ASK HOTEL DEVELOPER
Michael Rawson why he's so enthusiastic about Broadway in the high 20s -- a streetscape of wholesalers and sidewalk vendors that does not necessarily conjure visions of glitz, glamour or smartly dressed doormen -- and the answer is instant.

"It's the last undiscovered neighborhood in Manhattan," he says. "It's in the center of things, surrounded by Madison Square, Gramercy, Chelsea, Times Square and Midtown South. It's part of the Madison Square North Historical District, so it's got all these wonderful buildings and this is a great opportunity for us to develop some of them. It'll be similar to the redevelopment of the Lower East Side and the Meatpacking District, but in a more central location."

Rawson is president of GFI Hotels, a subsidiary of GFI Development Co., which, together with other equity partners, is investing $200 million in two new hotels in landmark buildings that each are more than 100 years old.

One is the former Breslin Hotel, at the southeast corner of Broadway and 29th Street. It will soon debut as the Ace Hotel New York, the newest unit of Ace Hotels of Seattle, a chain of urban hotels with a reputation for cutting-edge hipness. The other is the NoMad Hotel, which has the same name as the acronym some people attach to the neighborhood: NoMad, for north of Madison Square. It is at 1170 Broadway, at the corner of 28th Street, exactly one block south of the Ace. An office building currently undergoing a gut renovation, it is expected to open approximately a year from now.

"The neighborhood is a great combination of residential buildings and office buildings," Rawson said. "It's got retailing, and a wide audience of people who live here and who work here. Our hotel restaurants will appeal to the locals and to all New Yorkers who love a 'find.' And out-of-towners will like the location, which is convenient to so many other things."

The Ace, with an entrance at 20 West 29th Street, will have a soft opening in April. Its restaurant and other retail attractions will open closer to June. The restaurant will be called the Breslin, a nod to the original identity of the 12-story building, which was completed in 1904. It will be run by Ken Friedman and chef April Bloomfield, owners of the Spotted Pig. Unlike that highly acclaimed Greenwich Village gastropub, it will offer more of a pan-European cuisine with an emphasis on meat dishes, according to Alex Calderwood, one of Ace's founders.

The Ace will also house the first East Coast branch of Stumptown Coffee Roasters, a celebrated chain of cafes and roasteries based in Portland, Ore.; Project No. 8, a chic clothing boutique; and a Rudy's Barbershop (which is owned by Ace and supplies the amenities in the guest rooms). There will also be a 3,000-square-foot event space and a 900-square-foot gym.

Rawson said the Ace will have 258 rooms, with rates generally ranging from $195 a night up to $1,000 for suites. Roman and Williams, a hot design firm that claims numerous celebrity clients, did the rooms, which combine vintage and custom furnishings.

The NoMad, said Rawson, will be "more upscale, more luxury," especially in the furnishings of the 165 guest rooms and suites, all designed by Jacques Garcia of Paris. The 12-story structure, completed in 1903, has a façade of Kentucky limestone decorated with sculptures of open-mouthed lions and is capped by an ornate cupola that will be used for private events. Rates start at about $395 and go to more than $1,200.

When complete, the NoMad will include a dining area and bar operated by Philadelphia's Stephen Starr, whose Manhattan restaurants include Morimoto and Buddakan. The restaurant, still unnamed, and a space for meetings and banquets will be in one of the two townhouses that flank the NoMad. The other townhouse will include a retail business as well as office space for GFI Hotels.

The NoMad's location is not without historical significance. A brass plaque embedded into the adjacent sidewalk in 1976 commemorates the area as "Tin Pan Alley . . . where the business of the American popular song flourished during the first decades of the 20th century." Now GFI is betting that the neighborhood is ready to sing a new tune for a new century.

THE TIMING WAS EXQUISITE. On the morning of Feb. 25, less than 12 hours after President Obama's speech to the nation about the economy, almost 150 members of the Flatiron community turned up at Baruch College for "Rolling With the Punches: Small Business Survival for 2009," the first in a new series of programs launched by the Flatiron Partnership.

The series, called "Intersections," is intended to generate an exchange of ideas and information about matters affecting the district. This one, of course, was all about the economy, and judging by the responses of those who were there, "Rolling With the Punches" was a knockout.

Comments such as "timely," "informative," and "knowledgeable participants" typified feedback forms given to the small-business owners, real estate developers and other members of the community who attended.

"We are pleased with the success of this event and that the BID, in partnership with Baruch College, was able to bring these important resources and strategies to the table at a time when businesses need them the most," said Jennifer Brown, executive director of the Flatiron Partnership. "The diverse expertise of the panelists and breakout session leaders provided a wealth of knowledge to the Flatiron community."

Dr. Kathleen Waldron, president of Baruch, and Dr. John A. Elliott, dean of the college's Zicklin School of Business, got things moving with welcoming remarks before turning the meeting over to a panel discussion moderated by Annika Pergament, anchor of the "Fortune Business Report" on cable news channel NY1.

Panelists, who talked about everything from credit crunches to consumer confidence, were Martha Soffer of the U.S. Small Business Administration; Joel L. Naroff, chief economist at TD Bank, which was a co-sponsor of the event; Evan Margolin, corporate managing director of Studley, a commercial real estate servicing firm specializing in tenant representation; Dr. Ramona Heck, academic director of the Lawrence N. Field Programs in Entrepreneurship at Baruch; and John Grathwol of the New York City Office of Management and Budget.

Following the panel discussion, attendees split into four breakout sessions, each of which addressed specific areas of concern: Redeveloping Business Plans, led by Allison Lehr of Baruch's Field Center for Entrepreneurship; Workforce Issues in an Uncertain Business Environment, led by Chason Hecht, president of Retensa, experts in employee retention; External Solutions to Workforce Retention Issues, led by Marie Roker of NYC Business Solutions; and Accessing Credit, led by Elli Papadopoulos of NYC Business Solutions, and Robert Jacobs and Sanddy Marchena of TD Bank.

Stay tuned for news of subsequent "Intersections" events, details of which will be announced as they develop.

Click here for the information and resources provided by panelists and presenters from Rolling with the Punches.

WILKENS GEFFRARD IS A
big guy who comes from a big family, so it is not unexpected to learn that he is not the first in his household to work as a security officer. What does come as a surprise, however, is that it wasn't an older brother or his dad who predated him in the security business.

It was his mother.

"She was in security for United Parcel Service, and she was very good at catching thieves," says Wilkens, grinning. "She also helped get me my first security job, also at UPS."

Wilkens, an affable 22-year-old who is 6 feet tall and weighs 230, began working security shortly after graduating from Bushwick High School in Brooklyn, in 2004. He was born and raised in Brooklyn and lives there with his mother, Hernance, who these days is a home attendant; his father, Maxine, a cab driver; his three younger sisters, including twins; and one older brother. Another older brother is married and raising his own family.

Wilkens began working at the Flatiron BID last August. He's on duty only on Fridays and Saturdays. From Mondays through Thursdays, he attends a trade school in Queens, where's he learning carpentry, a skill he hopes to pursue.

He first became aware of the BID last year, during a shopping excursion to the neighborhood. That's when he took notice of some members of the Safety Team in their natty blue uniforms.

"I thought they looked really good," Wilkens recalls. "I was with a friend and he knew a little about the BID and I was interested. Now he's a guard for the Lincoln Square BID and I'm here. I love this job because you're out of doors, you're on the move and you see new sights and new people all the time."

He's constantly being asked two things by tourists and visitors: to help with directions and to take their photos, often with the Flatiron Building in the background.

Asked whether he's comfortable taking pictures of people, Wilkens shrugs and says, "When you come from a big family, you're always taking pictures."

SOME OF THE WORLD'S MOST familiar faces will share space with lesser known folks in a new exhibit of photographs by Andy Warhol that is slated to open March 27 at the Sidney Mishkin Gallery at Baruch College. The pictures are from among more than 100 images awarded to the gallery last year by the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy project.

The exhibit is entitled "Everyone Will Be Famous for 15 Minutes: Andy Warhol's Photographs" and will include portraits of those whose fame has extended far beyond that (Dolly Parton, Dorothy Hamill and Yoko Ono, for example) as well as unidentified people on the street. The pictures were taken from 1972 through 1986. Warhol, one of America's iconic pop artists, died in 1987.

An opening reception has been scheduled for March 26, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. It is free and open to the public. The show will run through May 22. The Sidney Mishkin Gallery is at 135 East 22nd Street. Hours are noon to 5 p.m. on Mondays through Fridays, and noon to 7 p.m. on Thursdays. For more information, call (212) 802-2690.

Free Tax Assistance at Baruch

There is still time to take advantage of the free program that Baruch College is offering to anyone who needs help preparing federal and New York State returns.

Baruch, one of the nation's premier business schools, is making more than 320 students available to help file returns. All have been tested and certified by the Internal Revenue Service as tax preparers and all are qualified to complete federal forms 1040, 1040A and 1040EZ and New York City and State forms IT 150 and IT 201 as well as all accompanying schedules.

The service is free and no appointments are necessary. Tax preparers are handling people on a first-come, first-served basis and are available four days a week through Wednesday, April 15, on the first floor of 151 East 25th Street, the home of Baruch's Library and Technology Building. The hours of operation are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and noon to 7 p.m. on Fridays.

For additional information, call the Tax Help Line at (646) 312-4600 or click here.

Free Walking Tours Every Sunday

Free walking tours are sponsored every Sunday by the Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership.

Join our expert guides on a 90-minute journey through this vibrant neighborhood, viewing some of the City's most notable landmarks, including the New York Life Insurance building, the MetLife Tower, the Appellate Courthouse and the famous Flatiron Building.

Time:
Every Sunday at 11 a.m.

Meeting Place:
The southwest corner of Madison Square Park, at 23rd Street and Broadway, in front of the statue of William Seward.

THE BAD NEWS FOR MANY NEW YORKERS IN 1912 INCLUDED THE sinking of the Titanic, the wounding of former president Theodore Roosevelt by a crazed saloonkeeper, and the loss of the World Series by the New York Giants to the Boston Red Sox.

The good news in 1912 was the opening of a sheet music store on 23rd Street by an enterprising teenager from Italy by the name of Paul Vercesi. Later, the young man added film development and a new-fangled invention called radio. At some point, hardware became part of the mix. Eventually, the sheet music and radio tubes and film all but vanished, but the hardware hung on. Today, 97 years after it opened, the Vercesi store is still on 23rd Street, it's still owned by the family and it just might be the Flatiron district's longest-running retail establishment doing business at the same old stand.

The big yellow sign that says "Vercesi Hardware" and, in fading letters "Est. 1912," over the entrance of 152 East 23rd Street is hard to miss, but a 1936 photograph in the files of the New York Public Library reveals a storefront festooned with smaller signs. One says simply "Hardware," while others proclaim, "Radio service by trained men" and "Don't trust your films to a butcher -- developing done in our own laboratory."

"My father was about 14 when he started the business. He couldn't even legally drive a car," said Paul Vercesi Jr., who at 68 has been in charge of the store for about 40 years. "I started working here when I was seven or eight years old and kept at it right through high school."

Vercesi is a chatty, fit-looking fellow who describes himself as "a neighborhood guy." After attending local schools, he majored in business administration at New York University and then went to New York Law School. Instead of pursuing the legal profession, however, he began learning the retail business while working at a nearby S.S. Kresge, a variety store chain now known as Kmart. When his father was diagnosed with cancer, Vercesi returned to the store to help out.

"The deal was that I would come back for a year," he said. "That was around 1969. After my father died in 1971, I remained . . . and 40 years later, here I am."

Today, Vercesi offers more than basic hardware, much more. Through the decades, it became a neighborhood institution by establishing a reputation for service.

It may be only a coincidence, but the name "Vercesi" is an anagram for "service," a fact once lost on the boss. "My father always used to say, 'Vercesi spells service,'" he said. "I wanted to be different, more modern, so I stopped using it."

That changed in 2004, when Home Depot opened a few blocks away. Vercesi realized he and his staff of 17 were offering the kind of personal touch most big stores lack. The slogan "Vercesi spells service" was reborn.

Vercesi had expanded to the building next door in the early '90s, increasing its selling space to 7,000 square feet (in addition to 7,500 square feet of storage area in both basements). It also added major categories such as a paint center, appliances and housewares. After the neighboring Kantor's stationery store closed, Vercesi started selling envelopes and writing paper. It now carries more discrete products than the average supermarket.

"For plumbing and electrical work, we have every fitting imaginable," said Vercesi. "They say that you do 80 percent of the business with 20 percent of your merchandise, so some stores just concentrate on the 20 percent. We have it all. If you're fixing your toilet and you need a little gizmo, you don't want to hear that you can't use your toilet for a week because that's how long it'll take to get it. No one wants to hear that."

(Vercesi Hardware, 152 East 23rd Street. Telephone: 212-475-1883. Hours: Mondays-Fridays, 8 a.m.-7 p.m.; Saturdays, 9 a.m.-7 p.m.; Sundays, noon-5 p.m.)

A YEAR AFTER THE BATTLE OF MANILA BAY -- A STUNNING
naval victory by the United States over Spain in 1898, an event that established the U.S. as a global military power -- the architect of that historic engagement in the Philippines was invited to New York for a triumphal celebration in his honor. If Admiral George Dewey's entrance into the city in the waning summer days of 1899 wasn't quite as elaborate as Cleopatra's into Rome, it was not for lack of trying.

The hero's welcome that awaited him lasted several days, two of which were declared state holidays by Governor Theodore Roosevelt. The festivities included a flotilla of ships steaming up the Hudson, led by Dewey's cruiser, the USS Olympia, on Sept. 29, 1899, and culminated in a spectacular parade through Manhattan on Sept. 30. The reviewing stand was at Fifth Avenue and 24th Street, where a colossal arch and colonnade had been erected.

Because time was tight, however, it was decided to first build a temporary arch out of "staff," a construction material that combined plaster and wood shavings. Later, when enough money had been raised, the arch would be reproduced in stone. That, after all, had been the successful scenario for the Washington Square Arch just a few years earlier.

The Dewey Arch, designed by architect Charles R. Lamb, was based on the Arch of Titus in Rome and was produced by 28 sculptors. It was topped by a quadriga, a chariot pulled by four horses running abreast. This one, in keeping with the occasion, depicted four seahorses pulling a ship.

The day after the parade, The New York Times published almost 29,000 words of coverage. Describing the Dewey Arch, the newspaper waxed poetic: "Imagine arch and columns shining whiter than marble, brilliant and spotless in dazzling candidness. Imagine a brilliant atmosphere electrified by a gusty west wind, through which pours sunshine cooled by the breeze, but giving to every capital on every column, to every projection, and to all the statues and groups and reliefs that charm of keenly cut shadows which pure white marble offers. Imagine the shadows of branches and foliage mottling these white surfaces with dark spots that quiver with the gamboling of the wind."

The parade itself stepped off from 125th Street at 11:22 a.m. and, to the spirited sound of Sousa marches and the roar of the multitudes, continued south on Riverside Drive, then Central Park West and, finally, Fifth Avenue, which according to The Times, had been swept "as clean as a good housewife's pantry."

Contemporaneous accounts place the number of spectators at two million, with most of them seemingly determined to squeeze as close to Madison Square as possible.

Admiral Dewey, together with Mayor Robert A. Van Wyck, was in the first horse-drawn carriage, a splendid Victoria pulled by a quartet of sturdy bays. Forty-three other coaches, filled with assorted dignitaries, followed, and then came almost 35,000 military personnel. Several newspaper accounts reported that the sky was filled with butterflies.

Ironically, when Dewey's carriage reached the arch, he disembarked and was shown directly to the reviewing stand. Consequently, he never actually passed through his own triumphal arch. That might have been an omen, for despite all the hoopla, Dewey mania turned out to be as temporary as his arch. The plan to convert the monument into something permanent was finally abandoned when fund-raising and public interest waned and in 1901, after the structure began to deteriorate badly, it was removed from Madison Square, just another fallen arch.

In 1996, a bar and restaurant called Dewey's Flatiron opened on Fifth Avenue near 25th Street. With its murals of the Battle of Manila Bay and a replica of the Dewey Arch atop the back bar, it may be the only tangible reminder left of the Admiral and his big day at Madison Square.

• Rolling With the Punches press release
• The Transformation of NYC's Madison Square (video by Streetfilms)
• amNew York: Flatiron's Fanciful Flight
• Flatiron BID Promotes Neighborhood for Holidays
• Mayor Officially Opens the Plaza
• Mayor Bloomberg and DOT Commissioner Sadik-Khan Unveil New Public Space at Madison Square
• Pedestrian Plazas Already an Attraction
• Time Out New York: Flatiron Walking Tour
• Gotham Gazette: The Flatiron District
• 'Strengthening Communities' Panel Held
• BID Tells Businesses: Yes You 'Can'
• Click Here For More News Articles

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The Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership Business Improvement District, formed in 2006, is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to enhance the area's reputation as one of New York's most vital and exciting neighborhoods. This is undertaken by maintaining a clean and safe environment for those who live, work and visit the area; by spearheading area improvement projects; and by marketing the diverse business and retail options in this vibrant and historic neighborhood.

For more information go to our Web site at www.discoverflatiron.org or e-mail us at info@flatironbid.org.

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