Citi-Spaces yesterday closed one of its four offices, according to
company founder Israel Horowitz, who squelched pervasive rumors that
the 60-agent company is folding. “I never thought of closing,” Horowitz said, adding that he, too, has
heard rumors of the company’s shuttering from agents interviewing with
the residential sales and rentals brokerage. The perception is so
widespread, he said, that four different firms have approached him in
recent months with offers to buy or merge with Citi-Spaces. “I was considering it, but a merger didn’t make sense,” he said. “What
made sense was to get rid of the office that was causing the headaches.” That office was Citi-Spaces’ East Village branch at 174 Second Avenue,
between 11th and 12th streets. The 27-agent storefront branch opened
eight months ago, just as the city was descending into the financial
turmoil, at a rent reflecting the previous hot market, he said. [more]

Four years after allowing luxury condos to be built on the
Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfront, the city has yet to complete
1,345
affordable housing units that were promised at the time of rezoning.
Only one affordable building on Herbert Street with 14 units is under
construction, and more than 2,700 people have requested applications
for the units. Seth Donlin, a spokesperson
for the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said that
the delay
is due to numerous unforeseen obstacles, including problems finding a
new location
for a sludge tank that occupies one of the proposed building sites.
Evan Theis, a candidate for
City Council, said this is just another failure on the city’s part to
build
city-owned and managed affordable units on city-owned lots.

Renters in the outer boroughs who were previously priced out of
Manhattan are moving back as prices fall. For just $100 more a month, a
publicist left his Greenpoint apartment for a Lower East Side unit
(although it is half the size of his old Brooklyn home), and an editor
left Sunset Park for Midtown, receiving a month of free rent. In the
first three months of the year, one-bedroom rents in Manhattan fell 6.7
percent compared to the previous year, while Brooklyn one-bedrooms saw
rents drop 3.2 percent, according to Citi Habitats and Ideal Properties
Group. Only 9 percent of renters moving to Brooklyn were from Manhattan
during the first three months of the year, while nearly a quarter of
renters migrated from Manhattan to Brooklyn during the same time last
year, according to Ideal.
[more]

Community Board 1 voted in favor
of a rezoning to cap building heights of new developments in Williamsburg
and Greenpoint. The rezoning would limit new buildings on narrow
residential streets to 50 feet, and 70 feet on wider residential
streets. The board’s vote is the first step in the rezoning’s
eight-month land-use review process. The rezoning was unveiled last
fall by the Department of City Planning, and if approved, will affect
175 blocks between Clay and Maujer streets. [more]