Author Archives: Editor

It’s a boom with a view

Buyers have returned, bidding wars are raging, and competition is fierce to nab the perfect NYC pad

By MAX GROSS/ New York POST

Late last month, the sales team at 422 W. 20th St., the Brodsky Organization’s new condo building, arrived early to set up for its first open house.

It was Saturday morning at about 8 a.m., and the Corcoran Sunshine Marketing brokers had sunny expectations for this 37-unit building, with units ranging from $670,000 one-bedrooms up to $2.095 million three-bedrooms.

It turns out their best expectations might have been too low. Prospective buyers were lined up outside. By the time they opened their doors at 11:30, 80 people were waiting. More than 700 people came through over the weekend. As of last week, 75 percent of the building was in contract.

Do our eyes deceive us, or is the market strong again?

{SNIP}

The Apex Condominiums had a great two-bedroom layout.

The Apex Condominiums had a great two-bedroom layout.

Guy Soreq, a buyer from Tel Aviv who is starting the MBA program at Columbia in the fall, had never set foot in New York City before he began searching for an apartment in Harlem.

But he did enough homework to make his future professors proud.

“I wanted to maintain walking distance from Columbia, so I started to go over the works and did an Excel sheet that calculated the ups and downs [of nearby properties],” Soreq says.

He put size, proximity, taxes and monthly service fees into his spreadsheet and ranked each category with a point system: “It was less a gut feeling, more of a numbers thing.”

Two days after coming to New York to look at the properties that made the cut, Soreq purchased a one-bedroom for approximately $500,000 at the Apex condo building with broker Khadeejah Johnson of the Marketing Directors.

Foreign buyers — like Soreq — are one of the major drivers of the market. CONTINUE READING >>>

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It’s Time for Harlem’s Battle of the Bars!

Harlem Park to Park presents Harlem Battle of the Bars

April 23rd to May 7th

Sponsored by Grey Goose

Harlem Park to Park will be presenting Harlem Battle of the Bars from April 23rd – May 7th. Participating bars will battle to create the best Grey Goose Cherry Noir cocktail. With 10 Harlem Park to Park bars and restaurants participating, guest can enjoy the signature cocktail and cast their vote for their favorite cocktail. Voters will also be entered in a raffle to have a chance to win prizes from other Harlem Park to Park businesses.

Participating restaurants and bars include Red Rooster, Sylvia’s Restaurant, Melba’s Restaurant, Chocolat Restaurant and Lounge, and Harlem Tavern. Native, Moca Lounge, Corner Social, Harlem Vintage, and 67 Orange Street will also be participating in the event. Sponsored by Grey Goose Vodka, the two week event will be sure to showcase Harlem’s finest mixologists.

To vote, be sure to visit Harlem Park to Park’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/harlemparktopark. Here you will be able to cast your votes and learn more about other featured events.

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CHECK OUT JAZZ BY THE RIVERSIDE!

AZIZA MILLER PERFORMS AT JAZZ BY THE RIVERSIDE

Upcoming: 

Aziza Miller

Jazz By The Riverside

 Friday, April 20

$10

Call 914 512 5395 to order or CLICK HERE!

Aziza Miller Ten years ago, Linda Williams, best known in music circles for her 5 _ years playing and conducting for Natalie Cole, had an epiphany: it was time for a change – time for a new name, a new direction, a new life.

Aziza, the performer, the composer/lyricist, the complete artist was born. After her Hollywood period in which she composed the melody for Miss Cole’s “La Costa”, a contemporary standard, then wrote and recorded “City Living”, her debut album on Clive Davis’ Arista Records, Aziza turned to the daunting task of raising her son Brandon. She spent years happily shaping her young man’s life until he graduated with an Aerospace Engineering degree from U.S.C. and became Lt. Brandon Miller, pilot, U.S. Navy. Finding herself in the proverbial “empty nest”, Aziza brought out her yellow writing pad and began chronicling her thought and feelings. Somewhat to her amazement, the poet in her emerged! Reams and reams of poetry, song lyrics and topical statements poured out of her busy pen. Marrying those words to melody had always been her forte, so the composer in her got to work setting lyric to melody. Watching Aziza perform we sense the organic nature of her songwriting. Everything becomes a part of her work – a trip on the subway, a walk through the neighborhood, a fantasy about the man she will love, a statement about the man she will no longer love, her paean to the great ladies of jazz, and yes her exhortation to all the ladies to strut their divalicious ways – it all sums up her positive take on life. Watching her audiences nod their heads in agreement as she weaves her way through the types of relationships “out there” today, one gets the sense that she is talking for them, saying the things they think but can’t really express. She is becoming their voice, their spokesperson in a world that doesn’t always make sense. Her audience knows she makes sense to them.

JAZZ BY THE RIVERSIDE

Riverside Church

10th Tower

91 Claremont Avenue

Between 121 & 122 Claremont Avenue

(One block over west of Broadway)

New York, NY 10027

Dates:

Friday, April 20, 2012 @ 8:00 pm

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ArtCrawl Harlem™’s Hispanic Showcase Is Here!


 

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Access to the Country and to Croissants

via Joyce Cohen/ The New York Times “THE HUNT”

The Apex Condominiums had a great two-bedroom layout.

Hervé and Dacotah Rousseau instantly liked the Apex Condominiums on Frederick Douglass Boulevard.  READ THE FULL STORY >>>

 

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Need Wine for your Picnic in the Park?

Check out Harlem Vintage

Wine store owners Eric Woods and Jai Jai Greenfield are spreading their love of wine in New York’s famed Harlem neighborhood.

 

By Robyn Moreno

 

After seven years of enjoying Harlem’s flourishing restaurant scene, but still finding himself unable to buy a decent bottle of wine in his neighborhood, Eric Woods decided to take matters into his own hands. Where Manhattan may have a wine store every five or six blocks, there wasn’t one near Woods for over forty blocks. “I was spending way too much time across town in Sherry-Lehmann’s,” says Woods. “As a consumer, it was a challenge to find and purchase wine in Harlem that I wanted to drink.”

 

So the ad exec-by-day and wineenthusiast-by-night teamed up with college pal Jai Jai Greenfield and together they decided to open up Harlem Vintage Wine Store, the area’s first boutique vintner. Thus began a two-year project that included creating an extensive business plan, dealing with tricky zoning laws, and tasting enough wine to last a lifetime.

 

“We carry up to 300 different labels,” explains Greenfield. “Tasting and deciding what wine people wanted to buy was an onerous endeavor. “But,” she adds with a smile, “we didn’t complain too much.”

 

Their hard work bore fruit this past October when the long-awaited store opened its doors on Frederick Douglas Avenue and 120th Street. “People were so ready for us,” recalls Woods. “We had a sign in the window that read ‘Wine Store Coming’ and people kept peeking in asking ‘When are you opening?’” READ MORE >>>

 

2235 Frederick Douglass Blvd.

at 121 Street

Harlem, NY 10027

CALL: 212-866-9463

 Open 7 Days a Week

Monday – Saturday 11am-10pm

Sunday 12pm-9pm

10% Case Discount

!

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It’s Harlem Restaurant Week!

Where are You eating??!

Click to Enlarge

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The Gohan Society presents ‘Sake Comes to Harlem’

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A New Harlem: A New Renaissance

 

 

By Christy Smith-Sloman

 Today’s Harlem has a celebrity chef whipping up gourmet cornbread for President Barack Obama, a new Starwood Hotel featuring loft-style rooms geared toward an urban tech-savvy clientele, a newly opened 174,000-square-foot Target big-box store that carries everything from Spanish-language greeting cards to multicultural dolls to locally-produced Southern food. There’s even an intimate speakeasy tucked away on Frederick Douglass Boulevard offering up live jazz from up and coming local musicians and staffed with aspiring models serving up couture cocktails.

Harlem continues to be one of the most recognizable neighborhoods in the world. During the much romanticized Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, the explosion of nightlife was so legendary we’re still talking about it 90 years later.

Harlem extends from the East River West to the Hudson River between 155th and 96th streets and is comprised of seven neighborhoods: Hamilton Heights, Mount Morris Park, Manhanttanville, Strivers Row, Astor Row, Morris Jumel Landmark District and East Harlem.

READ MORE >>>

 

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Soul Food Alive and Well in Harlem, Say Area Restaurateurs

via DNAinfo

HARLEM—It wasn’t long ago that it looked like soul food in Harlem was in trouble. Stalwarts like M&G’s Diner, Copeland’s and Louise’s all shut down within a year or so of one another.

Some blamed a gentrifying Harlem, others thought a new awareness and focus on health issues like high blood pressure and obesity led to the decline.

But soul food is now alive and well in Harlem thanks to its connection to the African-American culture that makes Harlem a top tourist destination. Along the way, some restaurants have developed their own take on soul food and some of the stalwarts have changed with the times.

“Restaurants like Red Rooster have reinterpreted soul food so we now have more options. Before, you only had traditional options like fried chicken and fried chicken with fried chicken,” said Nikoa Evans-Hendricks, a founder of Harlem Park to Park, a business alliance that includes several restaurants that cook soul food or a variation thereof.

At celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson’s restaurant — named after a famous Harlem speakeasy— he serves many southern classics with a twist. The fried chicken is fried yard bird with a white mace gravy. The macaroni and cheese is made with Gouda cheese. There’s cornbread but you can get it with tomato jam. It’s his take on comfort food.

“They are taking food that is traditional to us and approaching it differently,” said Nikoa-Evans.

READ MORE >>>

 

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