Thursday, September 3, 2026 · No. 24
Good morning, Yorkville. The Council hearing we have been waiting on since July finally happened yesterday — with a widow at the microphone and eight bills on the table, though still no named cooling tower. Also today: the corner of York and 81st gets its answer, and a familiar Third Avenue storefront gets a suitor.
The Lead
A widow testifies, and the Council moves: eight Legionnaires' bills on the table
The City Council's health committee held its long-awaited oversight hearing on this summer's Legionnaires' outbreak Wednesday, where Ida Goldstein — whose husband was among the 11 killed — testified, and members previewed an eight-bill package: temporary testing sites plus a public map, more frequent cooling-tower cleaning, education and outreach, and transparency measures. None of it has been voted on yet, and the outbreak's source tower has still not been named, per Gothamist; PIX11 and Patch also covered the hearing. We will keep asking about the sequencing results.
via Gothamist
Around the Neighborhood
The corner York Avenue lost in 2023 returns as ten full-floor condos
The Rybak Development site at York Avenue and East 81st Street — where two low-rise buildings came down in 2023 — now has a name and a sales team: 500 East 81st Street, an 11-story condominium of ten full-floor four-bedroom homes with private elevators and terraces, marketed by Douglas Elliman's Eklund | Gomes team with a projected $69.4 million sellout, per New York YIMBY, which has tracked the build from foundations to topping-out and expects completion by late 2026.
via New York YIMBY
Talk of the Neighborhood
A seafood wine bar wants Kaia's old corner of Third Avenue
Top Table LLC — led by Enrique Lerma, an established Upper East Side restaurateur — has filed for a full liquor license at 1614 Third Avenue between 90th and 91st, the storefront Kaia Wine Bar held for 15 years before decamping last December to a bigger space at 1446 First Avenue, down at 75th. Lerma told a Community Board 8 meeting the concept will be seafood-focused and mostly wine and cocktails, open 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. seven days a week, per East Side Feed; What Now NY and Patch carried the same filing. CB8's committee approved the application unanimously — the State Liquor Authority has the final call.
via East Side Feed
This Week
Third Avenue street fair, Saturday Sept 19
The Manhattan Chamber of Commerce's 3rd Avenue Community Benefit Festival returns Saturday, September 19, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. — vendors, live music, and kids' rides along Third Avenue from 66th to 86th Street, per the city's events calendar. The 79th-to-86th stretch is our patch; the rest is a pleasant walk south. Free.
via NYC.gov events calendar
Ten more days of free swim at John Jay
The city's outdoor pool season ends Sunday, September 13, per NYC Parks — which gives John Jay Pool, just south of our line at 77th and Cherokee Place, a final week and a half of free general swim (roughly 11 a.m.–3 p.m. and 4–7 p.m.). After that it's indoor lanes or next June.
via NYC Parks
Corrections
Clarification: at the stargazing esplanade, the stairs are at 86th
Wednesday's telescope-night item briefly told readers to enter Carl Schurz Park near 86th or 87th Street to skip the stairs. Per the Amateur Astronomers Association's own venue page, it's the 86th Street entrance that has the stairs — 87th Street avoids them — and the stargazing season runs May through October, not April. Both were fixed on the site and the events page the same morning; the session itself is tomorrow, Friday, after sunset, weather permitting.
via Amateur Astronomers Association
Yorkville, Remembered
Asphalt Green's playing fields sit on a WWII-era asphalt plant
Long before Asphalt Green anchored East 90th Street with a pool and playing fields, the city had been mixing asphalt for its streets on that East River-side site since 1914 - a location chosen so barges could deliver sand and gravel by water instead of truck. The current Municipal Asphalt Plant building, a swooping parabolic-arch structure designed by architects Ely Jacques Kahn and Robert Allan Jacobs, opened in 1944 and kept mixing asphalt until the plant closed in 1968. Preservationists led by Dr. George and Annette Murphy saved the abandoned plant from demolition, and it reopened as Asphalt Green in 1984.
source: NYC Parks
One more thing: when the kids come home next week asking why the gym is called Asphalt Green when it is neither asphalt nor especially green — see today's history corner. You'll have the barges, the parabola, and the Murphys ready before they finish their snack.