LMDC Unveils WTC Redevelopment Ideas
With the unveiling of nine new design proposals for the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site by seven architectural firms, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation announced plans for a public outreach effort. Visitors are now coming to the Winter Garden by the thousands to view the models, which have been placed behind the windows of empty storefronts. (Posted Dec 23)

What’s up with that project? A BPC roundup
Weather-hampered ballfield construction, dog run delays, and new public toilets were among projects discussed recently in an update by Battery Park City Authority officials. (Posted Dec 6)


Independence Plaza Residents Rally
to Keep Their Homes
About 40 Independence Plaza residents sloshed their way to City Hall Dec. 5 to join a rally organized by Housing First, a coalition that wants to the city to create100,000 new affordable housing units and preserve 85,000 more. IPN tenants say that their homes are among those in

jeopardy. The three-tower complex of 1,330 units is expected to be sold to Laurnce Gluck, who said he intends to take IPN out of the Mitchell-Lama program that has kept rents affordable for middle income residents. Gluck has said that three-fourths of IPN tenants are “rent-burdened” and will qualify for government rent subsidies that will allow them to stay in their homes. Other rents, he said, would be negotiated. The tenant association is looking for a way that residents can buy their apartments at below-market rates or be protected from big rent increases. (Posted Dec 6)

Frustrated by months of fruitless discussions with District 2 and the Department of Education, Community Board 1 chair Madelyn Wils sent a letter to schools chancellor Joel Klein saying the board would not raise funds for the Millenium High School if, by Dec. 17, he does not agree to an admissions policy for the school that gives priority to Downtown students. The school, temporarily housed at Second Avenue and East 57th Street, will probably move next year to 75 Broad Street. (Posted Dec 4)

As Community Board 1 presses its demand that Millenium High School would be an important option for the children of Lower Manhattan, it is also beginning to question how I.S. 89 and other District 2 middle schools have fared under the district’s 1998 mandate for “choice.” When I.S. 89 was created five years ago, local parents pleaded in vain for it to be zoned for Lower Manhattan. (Posted Dec 4)

Woolworth Building hit with violations for unlawful advertising. (Posted Dec 4)

The website of Van Wagner Communications, which specializes in outdoor ads, promotes a wide selection of walls, construction sites, phone booths, buses and billboards that are available to advertisers. Among them is the south wall of the Peck Slip Station post office, between South Street Seaport and the Brooklyn Bridge, where the company has secured a prominent spot for a 27-by-60-foot sign. (Posted Dec 4)

Neighbors Against Noise, a group of Tribeca residents who have been battling the cacophony from a nearby telecommunications building for years, say they are now fighting not for a night’s sleep, but for their lives. Prompted by a recent front-page article in the New York Times article exposing an investigation into diesel fuel storage in “telecom hotels” around the city, the group said it will sue the city to bring buildings such as 60 Hudson Street, the former Western Union Building, into compliance with city laws. (Posted Dec 4)

From their fourth-floor balcony overlooking Greenwich Street, Darrell Wilks and Valerie Cates have a beautiful view of Washington Market Park, with the golden leaves of its honey locust trees framing the broad blue and purple stripes of the new playground. Blue and purple? Stripes? That not-so-natural addition, marking the safety surface of the expanded play area near Chambers and Greenwich streets, have Wilks, Cates and many of their neighbors seeing red. (Posted Dec 4)

When Tribeca last heard from the developer of the narrow lot at the corner of Church and Duane streets, a year and a half ago, he told worried residents that he was planning to build a six-story residential loft building. His designs for a hotel had repeatedly been opposed by neighbors and rejected by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission. But last month, when excavation work suddenly began at the site, Duane Street residents were dismayed to learn from construction workers that a hotel was going up after all, and they’re worried again. (Posted Dec 4)

What to do with West Street. The plans for that thoroughfare below Chambers Street are increasingly the subject of controversy and concern as the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site moves forward, and many residents, especially those in Battery Park City, wonder about the impact of a new—pehaps submerged—roadway on their neighborhoods. Last month, a state Department of Transportation official laid out four possible configurations for a new West Street. (Posted Dec 4)

Grant Checks Start Rolling Out To Residents, but IRS Moves In
Though moving more slowly than anticipated, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation last month made progress with its $281 million residential grant program, sending checks to 3,600 people by month’s end. But at the same time, the IRS announced that recipients of the federally funded grants, meant to attract and keep residents Downtown, must pay income tax on parts of their awards. (Posted Dec 4)

Progress Is Slow but Steady as Thousands Await EPA Cleanup
More than three months into the Environmental Protection Agency’s indoor cleaning and testing program, some residents were relieved to have their apartments cleaned and declared asbestos-free by the EPA, and others were disappointed in the program. But the most common refrain among those interviewed was that they were frustrated because they had heard nothing from the EPA since registering months ago. (Posted Dec 4)

Landmarks OKs Wider Tribeca Historic District; Hopes for More
The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously last month to extend the Tribeca South Historic District, and several commissioners said they hoped to see additional areas in the neighborhood protected. (Posted Dec 4)

Con Ed Went Back on Promise Over Emissions, Neighbors Say
Residents who live next to the Con Edison substation on South Street are fuming because, they say, electro-magnetic fields and noise emissions from the facility have increased significantly since new transformers were installed earlier this year, but Con Ed has not kept its promise to maintain levels it projected before expanding the substation’s capacity. (Posted Dec 4)

Developer Spars with CB1 Over Plan to Thwart Building
For months, real estate powerhouse Milstein Properties has been quietly lobbying against Community Board 1’s effort to bar large-scale development in the South Street Seaport area, which would prevent the developer from putting a residential tower at 250 Water Street. Last month, Milstein representatives and board members met face to face over the board’s proposal to change zoning rules, and a critical City Planning Commission vote on the plan may take place in January. (Posted Dec 4)

It’s hard to imagine that tons of the Hudson River sediment would be dredged without a single environmental study, a hearing, or even a debate, but when disaster struck on Sept. 11, some 120,000 cubic yards of riverbed next to Tribeca’s Pier 25 were removed to accommodate barges that were needed for the removal of World Trade Center debris. Now, a crew of four Cornell University researchers working on a tiny trawler in the waters off Manhattan’s West Side hopes to help us understand what the Trade Center disaster and the dredging did to the Hudson. (Posted Dec 4)

Spirit of the Season: A Calendar of Holiday Fun
Plenty of holiday events are happening all over Downtown this month. Here’s a run-down of what’s happening. (Posted Dec 4)

Can a two-hour course in a Beach Street loft turn our reporter into a hypnotist—and help her quit smoking? Anne Kadet takes a crash course in the art and business of hypnosis, taught by a Las Vegas doctor who uses his powers to cure cancer, heal childhood trauma and help executives improve their golf game. (Posted Dec 4)

A half-century ago, they were buddies in Paris, living in garrets, arguing about art in smoky cafes and showing their work at a tiny gallery at 8 rue Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, called Gallerie Huit. Last month, these 21 artists, some famous, all accomplished and several using canes or wheelchairs, and their work were reunited at Studio 18 Gallery in Tribeca, for the opening of “Galerie Huit: American Artists in Paris 1950-52.” (Posted Dec 4)

In the largely empty and infinitely malleable space of the studio-gallery Engine 27, where black sound baffles line the brick walls and massive speakers hang from the ceiling, composers, musicians and “sound artists” stretch the meanings of music and art. Last month, the Franklin Street gallery participated in a “Global Internet Exchange” in which musicians around the world played together in a series of performances via internet feed, incorporating six-second delays and layers of feedback into their improvisational collaboration. (Posted Dec 4)

Long Island City-based food art impresario Alisoun Meehan turns dinners into 100-square-foot pastels on canvas, with her appetite for culinary subjects incorporating mostly sweets and meats, from a petit fours to well-marbled T-bone steaks to the carcasses of pigs and chickens hanging in Chinatown windows. As a curator, she has mounted food-themed shows in moving trucks, meat lockers, pastry kitchens and gun ranges, and this month she’s exhibiting “Sugar Craze,” a feast for the eyes if not the stomach, at A Taste of Art, the gallery/eatery on Duane Street. (Posted Dec 4)