NYC news you might have missed in June

This is an occasional recap of recent NYC news you might have missed during the last few weeks. Top of our list is food news, about the new Anthony Bourdain food market and the old Katz’s Delicatessen:

It’s opening date unknown for Anthony Bourdain’s Food Hall at Pier 57, now under development on the Hudson River. The TV food star’s reality food outlet was to open next year, now it’s been pushed back to at least 2019. It is to be a massive international food market.  According to New York Magazine’s NY Eater, it will be nearly 60,000 feet of international eateries and shops.

Katz’s Deli, the venerable 128-year-old food hall on Houston St. is not closing, but expanding. The popular home of pastrami and pickles was in danger being bulldozed by rising rents  in the now-trendy Lower East Side neighborhood. Luckily, Katz’s owners own the building, and sold the air rights to a developer, who now can increase the size of a pricey new condo building going up next door. According to the New York Times, condo prices will start at $1.07 million for a tiny 550-square-foot apartment. The $17 million deal also allows Katz’s to expand.  One report says Katz’s will open an outpost in Brooklyn, in the DeKalb Market now under development.

More real estate news, including about New York City’s most famous construction mogul:

The Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point in the Bronx, which opened last year, reportedly is costing city taxpayers millions of dollars, even while developer Donald Trump pockets millions in income, and the permanent clubhouse that was part of the deal still has not been constructed.  According to Gothamist, the golf course, built on landfill near the Throgs Neck Bridge, is also the most expensive public golf course in the city, charging nearly three times what other NYC public golf courses charge. Here’s a price comparison from the NY Daily News:

Trump also was fined $10,000 for missing a court hearing about using leqally-required public space in his Trump Tower shopping mall on Fifth Avenue to sell  Trump-branded chotchkes and his books. The public space was part of the deal to build a building larger than codes permitted.

The giant Ferris wheel on Staten Island’s waterfront turns step closer to reality as construction workers finish pouring the concrete foundation.  At 630 feet, the ‘New York Wheel’ will be America’s tallest Ferris wheel. The foundation includes a time capsule, with items including a copy of the Staten Island Advance and a jar of organic honey. The Ferris wheel is slated to open next year.

The old Rheingold brewery site in Bushwick is being re-imagined as a city-within-a-city, with multiple buildings and plazas.  According to Brooklyn Paper, it will be called Bushwick II, which is an even less creative name than Hudson Yards.

The New York City newspaper  amNewYork, Long Island newspaper Newsday and News 12 Long Island have been sold to a Dutch company called Altice N.V.  The local news outlets were owned by Cablevision, the Long Island-based company founded by Charles Dolan and his family.  Dolan is widely regarded as a telecom pioneer, including creating Home Box Office.  Altice also owns a Missouri-based cable provider, Suddenlink.  All will be combined into a new company, Altice USA, which becomes the fourth-largest cable business in the USA.  According to Fortune, the deal was worth $17.7 Billion, which is slightly more than my monthly cable bill.

The Cablevision deal does not include Madison Square Garden, which the Dolans will continue to own.  MSG owns the Knicks, the basketball team which hasn’t been doing well lately.  Once upon a time, the Knicks were known as the Cinderella Team in the 1970s and 1980s, with a bench that included Walt Frazier, Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, Dave deBusshere and Patrick Ewing. Those were the days, my friend.