short-term rentals and noise complaints

The Alfred Village Planning Board has been working on revisions to the zoning code. One of the new considerations is short-term rentals like Airbnb. Alfred is a college town, rather overwhelmed by its student population. A lot of the houses in the center of the village and beyond are rental houses. Some are big and can be noisy, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights. There is fear that short-term rentals will be occasional party houses and therefore should be limited to the multi-family zones (R-2 and R-3). Some of the bigger houses in the village are grandfathered for greater capacity than two units.

We board members were having an email discussion about which zones should be allowed to have short-term rentals. Someone brought up boisterous parties they knew about in such rentals. It seems to me ungracious to preclude graduation parties in the "collegiest town" in America. As a resident of the central village in R-2, I know about the noise that can burst from the house and yard of some of those group houses, especially on a warm afternoon. The boom-boom from the speakers can be especially irksome. But I do really appreciate being in the center of town, where I can walk to most every place I need to go.

This morning as I ate my breakfast, I was reading last Sunday's New York times book review, particularly the article on Antonio Di Benedetto by Michael Greenberg. "No writer has laid bare so thoroughly the ongoing predicament of the Argentine, for whom the resolution of even minor problems, such as a noise complaint or the collection of one's modest salary, seems beyond normal human effort. Di Benedetto understands this bitter ingredient of Argentine life, where the middle class is as evanescent as melting ice, subject to impoverishing currency devaluations, corrupt populists, vicious military coups, cynical guerrilla movements and useless reforms."

I don't know whether Di Benedetto's books are exactly the thing to read now, as parallels to the chaos of the moment, or the thing to avoid and let yourself slip into comfortable release. Whatever, it will be pleasant when it's nice enough to sit on the front porch and read, even if the ex frat house across the street is boom booming.

the shape of the plaza and the distant view

So I was watching episode two of One Day and enjoying the sights of Rome. When Dexter is talking to his mother outside her hotel, the space in front of the hotel was so familiar. Not just the narrow space there, opening into the wider plaza beyond. The decorated façade of the shopfront across from the hotel. It just had to be the Rome hotel that Carol and I stayed in before we went to Florence for the IFLA art periodicals conference in 1986. Dexter's father comes to the door to meet them. The sliding door has the name "Campo de' Fiori" painted on it. That's it, our hotel.

That was my first time in Rome. I was excited beyond words. Carol had gotten there a while before I did. I had been warned not to take anything but a legitimate taxi from the central train station. My cab was somewhere near the taxi stand but he drove me a very indirect route to the Campo area. I had a map and was able to follow where we were. He was having trouble finding the Campo and stopped at a business on a very narrow street to ask directions. We got close, to the nearby Piazza Farnese which is in front of the French Embassy. I told him this was close enough, paid him, and got out of the car to get my suitcase from the back. He took off. I ran after him and he went out into the clogged traffic on the Lungotevere, along the Tiber River. As I ran, I was shouting something and a guard at the embassy joined the chase. (Was this a movie?) Anyway, the guard stood on the corner and I pointed to the supposed taxi. With a uniformed security man standing there, the driver got out and opened the back of the car so I could get my suitcase. I walked sheepishly the block and a half to the Hotel Campo de' Fiori. By the time we left Rome a few days later, I knew how to take the city bus from near the Campo to the central station.

 

anybody got $170 million?

When I lived in New York City from 1995 until 2009, there was a significant coalescing of art galleries in West Chelsea. Primarily in the blocks east and west of Tenth Avenue, from West 17th to West 29th. Galleries that had been in SoHo were pushed out by rising rents. It was massive fun to go galleryhopping in those days and one of my favorite buildings was 526 West 26th Street.

(James Estrin / New York Times)

I sometimes would walk up and down the stairs as well as back and forth on several of the floors. Other times, I might take the elevator up to the top floor with galleries and walk down. The elevator was operated by a person and had one of those gate doors.

By the time I moved upstate in 2009, the smaller galleries were being pushed out of West Chelsea as gentrification in general and specifically development around the High Line forced up rents and sale prices. Crowds and monster tall buildings proliferated. Even the Whitney Museum of American Art built its new building in the southern reaches of the arts district.

Now, Deb has sent me an article from the NY Times about the listing of 526 West 26th for sale and how the sale could displace many artists and art spaces. (The picture above is from the article.) The building is being sold by the estate of Gloria Naftali, one of the early galleriests that opened in the building in 1995. Her husband had originally bought the building as a warehouse for his garment business. The Greene Naftali Gallery is still operating and has spaces on the eighth floor and now also on the ground floor. I remember how the upper floor space was significantly renovated and enlarged several times. In the picture, I see "LEVENBETTS" on a window. They are one of the smaller architectural firms that I encounter in my Avery indexing.

The building is included in the West Chelsea Historic District so there's probably little danger of it being demolished. Still, it has played, and continues to play, a significant role in the art life and life of artists in New York City.