The other day I returned to my old neighborhood, the Upper East Side, and was pleasantly surprised to see a new store, only two weeks old, that belonged to the luxury cosmetics and soap company Sabon, its ninth store in Manhattan, at 1276 Lexington Avenue, a few feet south of the subway at 86th Street. he store has three other locations outside Manhattan, including in Garden City, N.Y., and in Chicago and Schaumburg, I.L. Although it looks in the main like most of the other Sabon outlets in the city, to me it is easily the loveliest of all. It is not the rustic feel of the two tones of woods, paler and rougher-hewn at the summit, dark and smooth along the rest of the street-front, that makes it so appealing, nor the sweet smell of lavender and patchouli rising amid the general foetor of this stretch of Lexington Avenue.
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From left: 429 East 75th Street before its redevelopment and a rendering of it today. Center, Charles Bendit, co-CEO of Taconic.

An unnamed affiliate of the Hospital for Special Surgery has made an all-cash purchase for a medical office building at 429 East 75th Street between York and First avenues. The sellers, Taconic Partners and ABR Partners purchased the property, then a parking garage, in 2006 and transformed it into a 30,000-square-foot medical facility. Charles Bendit, the co-CEO of Taconic, said that the property’s proximity to other medical institutions, such as Lenox Hill Hospital at 100 East 77th Street between Lexington and Park avenues, and Cornell University Hospital at 525 East 68th Street near York Avenue, influenced his decision to develop the medical use building there. The sellers were represented by Paul Wexler of Corcoran Wexler. TRD [more]

The competitive pool for a partnership with cash-strapped Lenox Hill
Hospital shrunk to one yesterday, when NYU Langone Medical Center
withdrew from negotiations, leaving only North Shore-Long Island
Jewish Health System in the running. NYU had been seeking a complete merger
with Lenox Hill, which would have removed control from the bulk of
Lenox Hill’s current administrators, while promoting many Lenox Hill
clinical department heads, but Lenox Hill declined to consider such an arrangement.
North Shore-LIJ’s proposal, which would affiliate the two facilities
while leaving Lenox Hill administrators in place, would not save the
hospital as much money. Lenox Hill had a $20 million operating loss last year. Nearby Mount Sinai Hospital had also expressed interest in a
merger with Lenox Hill but was never invited to submit a proposal
[Crain's]