Dear Mayor Mamdani…

Community Board 1 Sends City Hall a Lower Manhattan Wish List

As part of the municipal budgeting process, Community Board 1 (CB1) compiles an annual statement of District Needs and Budget Requests, which is submitted every 12 months to City Hall to help set the agenda for policy and spending in the coming year. For Fiscal Year 2027 (which begins July 1), the Board has outlined dozens of goals, in areas ranging from schools and parks to affordable housing and resiliency.

For schools, CB1 wants new elevators for Millennium High School (75 Broad Street), the Lower Manhattan Community Middle School (26 Broadway), and the Richard R. Green High School for Teaching (26 Broadway). Additionally, the Board is seeking to close a traffic lane on Edgar Street to provide P.S. 150 (on Trinity Place) with an outdoor gathering space, as well as a safe location for buses to pick up and drop off students. More broadly, CB1 wants to implement traffic calming measures around all Lower Manhattan school zones, including signage, marked pavements, reduced speed limits, and traffic lights. The Board is also urging the City to add hours to the workdays of school crossing guards to enable benefits and higher pay.

In terms of improvements to local parks, CB1 is seeking funds to expand Duane Park (Hudson and Duane Streets), Barnett Newman Triangle (Church and Franklin Streets), and Finn Square Park (West Broadway and Franklin Street), as well as allocations to support Gotham Park and further develop “the Arches” (alongside the Brooklyn Bridge) as recreation space. Other requests related to the Arches are to open a new branch of the New York Public Library there, and build a public pool.

The Board is asking for new public restrooms at the Arches, as well as on the Municipal Plaza at One Centre Street (near the Brooklyn Bridge entrance.) CB1 wants repairs made to water features at Collect Pond Park (Leonard and Lafayette Streets), Albert Capsouto Park (Canal and Varick Streets), and Delury Square (Gold and Fulton Streets).

More broadly, CB1 notes that throughout Lower Manhattan, “the City has reduced the number of [Parks Department] staff and Parks Enforcement Patrol (PEP) officers. Our parks are not being properly maintained and rules are not enforced.” CB1 is asking for parks staff to replace those eliminated, with a specific request for four additional PEP officers assigned to the Battery Conservancy “to help enforce the vending and quality of life issues.”

To enhance local housing affordability, CB1 wants to “fund housing protections in Battery Park City and establish a program with the aim of increasing and preserving permanent affordable housing.” Noting that rent protections at Gateway Plaza expire in June 2030, the Board notes, “affordable units in rental buildings are diminishing,” and calls for a halt to “the conversion of buildings from rental to co-op in order to maintain rental stock and affordable housing.” A further request is for “veteran-specific Section 8 housing vouchers,” for the planned residential tower slated to begin rising soon at Five World Trade Center.

To help protect Lower Manhattan’s growing population of elders, CB1 wants to “designate the Gateway Plaza residential complex as a ‘Naturally Occurring Retirement Community’ to allow for enhanced services and funding streams for the aging in that location,” while also “providing higher quality food at the Independence Plaza Senior Center.”

Looking to resiliency, the District Needs and Budget Requests statement recommends that the City plan and fund long-term comprehensive resiliency infrastructure for the lower west side of Manhattan from North Moore Street (where it would connect to the Battery Park City Authority’s N/W Resiliency Project) to the north along the Hudson River. “This is especially timely,” CB1 reminds the Mayor, “as the federal government has not renewed funding for the NY & NJ Harbor & Tributaries Focus Area Feasibility Study (HATS), which was expected to address flood resiliency protection for this area.” Further resiliency requests include funding for the completion of design and construction for the FiDi-Seaport Resiliency Plan and for completion of design and construction of the Seaport Coastal Resilience Plan.