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Not that this is surprising, but the real-estate blog Triple Mint calls attention to yesterday's Post report that Andy Warhol's Factory is set to be converted into luxury condo lofts.

This former Con-Ed substation is an unusual T-shaped four story building with frontage on three sides: Madison Avenue, 33rd Street, and 32nd Street. It has been bought and sold numerous times since the estate owned it after the artist's death in 1987, but no one seems to have been able to use it effectively. The New York Post's Lois Weiss now reports that a partnership has plans to convert it into a 22-story luxury loft condo with 50 units.

We could turn this into a ideal metaphor for the transformation of Manhattan. We could wax nostalgic for a time when artists and weirdos and all sorts of interesting, creative people lived and worked in the borough, and were able to afford it. We could bemoan that it's instead turning into essentially an upscale suburb, an emasculated shell of its former vibrant self. We could whine about how all sorts of New York legends are being swallowed up by the real-estate boom, unable to hold out against high rents and luxury condoization and all that. (See also: CBGB's.)

But we won't.

Warhol Factory Condos [Triple Mint]
Between Punk Rock and a Hard Place [NY Mag]