Here are some bite-sized bits of news for Upper West Siders.
Chai Urgent Care has leased a space at 2345 Broadway, between 85th and 86th streets, @TradedNY reports. Chai has locations in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. From the chain’s website, it appears that this will be its second Manhattan location. Chai can also be found at 1113 York Ave on the Upper East Side.
Advertisement
Sales launched on Monday at new development 250 West 96th Street, Robb Report first announced. The building, which we last wrote about here, also goes by 96+Broadway, and prices range from $1.395 million for a one-bedroom measuring 734 square feet to $5.625 million for a three-bedroom 2,221 square feet.
The Central Park Conservancy and Jazzmobile have announced that Great Jazz on the Great Hill will return on Saturday, August 13 from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. “The event features a lineup of world-renowned jazz performers for New Yorkers, tourists, and visitors of all ages to enjoy while lounging or swing dancing in Central Park. The event is weather permitting, and tickets are NOT required. No refreshments will be sold during the event.” The Great Hill can be accessed through entrance located at 106th Street and Central Park West. View it on a map here, and here’s more info about the event.
A new playground is being built at P.S. 165 Robert E. Simon, located at 234 West 109th Street. We found out when one of our readers — who asked us to refer to him as “Concerned and upset lifelong Upper West Sider” (no problem) — contacted us on July 30 when he saw the playground’s four trees being cut down. “Workers have just cut down beautiful trees that have stood for MANY years in the school playground at 109th between Broadway and Amsterdam,” he wrote to us at just past noon. Someone from Friends of PS 165, the school’s PTA, told us that the space is being renovated and “This has been a planned project for a while now that got stalled for COVID. Overall it will be a great improvement of what’s there. It will still be a playground.”
But where’s the news about the chicken nuggets??
The cutting down of these 40 year old healthy trees is absolutely disgusting. At least 4 of these trees were not in the way of the main space at all and could have easily been built around. Additionally, the DOE and PS165 didn’t give the community any notice, no signs, at all about their plans. A lot of the neighbors would have protested had we known what they planned. We have asked to see the permit for the cutting down of these trees. We cannot fathom what developer would think that leaving children in the full sunlight without any shade is a better option. These were native trees that housed birds and bugs that were good for the environment. Since PS165 has been under construction for over 10 years, it’s clear the DOE, and the NYC School Construction Authority doesn’t care about the public school kids or the community its school is in. Shame on them all.
Totally agree. We saw trees senselessly cut down outside our building on 95th and Columbus as part of the Dwight School makeover. NYC needs more green, not less.
“didn’t give the community any notice, no signs, at all about their plans. A lot of the neighbors would have protested had we known what they planned.”
I think you just answered your question about why they didn’t give notice.
I agree. I would be interested what individual made the dumb decision to cut down these beautiful, thriving trees.
I’m trying to get to the bottom of it. A few of us neighbors met with representatives from Councilmember Sean Abreu’s office today and they were also perplexed as to why this happened. They are going to investigate who made the decision and whether or not it was legal and if a permit was approved. It would help us to find out more if anyone else who is angry/concerned would write to his office, the DOE-specifically the NYC School Construction Authority, and the Community Board 7.
Until lawsuits and jail time are the end-result of such heinous decision-making, flora-and-fauna destruction and desecration will continue unabated in New York City and around the globe.
We can barely get the average person on the street to care about the lives of stray cats, dogs, kittens and puppies (much less human homelessness and poverty)….imagine how starved of oxygen we will have to be as a planet for us to finally get a clue how interdependent we all are whether it has leaves, roots, fur, scales, legs, paws, hooves, claws or fins. If it lives, it deserves to be left in peace to grow and multiply. Who are the CRIMINALS who did this? Find them, sue them or arrest them and throw them in jail for their ignorance and despicable malfeasance.
Trees are fungible. We miss the old ones but we plant new ones. Playground designs always include new trees, like this one for example of another playground for the same school a few years ago. Looks like at least a dozen trees were planted. And new trees grow pretty fast, about 15 percent a year when they’re young:
https://ms-my.facebook.com/FriendsOfPS165/posts/944007929317579
Steve, there are no residential buildings right next to this park so posting this as an example is moot. And some of us don’t have another 40 years left to wait to watch these trees grow to the height they were at when chopped down.
What’s next to it doesn’t make any difference. And it doesn’t take 40 years for trees to grow, look it up. You’ll have mature trees in ten years. Plus it’s between buildings, there’s a lot of shade already. Look at all that shade in the picture.
Let’s hear it for the new playground! New playground and new trees > old playground and old trees. New trees won’t fall on you either.
We had two 50 year old tree pit trees cut down on 90th between CPW and Columbus “by accident”. Until someone stumbles on collating these events into uncovering the incompetence and then digs deep and exposes it it continues in secret. Once it’s finally uncovered you reach the next step: no one in charge cares or does their job or has the discernment to do it thoughtfully. It’s amazing when anything is accomplished or remediated.