SoHo, long one of the premier shopping areas in the city, is being transformed by invaders grabbing storefronts. There is Orior, a furniture maker from Northern Ireland. Galia Lahav, a haute couture and bridal fashion brand from Israel. TOTEME, a Swedish apparel company, as well as Thuma, a San Francisco mattress company, have established New York beachheads as well. As a result, retail occupancy in SoHo is now 84%, higher than before the pandemic. “There is an international hunger and curiosity about the neighborhood,” said Erin Piscopink, executive director of the SoHo Broadway Initiative b ..read more

The CITY partners with Open Campus on coverage of the City University of New York. Hunter College sophomore Molly Gardiner pays one of the lowest rates for a dorm room in New York City — just $7,500 a year for a single room at the Brookdale dormitories. An out-of-state student from New Jersey, Gardiner says she turned to Hunter after Boston University proved too expensive, and the affordable housing it offered her in Manhattan was a big part of the appeal. “I feel like if it wasn’t this, I don’t know what I would’ve done,” she told THE CITY. But at the end of the next academic year, Gardiner ..read more

Members of a Manhattan community board are readying to vote on measures that would exclude advocacy group staff or board members from serving in key positions or voting on their issues of interest — steps aimed squarely at the board’s new chair and other members affiliated with a pro-housing development organization.  The proposal, expected to be considered at Community Board 5’s meeting Thursday night as a resolution, would prohibit any employee, board member or lobbyist of any advocacy group or 501(c)(4) organization from voting on any matter related to their group’s stated purpose.&nb ..read more

On any given day, children play in the dirt area at the center of Bennett Park in Washington Heights, happily digging away. Rachel Graham Kagan’s 2-year-old daughter is often among them, though possibly not for much longer —  if the Parks Department moves forward with plans to replace part of the dirt section with a multipurpose artificial turf field. “If they actually put this artificial turf in, my daughter is not going to be playing on it,” said Kagan, who grew up in the neighborhood. To some neighbors, the dust bowl is an eye sore and turf will be a welcome change. But Kagan is one o ..read more

Congestion pricing is a go — with a $15 once-a-day toll for most motorists driving into the most traffic-clogged parts of Manhattan. The MTA board on Wednesday gave the green light to how much drivers will have to pay as soon as June as part of the first-in-the-nation congestion pricing program that will toll vehicles going south of 60th Street. State lawmakers and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo initially approved the Central Business District Tolling Program in 2019 with hopes of generating $15 billion for upkeep and expansion of the transit system and to reduce by 100,000 the number of vehicles dri ..read more

An e-bike charging hub slated to replace an abandoned newsstand outside City Hall was rejected by Manhattan Community Board 1 on Tuesday night, in an advisory vote that will not brake the federally funded project.  The charging hub pilot will allow e-bike users to safely drop off and charge their batteries for up to six hours for a full recharge. The planned facility will also include a rest stop for delivery workers for bike tune-ups and an information booth, staffed by the Brooklyn-based Workers Justice Project, ready to inform them about their rights on the job.  The defunct news ..read more

Hosts Chrissy, Katie and Harry talk subway scares and safety, and Politico New York health care reporter Maya Kaufman breaks down her reporting on Beth Israel transferring out seriously ill ER patients and much more. https://feeds.fireside.fm/faqnyc/rss?h If you like what you’re hearing, please spread the word, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever podcasts are found. THE CITY is a nonprofit newsroom that serves the people of New York. Sign up for our SCOOP newsletter and get exclusive stories, helpful tips, a guide to low-cost events, and everythin ..read more

Tensions have come to a boil at a prominent Manhattan community board where several key members resigned this week, citing rapid change and “special interest” influence. Two members of Manhattan Community Board 5 — the influential advisory group whose district includes Penn Station, Times Square and several major zoning battles — stepped down, including Chair Nicholas Athanail and the head of the Land Use and Landmarks committees, Layla Law-Gisiko. In her resignation letter, obtained by THE CITY, Law-Gisiko said the board had moved in recent years “towards schism and lack of collegiality.” “T ..read more

On a sunny day back in June, Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand stood alongside Mayor Eric Adams and a gaggle of government officials outside the Baruch Houses on the Lower East Side to announce $25 million in federal funds to build e-bike charging stations at dozens of New York City Housing Authority developments.  Action was urgent, speaker after speaker said, following a deadly fire caused by an exploding lithium-ion battery at an e-bike shop in Chinatown days earlier, which killed four tenants. “I am announcing right now that we have procured a grant that NYCHA will get $25 m ..read more

A fire that ripped through a Harlem building Friday was started by a lithium-ion battery charging in an apartment shared by six delivery workers, according to new information from the Fire Department. Two of the six men were at home when the fire began, though FDNY didn’t know how many batteries were charging in their third-floor apartment, located in a six-story building on St Nicholas Place. Journalist Fazil Khan, 27, who lived on the fourth floor, died in the fire, and 22 others were injured. Khan was an education reporter for The Hechinger Report and had contributed to THE CITY. Before th ..read more