Author: Matthew Fenton

Activists Float Alternative to BPCA Plan for Wagner Park, Mull Legal Action As the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) prepares to demolish and rebuild Wagner Park, to create resiliency measures designed to protect against flooding, opponents of this plan are advocating for their own alternative vision, which they say will preserve the park and provide...

Artisanal Market May Be Squeezed from Site of New York’s Earliest Trading Post The Fulton Stall Market, a highly regarded non-profit indoor/outdoor farmers market that has offered locally grown fresh food in the South Street Seaport neighborhood since 2015, is facing an uncertain future. This has prompted Community Board 1 (CB1) to push the City’s...

Mediation on Justice by Formerly Incarcerated Muralist Now on Display Battery Park City is home to a new piece of public art that is both poignant and provocative. “Justice Reflected,” artist James Hough’s installation of three stained glass panels, configured as five-foot circular medallions, was formally dedicated on the curved 90-foot-long granite wall overlooking Esplanade...

Governor Vetoes Measure That Would Have Given Residents a Stronger Voice in BPCA Decisions More than a year of concerted effort by Lower Manhattan community activists and elected officials reached a disappointing turning point on the evening of November 21, when Governor Kathy Hochul vetoed a proposed law that would have expanded the number of...

New Air Taxi Service Coming to Wall Street Heliport; FAA and National Park Service Encourage Helicopter Tours Over National Monuments Because of noise complaints, local leaders have pushed for years to scale back the volume of helicopter traffic at the Wall Street Heliport.   Downtown activists and leaders who have for years pushed to limit...

The Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) hosted a Public Scoping Meeting about its North/West Battery Park City Resiliency Project on November 16 at Stuyvesant High School (345 Chambers Street, near the corner of North End Avenue), from 5pm to 8pm. The meeting was the fifth in a series of public sessions about the North/West Battery...