The site was formerly occupied by a Coca-Cola bottling plant and Mr. Zucker acquired it in 1978 but had to negotiate for several years with the community board that successfully argued for a 20 percent reduction in its bulk and a public park on First Avenue.
This massive, white-brick rental apartment building at 401 East 34th Street between First Avenue and the FDR Drive was a pioneer in the redevelopment of the East Midtown area near the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.
It was erected in 1985 by the Zucker Organization and was known as Rivergate until 2014 when UDR, Inc., a real estate investment trust with more than 50,000 apartments, changed its name to View 54 and installed new windows with roller shades. James D. Klingbell, a past chair of the Urban Land Institute, is chair of UDR.
The New York State Attorney General has accused the Coca‐Cola Bottling Company of New York of running an illegal lottery in its Dr Pepper “cash caps” game.
“No purchase required to win,” the advertisements stated, in line with the state’s gambling control law barring commercial sponsors of sweepstakes, lotteries and other games of chance from requiring participants to buy anything or from charging any other kind of entry fee.
The ads went on to state that “free ‘cash‐in’ caps may be picked up at your local Dr Pepper bottler.”
However, Attorney General Robert Abrams charged in his complaint, “These bottling plants are generally situated in industrial areas, thereby making it highly inconvenient for most consumers to visit them and highly unlikely that they would even attempt to do so.”
Moreover, the complaint said, when a frauds investigator tried to obtain free bottle caps at one of the plants, at 425 East 34th Street, he was turned away.
Coca-Cola Bottling Company of New York, Inc. (hereafter New York Coca-Cola
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