31 Comments
Gothamist and Daily Intelligencer are reporting that Dean Kathryn Yatrakis’ daughter Catherine, and her lovely Greek shipping magnate husband Alastair Economakis, have decided to convert a rent-controlled building on 47 E. 3rd (a building they already own, pictured at right) from $625/month apartments to their personal private 6 bedroom/5 bathroom residence.
While the conversion is perfectly legal, and the Economakis had informed their tenants of the proposed transformation years ago, it’s doesn’t exactly bode well for the couple’s public image. (Or give the impression that council with Associate Urban Studies Professor Yatrakis was sought.) Which is precisely why they’ve launched a website: to share “the other side” of the story, or so says Alastair in the site’s epigraph (in which he quotes himself.) Anyway, the whole sorry, sordid tale is available for parsing on Economakis.com.
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31 Comments
@F**K the Squatters F**k the squatters, tell them to get the hell out of the building. Rent control is a bunch of bullshit. No one should HAVE to give anyone else a discount. Its retarded. Let the free market work. If you can afford the market price, move to Jersey City, or Far Rockaway.
@biggerpicture more so than for the public image of our Dean whose family involvement seems a little too far removed to be relevant.
@biggerpicture While the sticky situation for Yatrakis might be alluring for some, the bigger issue at stake is the importance of who has authority over the city’s rent controlled units. As of now, they are still controlled by Albany, rather than the city, through a piece of controversial 70s legislation known as the Urstadt Law.
The decision and potential development of this site has much larger implications for the continued existence of the city’s slim stock of rent controlled units.
@Sigh Losing your apartment because someone buys, rent goes up, etc. it is a risk you take if you live in the posh prices of NYC. You have to be prepared for it. It’s the same as preparing for hurricanes in Florida or earthquakes in California. At least these people were offered compensation.
@Hmmm Can we really call this gentrification? I really doubt these are low income residents rather than a group of people clinging to unnaturally low rents.
@Sprinkles This is really old news…over-a-year-ago’s news.
@Economakis? More like Economics!
@aha It’s a very funny name indeed. I used to think it was a pun.
@look yatrakis has people, a veritable war chamber if you will. the skulls of her vanquished enemies are used as goblets in said chamber.
@... grreat… just what the east village needs … more annoying rich people pushing fucking strollers…
the irony, however, is beautiful… mama is prolly assigning chapters of jane jacobs to her classes, meanwhile daughter is busy kicking out rent stabilized tenants to build her very own tenament house chic megamansion.
what i don’t understand is this… why the fuck would you want to live in the east village if you have kids? it’s not exactly a settle down with family sort of place! hmm… … perhaps the tenant argument starts to make sense…
@way to jump on the bandwagon. This is really old news….
@so obvious when a speccie posts
@nomenclature wait, so Kathryn named her daughter Catherine? wtf, couldn’t have a) gone for Jr. or b) thought of a different name?
@Alum In this context it’s “counsel”, not “council”. Also, the story is available for “perusing”, not “parsing”.
@Juli Actually, council can be defined as “An assembly of persons called together for consultation, deliberation, or discussion” and parsing can be defined as “To make sense of; comprehend,” so in this context, it really have been either choice with respect to both of your suggestions.
@Embarrassing! Wow, Juli, that’s pretty pitiful. You’re dead wrong on the use of “council” even in your definition, which refers to a deliberative body. The context “sought counsel” means “sought advice” and “council” does not mean “advice.” To counsel is to provide consultation, whereas a council may itself provide consultation. Seeking council with Yatrakis could only mean wandering around the city hoping to find their chambers!
I’ll go along with you on the not incorrectness of parse, but given that the reading material is just someone’s blog and not anything especially complicated, perusal better expresses the casual style of reading it warrants.
In any case, if it makes you feel any better, your original interlocutor claims to be an “alum”, a type of chemical compound and not, despite common misperception, an accepted singular form of alumni.
Please, all of you, accept the gender bias of our language and refer to yourself as either alumnus or alumna!
@Alum You say that I “claim[] to be an ‘alum’, a type of chemical compound and not, despite common misperception, an accepted singular form of alumni.” By that logic, you must claim to be “Embarrassing!” Since you surely wouldn’t apply your logic applies to your own tag, there is no reason to apply it to mine.
Besides, “alum” is indeed an accepted singlular form of “alumni”. It’s informal, but this is an informal setting. I stand by my usage.
@Alumnus Point taken. I am indeed embarrassing to myself, for I see that the OED backs you up on the informal alum usage. I prefer the earlier antecedents where it was spelled alumn, however, since that’s more in keeping with the root alumnare, nourishment.
@Alum Sorry, but no. As you say, “council” is an actual group of people. “Counsel” is advice. The article says “council with Associate Urban Studies Professor Yatrakis was sought”. Leaving aside the awkwardness of the sentence, it says that the owners sought Prof. Yatrakis’s advice. It makes no sense to say that the owners sought Prof. Yatrakis’s group of people. Firther, the word “with” makes sense only if you mean advice rather than a group.
Your second argument implies that “to parse” means the same thing as “to read”, which it doesn’t. Reading is a pre-condition of parsing; one can read without parsing, but one cannot parse without reading.
@Juli Re: “seek counsel/council”, I rescind my earlier defense of “council.” Touche.
But with respect to “parse,” any implication that I meant it as a synonym of “to read” is a miscommunication. Since the entire post is a summation of the events, I suggest that readers visit the site themselves to try and make sense of the Economakis’ arguments.
@wooooow... You know you live in an Ivory Tower when……
a conversation about gentrification turns into a vocabulary debate
@I'm not positive, but I’m pretty sure that “Ivory Tower” isn’t supposed to be capitalized.
@board games o ya and if they roll doubles again they have to go to jail
@board games as soon as they get all the properties they’re gonna have enough money to just build a bunch of hotels. So the current holders should make them buy for enough money that they only ahve like 500 dollars left. then the game can continue fairly. of course this only works if i get to be the dog.
@smart people... Apparently they only paid a million dollars for the rent-controlled building. I’m sure the renovation and legal fees aren’t cheap and likely will run at least another million or two………
But even a few million dollars for 11,000 sq ft in manhattan is a good deal!
@ahhhh Nice band reference with the entry title.
@yawn this thing has dragged on for years. i still don’t see why they need a 10,000 sq. ft. house, but it definitely seems like they are not going to turn the properties into high-priced condos. if they can get that in writing, than who cares. let economakis have his mansion.
@hey bwog, come on. 47th and 3rd is not 47 E. 3rd Street.
Also, Yatrakis was my prof and she was great. Sins of the father in reverse and all that.
@Bwog Staff Thanks, fixed!
@hmmm After reading his site, I have to say he has a good point. If, in fact, he did offer to relocate these people across the street to similar apartments (relocate from a building he himself owns, which is beyond what is required of him by law) then this really paints the story in a different light.
@meh I’m going to hunger strike the hell out of those bastards!