Vogue Editor's Neighbors Are Pissed About Her Stupid Geothermal Well

By Kelly Faircloth  |  September 11, 2014 | 10:40pm

Vogue contributing editor, socialite (yes, that’s a title) and lover of puffy sleeves Lauren Santo Domingo is attempting to install a geothermal well underneath her Gramercy Park townhouse. And her neighbors are already utterly, thoroughly sick of the unrelenting noise.

DNAInfo reports that the perennial best-dressed-list honoree and her comically wealthy husband, Columbian beer scion Andres Santo Domingo, are putting in one of the eco-friendly wells (which draw on the Earth’s energy for heating and cooling, or something; I’m a blogger, not an engineer, Jim). But the project requires drilling more than a thousand feet into the earth. That just started Monday, and it is LOUD, and their neighbors are livid.

Besides the noise, construction is reportedly interfering with sidewalk traffic, and thus far three trees have been lost to the depredations of trucks associated with the project.

“We’ve never had as many phone calls and emails and people stopping us on the street to complain about a construction project as this one,” according to the president of the Gramercy Park Block Association, who added that it’s disturbed the bucolic peace of their private park. Said neighbor Sean Brady:

“The drill is something you seen in the [James Dean] movie “Giant,” like for a small oil well. It’s like a big piece of equipment you’d use wildcatting on Gramercy Park hoping to strike it rich if you weren’t already rich,” Brady said. “It’s taken over the whole neighborhood.”

Wildcatting on Gramercy Park!!! This is the best feud ever.

But perhaps the angriest local is four-decade neighborhood veteran Pamela Vassil, who carped that, “Everybody is furious. It’s a complete disregard for the neighbors.” She also told the Post, “I’m sick and tired of it,” and, “It’s unconscionable to be held hostage by this family without any regard for the neighbors or the neighborhood.” Pamelia is mad as hell and BY GOD she is not going to take it anymore.

Who can blame her, though? It sounds like the geothermal drilling is merely the crowning indignity. The Domingos bought the townhouse in 2010, but they’ve never moved in, spending the entire intervening four years renovating. (They needed a swimming pool, you see.) Zinged Pamela: “The Empire State Building was built in 11 months. This has been going on for four stinking years.”

Come sit by me, Pamela!

 
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