The Brooklyn hipster foodies have taken over the old Pfizer factory in South Williamsburg. On the day I visited the factory for this New York Times story, Brooklyn Soda Works was interviewing employees and Eric Child’s 9-month old son was toddling around the floor at Kombucha Brooklyn. It’s definitely a very different world at the place where Pfizer got its start.
My story about an arcane, but totally cumbersome clause in co-op mortgages is the cover story in this month’s Habitat Magazine. This little-known provision is just another casualty of the mortgage crisis, and it’s hurting a lot of co-ops as they try to get in on today’ historically low mortgages.
A new study has found that women don’t pursue academic careers in math-intensive fields because motherhood and academia are basically incompatible. Women are forced to choose between a tenure-track job and having a family. I reported this story for Reuters.
I think the same can be said for the private sector too — the professional world is often quite inflexible when it comes to the needs of young moms. But in fields like physics and engineering where there are few women to begin with, the mommy factor reduces a stream to a trickle.
For my first story for Habitat Magazine, I wrote about how Fannie Mae’s new lending rules are affecting condos and co-ops. Sellers trying to unload their apartment are finding that problems with their building are making it hard for them to sell. The fallout from the mortgage crisis just keeps on going and going.
The thing I remember most about my college dorm was the horrible co-ed bathrooms. They were just wrong. But now that private developers are getting into the on-campus housing game, as I reported today as a New York Times Business Day centerpiece, students are getting a totally different freshman experience.
The laundry room alone at The Heights at Montclair State University was amazing. It was better than most laundry facilities I’ve had as an adult. I can’t even remember how I washed my clothes as a freshman. The Heights had pool tables in a student clubhouse and a very swanky shared kitchen with stainless steel equipment. Definitely a different concept of student housing.
For this Business Day centerpiece in The New York Times, I got an inside peak at the Revel Casino, the mega-resort which is set to open on the Atlantic City boardwalk in May. The ocean looks pretty amazing 39 floors up. With a $2.4 billion price tag, the resort is certainly spectacular. There’s an all-season outdoor bar, an indoor-outdoor pool and cabanas guests can rent with a private bar.
But, until the state stepped in and pledged $261 million in tax credits, the entire project was dead in the water and probably never would have been finished. Read more about it here.
Electric car charging stations may soon start appearing at New Jersey malls, gas stations and parking lots now that the state signed onto a pledge to add more across the entire eastern seaboard. In the story I wrote for Reuters, it was cool to see four of them in my own Montclair neighborhood. I hadn’t even noticed them before, they ere so small. Makes you think about getting a Leaf….
Crain’s is reporting that Bruce Ratner really is going to build the world’s tallest prefab tower at Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn.
After he fielded the idea, I wrote a story for The New York Times about the potential of building large, prefab buildings.
There are other large-scale prefab buildings out there, but there definitely isn’t anything like what he’s considering: a 32-story steel structure. From the Crain’s article, it seems like the sticking point is the unions. Labor costs are much cheaper when the product is assembled off-site. But Ratner got a lot of his initial support for Atlantic Yards from the unions, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
On the surface, the story I wrote for Reuters seemed simple: a New Jersey teacher calls her students “future criminals” on Facebook, parents get wind of it, and the school wants her out.
But, in reporting the story, I found it far more layered and nuanced than merely a case of an employee using poor judgement on social media.
In reading the court documents, the tensions in play were clear: a disgruntled, frustrated teacher working in a poor, urban community with parents acutely sensitive to how their children are perceived and treated.
She claimed, in the week before the incident, that a student had hit her. That others had stolen from her. School administrators and parents saw her comments (she wrote, “I am not a teacher — I am a warden for future criminals.”) as racially charged and painfully insensitive.
The endgame: an administrative law judge ruled she should be fired. The district does not want her back.
New Jersey, home of the oldest hospitals in the country, is getting three sparkly new ones in less than a year. In reporting this story for The New York Times, it was fascinating to learn just how tough it is to be in the hospital business here. The state is one of the worst places to be in the hospital business — reimbursements are low, people aren’t using hospitals like they used to — but three non-profit companies have decided to sink half a billion dollars into new facilities. The result is three hospitals with some pretty swanky amenities like weeping fountain walls, meditation rooms and rooftop gardens.
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