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Residents Hear Reports on 9/11 Health Impacts
Posted Sept. 18
At a town hall meeting, Downtown residents were told of ill health suffered by some who lived near the World Trade Center site on Sept. 11.
Hearings on 60 Hudson Street Draw to a Close
Posted Sept. 18
In the third and last in a series of contentious hearings before the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals, residents and their attorneys and elected officials made their final arguments opposing a variance that allows 60 Hudson Street to store more diesel fuel than city code allows.
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Curiosity & Coping Encircle World Trade Center Site
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Posted Sept. 1
With this, the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, comes much reflection on the tragedy and its aftermath. Panels convene, politicians speak, exhibitions are mounted, and special concerts get performed.
But in the orbit of the World Trade Center site—those few blocks that ring the 16 acres—Sept. 11 is not an annual event. Here, the reminders do not end. |
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New 76-Story Tower Raising Concerns
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Posted Sept. 1
Next month Forest City Ratner will begin excavation for an 876-foot-tall apartment tower, designed by architect Frank Gehry, that will be Downtown’s largest construction project after the Freedom Tower—nearly 100 feet taller than the Woolworth Building. Construction may take as long as five years and require months of pounding pile-driving.
That has neighboring residents, businesses, and Pace University worried. |
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P.S. 234 Crowding May Grow With Delay of New Schools
Posted Sept. 1
In the race between more apartments and more classrooms in Lower Manhattan, the classrooms are losing.
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Fireworks Set Off Sparks of Anger in Battery Park City |
Posted Sept. 1
Anyone with enough money or political pull can get a permit for a fireworks show any night of the week in Lower Manhattan. That doesn't set well with some residents in Battery Park City, where the fireworks explode just outside their windows. “Sounds like Beirut," one resident complained last month during a show. "What idiots are behind these fireworks?”
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Neighbors Claim ‘Coup’ in Zoning Battle
Posted Sept. 1
Residents of northern Tribeca, backed by Community Board 1 and City Councilman Alan Gerson, forced a developer last month to scale back a rezoning proposal that will allow the construction of taller, bulkier buildings along a stretch of Hudson River waterfront.
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With Its Hefty Land Sale, NY Law School Set To Expand |
Posted Sept. 1
Excavation began last month at West Broadway and Leonard Streets in preparation for the construction of a sparkling, glass-encased complex for New York Law School. The new 200,000-square-foot building is part of a $190 million expansion and renovation that will nearly double the size of the school’s Tribeca campus.
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Tribeca Partnership: One Man’s Journey To A Job |
Posted Sept. 1
Ernest Bolling is a likeable guy with a wide grin and friendly manner that makes him easy to picture in a doorman’s uniform or salesman’s tie. But his resume—high school dropout, drug addict, ex-con—needs work.
How can someone like Bolling convince a potential employer that he’s a changed man? He’d have to prove it.
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It’s a Sign of the Times;
Starbucks Trumps Relic |
Posted Sept. 1
The old, hand-painted advertisement on a building near the corner of Lispenard Street and Broadway, fading but still visible for blocks, is not technically a historical artifact, but it is certainly a relic from Tribeca’s industrial past. It is soon to be replaced with a sign of Tribeca's more commercial future—a Starbucks advertisement.
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IN BRIEF
BEEKMAN BUILDING INFO |
BLOCK PARTY |
9/11 VOLUNTEER PROJECTS |
Learn from the developers about the 76-story residential tower to go up on the New York Downtown Hospital parking lot site on Beekman St. A community meeting is set for Sept. 14 at 6 p.m. in Pace University’s Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts. |
The Fifth Annual Battery Park City Block Party will take place on Sept. 16, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., on Vesey Street between West Street and North End Avenue. There will be live music, food, children’s rides, a dog parade and a performance by the New American Youth Ballet. |
New York Cares, a local nonprofit, will offer over 1,000 volunteer opportunities throughout the city in commemoration of the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11. Lower Manhattan projects include English language tutoring in Chinatown, and assembling picnic tables and cleaning around historic houses on Governor’s Island. Visit www.nycares.org or www.mygooddeed.org to register to become a volunteer, or for more information. |
WHITMAN AT THE SEAPORT |
BOOK SALE |
FREE YOGA, PILATES |
A reading of Walt Whitman's epic poem “Song of Myself” will take place aboard the tall ship Peking at the South Street Seaport on Sept. 17. The reading begins at 5:30 p.m. and lasts about three hours. To participate as a reader, email songofmyself2006@yahoo.com. Tickets are $6; call 212-748-8786 to reserve.
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The New Amsterdam Library, at 9 Murray St., will hold a book sale on Sept. 25 and 26 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Sept. 27 from noon to 6 p.m. Paperback and hardcover books in all genres, including children’s fiction and reference books, will be on sale. |
Dance New Amsterdam, at 280 Broadway, 2nd fl., is offering free yoga and Pilates classes on Tuesday and Thursday mornings from Sept. 5–14, at 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. For more information, visit www.dnadance.org. |
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
TOO MANY TOUR BUSSES IN BATTERY PARK CITY |
TRUTH ABOUT 60 HUDSON STREET NOT BEING TOLD |
SOME IDEAS FOR THE NYPD FOR SECURING CITY HALL
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My husband and I are embarking on a mission to prevent double-decker, and other tour busses from illegally parking in our cul-de-sac at the end of South End Avenue in Battery Park City. Recently, we have witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of tour busses, from large vans to the monstrous, red, double-decker busses, travelling down to the end of South End Avenue and at best, making 20-point turns to head back up the street (as if they wound up there by mistake), at worst, parking in a “No Standing - Any Time” zone to let tourists off and waiting for their return, then having to make the necessary 20-point turn to exit the cul-de-sac.
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Sixty Hudson Street, the noxious, fuel-laden telecom hotel in our midst, has been given a mythical history. It was presented last June by Phyllis Arnold, the Buildings Department’s counsel, at a hearing before the Board of Standards and Appeals of an appeal brought by Neighbors Against N.O.I.S.E. to overturn a Buildings Department waiver permitting 60 Hudson to store illegal amounts of diesel fuel on upper floors. According to Ms. Arnold, “In some ways this building is a relic. But it’s there.. . . It’s an as of right office building that is now functioning in a way that the law permits it to function. . . . The neighborhood has changed, in old common law parlance we would call it coming to the nuisance.”
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NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly seems nervous about security at City Hall. And when a brave guy like Ray Kelly is nervous, it makes me nervous, which leads me to thinking of big solutions.
So here’s a radical suggestion for Lower Manhattan, designed for this new era of being a constant terrorist target:
Build a new 21st-Century civic center for New York City with an up-to-date, wired-for-digital, secure City Hall; office buildings for the City Council and City agencies; and a public space for press conferences, civic celebrations and demonstrations. The new civic center is built at the WTC site, the West Side rail yards or even in Brooklyn or Queens.
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