Tag Archives: Armonk NY

Armonk NY

Mold Problem Dogs Jersey Shore | Armonk NY Homes

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Mold is a familiar problem in homes, traceable to ordinary water sources such as a damp basement, plumbing problems, or roof or window leaks. But Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge inundation was a whole different scale of water intrusion — and, according to the Asbury Park Press, it left behind a whole different scale of mold problem (“Sandy left Shore properties with a massive mold problem,” by Todd B. Bates and Jean Mikle).

“Superstorm Sandy flooded tens of thousands of New Jersey homes, businesses and schools,” the paper reports, “and longtime home inspectors say the state’s mold problem is the biggest they’ve ever seen.”

With whole stretches of the barrier islands closed to residents and contractors alike after the storm, homes sat wet for weeks or even months, giving mold an uncontested hold (see “Sandy Aftermath: Jersey Shore Struggles with Shattered Infrastructure,” Coastal Connection 11/14/2012).

“Many people tried to get rid of mold on their own or hired professionals or other contractors to clean up. But many people did not have the knowledge, tools, or equipment to properly remove mold, which frequently returned,” reports the Asbury Park Press. “Mold also resurfaced after some contractors completed their work. And some contractors vastly overcharged homeowners. Moreover, many people still don’t know they have a mold contamination problem, according to experts.”

 

 

 

http://www.jlconline.com/mold/

Brazil tops list of non-US home shoppers in Miami | Armonk Homes

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House hunters from Brazil were second only to the U.S. among those searching for properties on Miamire.com in August, according to the 30,000-member Miami Association of Realtors (MIAMI).

France, which has held the top spot twice this year, fell to eighth. Other countries rounding out the top 10 sources of international traffic were Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Russia, Malaysia, Spain and the United Kingdom.

MIAMI has reached out extensively to Brazilian agents and buyers since 1996, the trade group said. MIAMI is the ambassador association for the National Association of Realtors to Brazil’s SECOVI-SP real estate conference and in August signed an agreement with the another real estate group in Brazil, the Balneario Camboriu Association (ACIBC), to share listings.

Source: Miami Association of Realtors

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/wire/brazil-tops-list-of-non-u-s-home-shoppers-in-miami/#sthash.nXBIF6oA.dpuf

Zaha Hadid’s Wild Miami Tower Will Have Normal Kitchens | Armonk NY Homes

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Zaha Hadid’s swoopy, otherworldly One Thousand Museum condo tower in downtown Miami will have – gasp! – normal kitchens, according to a new sales brochure put out on the project’s website. (h/t: BuzzBuzzHome) They will be really nice normal kitchens of course, with appliances that hide behind fancy shmancy cabinetry by Italian kitchen firm GattoCucina, but normal kitchens nonetheless. Check out the kitchen, above, and a few detail renderings of the building’s exterior we found lying around the web that haven’t been seen much, after the jump.

 

Armonk memorial brings out ‘silly season’ politics | Armonk Homes

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It’s been said that all politics is local. Here’s a corollary: All local politics is personal, especially at election time.

Such appears to be the case in the Town of North Castle.

You would think that politics would have nothing to do with honoring the memory of a beloved citizen, a woman who served on the Town Board for more than three decades and by all accounts personified the virtue of civic mindedness.

Becky Kittredge, who died Aug. 26 at the age of 69, was instrumental in getting the town recreation center built. She was a founder of the public library and was a devoted member of the historical society.

Machiavellian-style mischief does not readily come to mind upon consideration of the fact that Kittredge was instrumental in getting the hamlet of Armonk recognized, of all things, as the hometown of Frosty the Snowman.

A Democrat, Kittredge was born in North Castle. She knew everybody and apparently offended no one.

So once again, given her universal acclaim, it’s hard to fathom that Kittredge could be posthumously dragged into a partisan arena.

But that’s precisely what happened — and it has caused a huge outcry in this town of 11,840. And like all partisan disputes, it’s the “other guys” who are to blame.

From interviews and emails, it’s at least clear that the controversy centers on a split decision by the Town Board to not broadcast Kittredge’s memorial service on the town’s public service channel, NCTV. The service was held Friday on the steps of Town Hall.

The board’s decision arrived after an informal discussion and polling conducted through email by Anne Curran, the Democratic town clerk.

Against the broadcast were three Republicans — town Supervisor Howard Arden and Councilman John Cronin and Councilwoman Diane DiDonato Roth. Their reasons included the cost of paying for a videographer and an unelaborated feeling that broadcasting the service was somehow inappropriate.

However, Councilmen Stephen D’Angelo, a Republican, and Michael Schiliro, the board’s sole Democrat, were in favor of the broadcast.

 

Phil Reisman: North Castle memorial brings out ‘silly season’ politics (video) | The Journal News | LoHud.com | lohud.com.

Building and measuring the social world | Armonk Realtor

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Tamara Mendelsohn leads marketing for Eventbrite with a focus on customer acquisition, retention and branding.

As an expert on e-commerce technology, multichannel retail, and trends in how consumers integrate technology into shopping, Mendelsohn has authored research reports and worked with both retailers and technology vendors to help them shape their strategies.

Hear what Mendelsohn has to say about “Building and measuring the social world.”

“Building and measuring the social world” (2:36).

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/09/03/building-and-measuring-the-social-world-video/#sthash.xb2FBmHq.dpuf

 

 

Building and measuring the social world [VIDEO] | Inman News.

Westchester’s Bee-Line Buses Begin Fall Schedule Monday | Armonk Real Estate

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WESTCHESTER COUNTY, N.Y. — There are still a few more weeks in summer, but Bee- Line Buses will change to their fall schedules on Sept. 2.

Here is a list of changes to area schedules:

Route 1

A weekday northbound 7:19 a.m. trip from the 242nd St. subway station in the Bronx to the Yonkers-Hastings border will be added.

Route 1X

A weekday northbound 7:45 a.m. trip from the 242nd St. subway station in the Bronx to the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla will be added.

Route 8

The weekday northbound 7:38 a.m. trip from Getty Square will be discontinued.

The weekday northbound 2:40 p.m. trip from Central Park Avenue and Tuckahoe Road to Valentine Lane and Riverdale Avenue in Yonkers will be discontinued.

There will be a minor weekday afternoon schedule adjustment.

Route 13

The Sunday eastbound 6:55 p.m. trip will depart 5 minutes earlier at 6:50 p.m. from Ossining.

Route 45

The weekday 3:20 p.m. trips will leave 10 minutes earlier at 3:10 p.m. from New Rochelle High School.

The weekday southbound 3:18 p.m. trip will leave 3 minutes earlier at 3:15 p.m. from Mill Road and White Plains Road in Eastchester.

A weekday southbound 3:10 p.m. trip from New Rochelle High School to Pelham Road and Pelhamdale Avenue will be added.

Route 55

A weekday southbound 7:03 a.m. trip from N. 3rd Avenue will be added at the Dyer Avenue subway station in the Bronx will be added.

NOTE: On Sept. 2 ( Labor Day), buses and ParaTransit will operate on a Sunday schedule.

On Tuesday, Sept. 3, seasonal service to Playland will be discontinued on Routes 13, 75 and 91.

For further details, visit the Bee-Line System website at www.westchestergov.com/beelinebus. Or call the Bee-Line Hotline at 914-813-7777, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m

Armonk Fighting over Funeral | Armonk NY Homes

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Dear North Castle Residents,

Yesterday Town Clerk Anne Curran sent an email notice to our residents with considerable misinformation regarding Becky Kittredge’s funeral. I would like to provide the facts regarding the arrangements for the former Town Board member. As we enter election season, I would also like to express my deep disappointment with the political nature of Ms. Curran’s message which is unbefitting the Office of Town Clerk. This is the truth about Ms. Kittredge’s funeral arrangements:

  • The Town Board was pleased to hold Becky Kittredge’s funeral ceremony in front of Town Hall in order to pay tribute to this valued public servant and her many contributions to North Castle over the years.
  • We ceased all official town business on Friday morning August 31st, for the three hour period of the funeral and closed off Bedford Road from Maple Avenue to Main Street to allow for the proceedings. We gave all Town employees time off to attend both the funeral service and subsequent buffet lunch at Legion Hall.
  • We provided the procession with an official police and fire truck escort from the funeral home in Hawthorne to Town Hall.
  • This was the most extensive recognition of a public servant in recent memory and far exceeded what was done by the prior Town Board for Jack Lombardi.
  • In response to Ann Curran’s request to air Ms. Kittredge’s funeral video on NCTV, an informal email discussion was conducted by Town Board members. Contrary to Ms. Curran’s representation, NO VOTE WAS EVER HELD as there has been no Town Board meeting since August 14th 2013 well before Ms. Kittredge’s passing. We were also aware that “All About Armonk” and Channel 12 were already covering the funeral so that any residents who were interested could easily access the proceedings.
  • When asked about airing the funeral on NCTV, several Board members expressed that rather than showing a funeral, a video montage celebrating Becky’s lifetime achievements would be a much more tasteful and respectful tribute– and frankly more relevant to those residents who are unaware of her contributions. It would also address the issue that the Town had no policy or guidelines about how to handle the passing of elected officials and employees.
  • The Town Clerk chose not to pursue this suggestion or to inform residents about it.  Instead, she decided to send out a town-wide email deliberately mischaracterizing the nature of our discussions. I can only assume that her effort was an attempt to paint the three of us in a negative light and inflame voters’ passions.
  • As early as August 26th, immediately after Ms. Kittredge’s passing, Councilman Cronin began exploring and proposed to me a more lasting memorial to her service in one of our parks. Over the weekend he met with members of the Recreation Board to review the proposal. We hope to publicly announce our plans at the Rec. Board update at the September 11th Town Board Meeting.

Given that some residents have expressed an interest in viewing Ms. Kittredge’s funeral on NCTV, we will of course schedule to have it shown. We will also add as an agenda item to our September 11th meeting the development of a policy concerning funerals for elected officials and Town employees including the appropriate level of funds to expend and televising such events.

In closing I must point out that the Town Clerk’s office is required by law to be a politically objective source of accurate information, NOT a venue for expressing opinions about Town Board actions or for advancing political agendas. The fact that Ms. Curran used the passing of Ms. Kittredge to pass along misinformation and make a political statement is not only an ethical breach, it is in poor taste.

Sincerely,

Howard Arden, Supervisor

Mapping 15 Manhattan Buildings Originally Built for Artists | Armonk Real Estate

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artistsmap_9_13.jpg

To do their work, artists need light and space—two things that can be hard to come by in Manhattan. In the early twentieth century, artists and their backers put up a number of buildings meant to meet those needs, with double-height studios, allowing for ample light, and low rents. Some of those buildings took advantage of the relatively new idea of co-op apartments and had artists buy shares in order to fund the buildings’ construction and maintenance. Artists’ cooperatives had occasional downsides—one resident of 130 West 57th Street filed a disorderly conduct complaint against a downstairs neighbor in 1921 over the “absolute riot” of ragtime music coming from her apartment. (The noisy neighbor in question decided to flee to Italy in search of “personal liberty” even once she was found not guilty.) But they were also home to the production of much notable work. We’ve rounded up 15 notable artists’ buildings for the map below. Most are still standing, though the prices for their apartments are no longer so artist-friendly.

Tenth Street Studio Building
51 West 10th Street, New York, NY 10011
Starchitect Richard Meier, before he achieved starchitect-dom, created the West Village’s Westbeth housing complex, meant for early-career artists who could hold onto their inexpensive rentals for about five years while growing their careers. The complex is now a landmark, and its residents have ended up having similar staying power. In fact, local politicians recently accused the complex of “stockpiling” apartments rather than allowing those on the waiting list to move in.
55 Bethune St, New York, NY 10014
Tenth Street Studio Building
Many of the buildings on this list date to the first decade of the twentieth century, but those structures were preceded by the Tenth Street Studio Building, which dates to 1857. Artists including Winslow Homer and Frederic Church had studio spaces there, and the building included a central gallery. (Some of the units were just studio spaces; others had bedrooms as well.) The building was demolished in 1956, and non-artist-oriented apartments now stand on the spot. (Photo courtesy the Museum of the City of New York.)
51 West 10th Street, New York, NY 10011
Gainsborough Studios
To address their needs for light and space, a group of painters and sculptors formed the Gainsborough Corporation in the early 1900s to build a building full of cooperative studios for artists. They purchased 222 Central Park South, then a millionaire’s mansion, in 1907, and replaced the mansion with the Gainsborough Studios. The 34 apartments at the front of the building have double-height living rooms. At the moment there’s one 2BR in the building for sale.
222 Central Park South, New York, NY 10019
Studio Building
The 1907 Studio Building, designed by Herbert Harde and R. Thomas Short, also had double-height studios intended for artists. But regular folk (i.e., lawyers and doctors) also lived there from the beginning. The building received some rave archicritical reviews: a “Brobdingnagian cathedral,” one magazine called it; the terra cotta decoration “appears to have been squeezed out of a pastry tube,” said an architectural historian. The building has one incredible penthouse on the market now.
44 West 77th Street, New York, NY 10024
Hotel Des Artistes
George Mort Pollard designed this building, which was built in 1917. As at other artists’ residents, a number of the apartments include double-height spaces, but not only visual artists lived at the Hotel Des Artistes. Noel Coward and Fannie Hurst, for example, were among the writers in residence. There is one $2 million 1BR on the market in the building now.
1 W 67th St, New York, NY 10023
Studio Building
This building—which shares the name the Studio Building with one of the Upper West Siders on this list—was architect Charles Platt’s first major city design. (He had previously been known as a country house architect.) Painter Gerald Murphy (a friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald) and baritone Lawrence Tibbett were among the early residents. There’s one two-bedroom on the market now in the landmarked building.
131 East 66th Street, New York, NY 10065
140 West 57th Street
Pollard & Steinam—who designed several other artist-oriented buildings on West 67th Street—were the architects of this structure, which was built in 1907-1908. The front of the building contained seven double-height apartments, and as the Landmarks Preservation Commission designation report for the building puts it, “the tall, projecting bay windows set in geometrically-ornamented cast iron frames bring in the north light so prized by artists.” 130 West 57th Street was designed by the same architects and was almost identical. (It was also the site of a disorderly conduct complaint over the “absolute riot” of ragtime.)
140 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019
80 West 40th Street
Painter (and naturalist) Abraham Archibald Anderson tried living in Connecticut so that he would have the space and light in which to work, but he wanted to be in the city—so he decided to buy four lots at 40th Street and Sixth Avenue and build a studio building there. Anderson and his wife occupied the top floor once the building was finished. Other artists took space, and eventually, Liz Claiborne had her first studio there. In the 1980s, the building received a restoration.
80 West 40th Street, New York, NY 10018
The Rembrandt
Carnegie Hall Tower now stands where the Rembrandt Studio building went up in 1881. Christopher Gray speculated in one Streetscapes column that the Rembrandt—along with the Sherwood Studio building at 57th Street and Sixth Avenue, since demolished—may have been one of the buildings that persuaded Andrew Carnegie that a concert hall would be the right fit for the neighborhood. (Photo via Museum of the City of New York.)
152 W 57th St, New York, NY 10019
Carnegie Hall Studios
Carnegie Hall kicked out its last artists several years ago in order to convert their live/work spaces above the famed concert hall into additional office and classroom space. One of the last residents, photographer/filmmaker Josef Astor, made the documentary Lost Bohemia about the end of the building’s artist housing era.
881 7th Ave, New York, NY 10019
(212) 247-7800
read more…

Real estate brokers, fall into line: It’s time to let the MLS lead | Armonk Real Estate

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The power balance in the real estate world is shifting faster than ever. Travel titans, search engines, investment oracles and government entities all want to change the way we do business. Most just want to control a larger piece of the pie.

Real estate brokerages are often too focused on their day-to-day business of attracting and retaining agents to give an appropriate share of their attention to the greater direction of real estate. The reasons are fairly simple. Brokerages are deemed successful by their ranking vs. local competitors as opposed to the greater health of all brokers in their region. The ability of a broker or agent to increase sales production and income often comes at the expense of competing agents and brokers, especially in a down market.  This is not necessarily a negative, but the reality of competitive business and our natural motivations in these roles.

Then, there is the MLS. The multiple listing service could be called the referee for our regional activities. Some practitioners love the MLS for its standardization of practices. Some hate it for its plethora of rules impeding their business. Some brokers appreciate the MLS’s creation of a level playing field vs. other companies. Many brokers feel disdain for any organization that seeks to override its regulatory authority.

The nature of these differing opinions exemplifies the strength and value of the MLS to our industry. Whether it’s a parent, teacher, CEO or government regulator, any authoritative entity should wield enough clout to create useful standards. If it lacks the strength to create regulations that benefit its constituents as a whole, it is useless. At the same time, if its decisions lack the support necessary to regulate member policies, it is impotent.

An uncommon position of power

MLS organizations are in a uniquely powerful position in our industry today. The MLS is supported in some way by Realtor organizations, diverse brokerages, volunteer agents, and MLS staff. Their overwhelming strength is the nearly ubiquitous control of our most precious asset in the new media age: the real estate listing

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/next/real-estate-brokers-fall-into-line-its-time-to-let-the-mls-lead/#sthash.8EjSwnsr.dpuf

Real estate brokers, fall into line: It’s time to let the MLS lead | Armonk Homes

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The power balance in the real estate world is shifting faster than ever. Travel titans, search engines, investment oracles and government entities all want to change the way we do business. Most just want to control a larger piece of the pie.

Real estate brokerages are often too focused on their day-to-day business of attracting and retaining agents to give an appropriate share of their attention to the greater direction of real estate. The reasons are fairly simple. Brokerages are deemed successful by their ranking vs. local competitors as opposed to the greater health of all brokers in their region. The ability of a broker or agent to increase sales production and income often comes at the expense of competing agents and brokers, especially in a down market.  This is not necessarily a negative, but the reality of competitive business and our natural motivations in these roles.

Then, there is the MLS. The multiple listing service could be called the referee for our regional activities. Some practitioners love the MLS for its standardization of practices. Some hate it for its plethora of rules impeding their business. Some brokers appreciate the MLS’s creation of a level playing field vs. other companies. Many brokers feel disdain for any organization that seeks to override its regulatory authority.

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/next/real-estate-brokers-fall-into-line-its-time-to-let-the-mls-lead/#sthash.qPqqrbTH.dpuf