference. Being a recessive trait means that a black squirrel mating with another black squirrel will result in offspring that are also black. But a gray squirrel mating with a black squirrel would result in offspring that have, at best, a 50/50 chance of being black. This is based on the gene that controls the black pigment. The gray squirrel has a lot of variation in its tail color, even when it is just gray. You can often see grays with white or reddish, or brown pigmentation in the tail, along with the gray. Basically the same thing here with the melanistic gray squirrel. They can also have white, brown or gray tails. Different genes control different colorations in different parts of the body.
When I lived in Toronto 15 years ago, there were a lot of patchwork squirrels, with various mixtures of grey, brown and black. Looked like random mismatched outfits and quite jarring to see for the first time. Sure took them long enough to get here!
“We have filled a void in the market that is clearly resonating with buyers.” So, the apartments on West 66 Street will start at $4.6 million and the penthouse was already announced at $85 million. Yeah –” filling the void …” — only in someone’s head. I doubt those buyers will be stopping at the farmers’ market or anyplace else in the hood. Ridiculous. Shell corporations don’t eat. Or pay taxes either.
Who is Gary Barnett kidding?? Little new construction on the UWS? If you believe that I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn cheap! This building is nothing to praise. It was fought by the community for years. It greatly exceeds the zoning law height limits for new building in the Lincoln Square district as Barnett “got around the law,” something developers do as often as we let them!!
This building is a “Let them eat cake” embarrassment. It has something like 200 feet of empty space within which they deemed as “mechanical space” to prop up the height for “better” views meaning more $$$$. No one in the meetings at the Board of Standards & Appeals could find any justification for those 200 empty feet. An enormous building tower like on BILLIONAIRE”S ROW with only 127 apartments!!! My small 6 story has 72!! Laughing in the face of anyone in government who claims we need “affordable housing” all the way to the bank! What has happened to this city folks??
The building was never in violation of “zoning height limits for new buildings”. Like it or not the zoning laws at the time referred to the number of floors, NOT the height of each floor or the overall height of the building. The building was constructed within the designated number of allowable floors.
Eventually, however, the developer did agree to reduce the height somewhat as a goodwill gesture to the neighborhood.
Furthermore, the “community” did not fight this building. True, some self-appointed community leaders were against it but many people supported its construction.
I personally think it’s a beautiful building that will enhance the quality of the neighborhood, not to mention provide a synagogue on the ground level.
The UWS is not building much new housing and has actually lost units to brownstone conversions (which NIMBYs don’t seem to care about…)
https://www.thecity.nyc/2023/08/24/100k-apartments-lost-to-house-conversions/
The 200 ft of empty space are a result of the existing zoning! If the developer was allowed to build more units in that space and achieve the same height they surely would. These loud but unrepresentative ‘community’ organizations that fight housing construction do much more harm than good.
UWS Dad,
There is housing lost as buildings are transformed into luxury buildings or torn down for new luxury development.
Landlords hold apartments vacant for years in some cases.
But elected officials don’t want to acknowledge all that is lost in this way. And mostly they’ve not tried to save it.
And here is another situation/example.
.https://w42st.com/post/demolition-by-neglect-hells-kitchen-building-faces-controversial-tear-down-amid-community-outcry/
BTW not seeing that it is useful to attack strangers as NIMBY if perhaps they don’t share our views 100% ….
Sure there are many ways to take housing supply off the market and they all help increase market rents & hurt those who are least able to afford rent as it is.
In the example in that link, why is a new 7-8 story building so offensive? Hells Kitchen is well served by transit and right next to a ton of jobs in midtown but the zoning artificially limits what can be built.
One illustration of the huge change on the West Side.
Filmmaker/actor/comedian Jordan Peele (born in 1979) grew up on the Upper West Side, lived in a small apartment in a pre-war building with his mother who was a teacher.
Now that would be impossible – a teacher could never afford an apartment
It’s biracial
Wonderful to hear that Milport Dairy has opened. Try the Amish pickles as well as eggs, butter ,cheese, well anything!
So fresh and good. Have bought from him for those 18years.
We need more new construction and tall towers on the UWS.
We can solve the affordable housing crisis by (a) eliminating rent control and (b) offering rent stabilized units only to those employed in lower paying, socially essential professions such as teachers, caregivers, etc. Why a banker or tech worker should be able to obtain a rent-stabilized apartment is beyond me.
Ugliest architecture ever. Anyone who would live there has zero taste.
The super-tall, super-skinny buildings are an intrusive affront to us nonwealthy, who actually reside here. “Developers” are always thinking of projects for lucrative investing or warehousing their mistresses. Reduce all the tall eyesore buildings by 50 floors. In Midtown et al. areas, they’ll still bring in a mint.
We need more black squirrels and fewer skyscrapers.
Up to a quarter million birds die annually from crashing into New York City’s buildings.
Estimates of the number of birds that die from window collisions in the United States range from 100 million to 1 billion each year.
Maybe implementing solutions in safeguarding our Avian friends from building strikes, with bird friendly structures, precede the “noble” distinction of size and presence.
– Just a callous thought.
These two buildings, 50 W. 66th and 200 Amsterdam, are abominations in this neighborhood, They are eyesores, completely out of place, ruin the views for everyone else, and just encourage more skyscrapers being built. And in one case one of the buildings was illegally built so high. Do y’all really want Lincoln Square to be midtown north? Because that’s what’s happening – no reason to celebrate that. The people who live in these buildings are not normal NY’ers. They are often shell companies purchasing the apts representing foreign billionaires who need a tax shelter. These people don’t live and work here, they don’t really contribute to the economy of the city. and the builders get huge tax breaks.
NYC needs to focus on housing for real people, the middle and working class. When only multi-multi millionaires and billionaires live here, you’ll never be able to afford anything in a store anymore in this neighborhood. There will be drugstores, pot stores, $40 hamburgers, $30 pizza pies and super-expensive markets to shop at.