Hexagon House, St. Johnsville, NY
Even the New York Times lamented the closing of the iconic Miss Albany Diner this morning.
The Miss Albany, a streamlined metal diner fabricated to look like a railroad car, has been a fixture of north Albany since Herbert H. Lehman was governor, but it is closing on Friday.
The lot Miss Albany occupies, about a mile and a half from the Capitol, was the site of a lunch cart that opened in 1929, serving workers in what was a commercial and industrial area. The railroad-car-style diner was erected in 1941 and named Lil’s Diner, after Ms. McCauliff. In the mid-1980s, it was restored for use in “Ironweed,” a film starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep that was based on the novel by William Kennedy; the filmmakers called it the Miss Albany Diner, taking the name from a onetime chain of local diners.
From the Times Union:
The Miss Albany Diner, a fixture in the city’s warehouse district since 1941, will close after lunch service next Friday (2/10). It has been sold to a real-estate company held by the owners of Wolff’s Biergarten, located next door to the diner’s 893 Broadway location. There are no immediate plans to reopen it as a diner, says Matt Baumgartner, who bought the diner with partners Jimmy and Demetra Vann, with whom he co-owns Wolff’s and The Olde English Pub & Pantry, also on Broadway in Albany.
A purchase price was not disclosed. When the diner was first announced for sale, in late 2009, the Browns were asking $350,000 for it.
Read the Times Union’s extensive coverage here.
The Business Review is reporting the results of the Reis Apartment Survey:
The annualized vacancy rate in the Albany metro area was 3.3 percent in 2011, the 22nd lowest rate among 200 metro areas surveyed by REIS, a real estate research firm in New York City. The annualized vacancy rate in the U.S. was 5.9 percent. In the Northeast, it was 4 percent, according to Reis.
The annualized rate is the average of the current vacancy rate and the rate from the same quarter of the previous year. In the Albany area, those rates were 3 percent and3.7 percent, respectively. As vacancies declined, average asking rents rose 3.2 percent for two-bedroom units, 2.4 percent for studio apartments, 1.8 percent for three-bedroom units and 0.6 percent for one-bedroom units. The increases were on an annualized basis. Reis surveyed 115 apartment complexes.
Click here to read the full story.
Sunrise Management & Consulting’s “Multifamily Rental Market Report Fall 2011″ reports that multifamily rental rates are recovering throughout the northeast market. The Northeastern Regional Overview states:
The Fall 2011 Sunrise Multifamily Rental Market Report finds average rental rates throughout the Northeast to be at or above rental rate levels from the Fall of 2008, having mostly recovered from the economic downturn. These findings are driven by rising demand for rentals amid constrained inventory throughout the region.
Average rent in the Capital Region was up 3.5% over Fall 2010 and 8.4% over Fall 2008.
Read the full report here.
Trader Joe's is coming to the #Albany area. Confirms store for Wolf Road in Colonie. bit.ly/yQ9MiA—
Chris Churchill (@chris_churchill) January 06, 2012
Shirley’s diner in Saratoga Springs sold to former Canadian race track president bizjournals.com/albany/news/20… via @Business_Review—
Gary Snowdon (@garysnowdon) December 19, 2011
I have decided, after many years of juggling appraisal work for two, and sometimes three, appraisal practices (including my own), to concentrate all of my time and effort on my private practice, Snowdon Valuation.
So, to those of you who know me from my association with CBRE-Albany and L.B. Berdan, “Welcome to Snowdon Valuation.” My contact information is listed on the sidebar at right. I look forward to our continued relationship!
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