By: Rusty Brooks

242 luxury condo apartments at Lightstone Group’s 130 William St. are nearly sold out, according to an analysis of public records analyzed by the NY Post, in one of the most interesting real estate developments for the week, meanwhile Rockefeller center is working hard to bring tourists to NYC, in another interesting development.

Lightstone senior VP of development Scott Avram said, “130 William Street is over 90% sold and occupied and recognized as the best-selling condo tower in the city over the past few years.”

130 William units sold at or very close to the original “asks.” Average prices were around $3,000 per square foot or less, compared with above $5,000 at 432 Park Ave. or even higher at Extell’s Central Park Tower, NY Post noted.

The NY Post also noted; the owners of long-stalled condo tower 125 Greenwich St. just landed a $313 million loan to finish the job. Whole Foods opened a massive store at Harry Macklowe’s One Wall Street. French department store Printemps is coming to the site in 2024.

A major New York City landmark is celebrating spring with flags focusing on all the beautiful and exciting restaurants New York City has to offer.

Rockefeller Center historical waves the flags of the member countries of the United Nations. During Covid-19, Rockefeller Center has held competitions for different flags as a way to bring tourists to Midtown.

The New York Times has an exclusive report that for this year’s flag project, the nonprofit City Harvest coordinated the flag display with Rockefeller Center. Jilly Stephens, the chief executive of City Harvest, said in an email that she found it meaningful that the flags would be up on Earth Day on April 22, “because through our work rescuing perfectly good surplus food that would otherwise go to waste and distributing it to community food programs, we are also addressing climate change.”

The pandemic inflicted food insecurity on households that had never experienced it: City Harvest said that the number of children visiting food pantries was 55 percent higher earlier in 2022 than it was before the pandemic. It expects to collect and distribute 75 million pounds of food this year.

Artist Ria Sim ,told The New York Times that She said her flag submissions were the first that had been chosen. “I saw this project said they were welcoming people whether you were an amateur or a professional,” she said. “I’ve never been able to enter any contests because the contests I looked at had so many criteria, and I don’t fit the mold.” She said her technique was “hard-core grammar school” — scissors, paper and crayons. The result is three-dimensional and collagelike.

Sim submitted a design that showed her love of croissants, quiche and cookies from the Maman cafe and bakery in SoHo. “If you’ve walked into Maman, my first thought was I wished there was a Maman when I was a little girl,” she said. “It was like a sweet little tea party place. It was somewhere I would have begged my mother to take me.”