Midday News: Emergency crews remain on scene at Bronx Building Collapse, State Rebate Checks Taxable, and Open House New York Returns with Record Sites

Title: Midday News: Emergency crews remain on scene at Bronx Building Collapse, State Rebate Checks Taxable, and Open House New York Returns with Record Sites

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Janae Pierre: Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City, from WNYC. It's Wednesday, October 1st. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill.

Michael Hill: Emergency responders are still on the scene after a partial building collapse in the Bronx this morning. Fire department officials say a ventilator shaft 20 stories tall collapsed at the building, and they're investigating a potential gas leak. Isabel Sanchez lives in the Mitchell houses and watched the collapse happen from her window.

Isabel Sanchez: At first, you heard the crack of the cement and stuff, you heard it crack. Once it started crackling, the first part at the bottom slid down, and then on the top, the rest of it came down.

Michael Hill: Authorities say there were no injuries or fatalities reported. City emergency management officials say some residents are being evacuated from the affected structure while engineers determine the state of the building. New Yorkers will have to pay federal income taxes on the state rebate checks that start arriving this week. WNYC's Jimmy Vielkind reports.

Jimmy Vielkind: Checks for up to $400 are in the mail, but state officials say people will need to list whatever they get on their tax return next year. Fiscal experts say Governor Hochul could have avoided the federal tax hit if she structured the program differently. EJ McMahon works for the conservative Manhattan Institute. He says the Democratic governor could have just given New Yorkers a credit on their state returns.

EJ McMahon: There were other ways to skin this cat, but none of them would have yielded the kind of political press release the governor wanted.

Jimmy Vielkind: Hochul says the checks provide relief to recent inflation. The governor's budget director says she decided to send checks directly to New Yorkers so the money would get out the door quickly.

Michael Hill: Mid-60s now with sunshine going up to 67 today with sunny skies, winds gusting to 23 miles an hour, clear and cold tonight, chilly down to 51, and still windy.

Janae Pierre: Stay close. There's more after the break.

Michael Hill: The ultimate treasure hunt for lovers of New York City is back this month. That's when Open House New York, or OHNY, takes hundreds of places around the city that are normally closed off to all of us and opens them up. You can go inside private social clubs, climb water towers, visit the MTA's subway maintenance yards, and get on the rooftops of Rockefeller Center. There are 341 locations this year, the biggest that OHNY weekend has ever been. WNYC's Ryan Kailath read through every single one, and he's here with some of his top picks. Ryan, that's a lot of New York to see. How'd you fit all this in?

Ryan: It goes for a while, too. The very first activity is at 12:01 AM on Friday, October 17th. That's before the workday. This is midnight leak detection. You go out with the Department of Environmental Protection, you put on these headphones connected to this crazy contraption they have, and you can listen for leaks in the water mains. They're doing this around Times Square. This they do all the time, but you get to get in on it.

Then the final thing is very, very late on Sunday night, stargazing in Inwood with the amateur astronomers. It's long, 1,600 hours of programming. I would spend some time with the schedule and chart out your list of stuff. A lot of the coolest stuff is on Friday during the day, so if you haven't taken the day off yet, there's still time.

Michael Hill: What's on top of your list this year?

Ryan: Number one for me is the Con Ed power plant on 14th Street because I was here during Hurricane Sandy when that thing blew up, as anybody else who was here will remember. You get to go inside and check out all the works and functioning of how they provide this power for so much of the city out of that plant. That one, I think, you even need to pass a small background check to get in.

Another one I'm really looking forward to, going underground in the underground road network that connects the entire World Trade Center campus. There's a huge cooling plant down there that cools the whole campus and the buildings, and you get shown around. Then you get to go to an exclusive event space on one of the high floors in the '60s of One World Trade Center.

Michael Hill: There's some offerings here that you argue are surprisingly interesting, even if they sound boring. What are some of those?

Ryan: I have a friend who's obsessed with going to the Met Gala, and I'm always like, "Listen, man, anybody with money can go to the Met Gala. What people can't do is go inside the Owls Head Wastewater Treatment Plant in Bay Ridge, where so much of Brooklyn's sewage is processed, and see that up close." That's so much cooler than the Met Gala. The Marine Transfer Station for the Department of Sanitation on the Upper East Side, that's where they barge our trash out of the city. You can go up close and see that being loaded onto barges. There's just so much cool infrastructure behind the scenes in this.

Michael Hill: This is New York City, as we said. How about something a little more glamorous?

Ryan: Oh, the wastewater plant didn't do it for you? There's four separate tours of private spaces at Rockefeller Center. There is a tenants-only park above Radio City Music Hall. There are rooftop gardens on the other side that have an amazing view of St. Patrick's Cathedral. You get to go up to the Rainbow Room. We've all seen a lot of wedding Instagrams up there, but I don't know how many people have been up there, and private clubs, like the Players Club, the National Arts Club, the Douglaston Club in Queens. You usually can't go to this stuff, but this weekend you can.

Michael Hill: Now, Ryan, logistics-wise, how do people sign up? What do they need to know?

Ryan: Most of the sites are totally free. You can just drop in during the opening hours, but some are so high demand that you need a $7 ticket. Those go very fast, so be ready at noon this Friday when they drop. That's on their website, ohny.org.

Michael Hill: You can read a dozen more of Ryan's picks on our news site, Gothamist. Ryan, this is fantastic. Thank you.

Ryan: Very fun. Thanks, Michael.

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Janae Pierre: Thanks for listening. This is NYC Now from WNYC. Check us out for updates every weekday, three times a day, for the latest news headlines and occasional deep dives, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back this evening.

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