Crane collapse nabe struggling to rebound

Developer Ziel Feldman may have stepped in last year to buy the note on the stalled Turtle Bay construction site at 303 East 51st Street, where a 2008 crane collapse killed seven people, but the immediate surrounding neighborhood is looking like it needs its own cash infusion in the aftermath of the tragedy. According to the Post, nine businesses around the site — near Second Avenue, between 50th and 51st streets — have become “ghostly museums” as a result of the crash. City Council member Jessica Lappin, who lives in the area, called the retail strip “moribund” and “just depressing.” Meanwhile, the construction site at the center of it all hasn’t been a source of much optimism, either. Original developer James Kennelly defaulted on his $110 million mortgage, the owner of the crane company implicated in the collapse was convicted of bribery, and Feldman’s HFZ Capital Group closed on the note to the 19-floor condo shell for $40 million in April. [Post]