Local leaders are echoing calls from elected officials for Mayor Bill de Blasio to reconsider his plan to boost diversity at the City’s specialized high schools, a group of eight selective secondary schools, where students are admitted on the basis of a competitive examination. In a series of proposals, City Hall has variously called for […]

Six years, two months, and 11 days after Hurricane Sandy swamped Lower Manhattan, Community Board 1 (CB1) is sounding the alarm about the process for developing a resiliency plan to protect the community from future extreme-weather events, which appears to have lapsed into an indefinite hiatus. At a December 19 meeting, Diana Switaj, CB1’s Director […]

He’s cut quite the figure for more than a century, standing alone in Trinity churchyard. Hamilton – just steps away – is who everyone seems to come for, but then are all drawn to the large bronze looming to the left. All lawyer robe and courtroom wig turned away to face Broadway. Not a hint […]

Community Board 1 (CB1) is pushing for local representation on a board created by Governor Andrew Cuomo, to choose a location with Battery Park City for a planned memorial to 2017’s Hurricane Maria (which killed nearly 3,000 residents of Puerto Rico), and oversee its design. In September, on the first anniversary of the devastation wrought […]

Shortly after 7:00 am on Saturday, December 29, a driver moving northbound along West Street at speeds prosecutors now estimate to have been in excess of 90 miles per hour slammed into another vehicle at West Street at Laight Street, flipping it over, causing it to burst into flames, and killing the woman inside. The […]

Gilbert Chesterton said that, “Christmas is built on a beautiful and intentional paradox — that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.” In an odd way, this restless longing to get home, or to find a place in the world to call home, is perhaps at the bottom of Christmas. Robert […]

The much-anticipated Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC) at the World Trade Center has passed several new milestones on the road from vision to completion in recent days. Last week, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) allocated an additional $89 million to cover construction costs for the project. At the December 13 meeting of the LMDC’s […]

Two years after opening amid much fanfare, Saks Fifth Avenue is pulling the plug on its three-level, 86,000-square-foot women’s store in Brookfield Place. The space, at 225 Liberty Street, was extensively remodeled in 2015 and 2016 to accommodate Saks, which was billed as the anchor retail tenant that would lead the transformation of the shopping […]

Although the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio has backed away from its controversial proposal to build a new, 40-story jail on top of a historic government office building at 80 Centre Street, it still aims to bring more prison capacity to Lower Manhattan. The revised iteration of this plan is to expand the Manhattan […]

The Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) has extended for one year its contract with Allied Universal, the firm that provides security guards (known as “safety ambassadors”) to the community. The original agreement, signed in November, 2015, provided for three years of such service (at a cost of $2.1 million per year), and was set to […]

As many as 10,000 people per weekend day will be pushed onto Battery Park City streets by a plan to use ferries to replace PATH train service to the World Trade Center, which will be on weekend hiatus for the next two years, during repairs to a pair of tunnels beneath the Hudson River that […]

Tomorrow (Saturday, December 15), the Rooftop at Pier 17 Winterland, opens for the season, featuring a pop-up winter village and market, along with New York’s first outdoor rooftop ice skating rink. The facility, which is nearly the size of the iconic ice rink in Rockefeller Center, is slated to offer not only traditional ice-skating lessons […]

On Thursday, December 6, the 200-year-old New York Stock Exchange saw its first-ever public menorah lighting. On the fifth night of the eight-day holiday of Chanukah, Rabbi Nissi Eber lit the Chanukah menorah at a public Menorah lighting outside the Exchange on Broad Street. The gathering  of hundreds of celebrants was organized by Chabad of […]

As the historic New Market Building in the South Street Seaport faces demolition, community leaders are beginning to ponder the future of the site. Anthony Notaro At the November 27 meeting of Community Board 1 (CB1), chair Anthony Notaro observed that the City’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC), “says that building is falling apart, it’s condemned, […]

Brookfield Properties, the owner of the giant Brookfield Place retail and office complex, plans a gut renovation to modernize the lobby of 200 Liberty Street, which faces the south side of Liberty Street, between South End Avenue and West Street. At the November 27 meeting of Community Board 1 (CB1), Tammy Meltzer, who chairs the […]

In a development that was widely anticipated, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and City Council member Margaret Chin (along with Speaker Corey Johnson, representing the City Council as a whole) have filed suit in Manhattan State Supreme Court on Friday to prevent the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio from approving three “super-tall” residential developments […]

Opponents of massive building projects along the East River waterfront were dealt a setback on Wednesday, when the City Planning Commission (CPC) approval proposals for three large residential developments in the Two Bridges neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, located on the shore of the East River, roughly between the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges. It is in […]

P.S. 150, the beloved elementary school also known as the Tribeca Learning Center, has been saved. Although no official announcement has been made, multiple sources directly familiar with the situation confirm that late Wednesday afternoon, all concerned parties agreed in principle to a deal that will keep the school at its current location, within the […]

A college that became part of the migration to Lower Manhattan by institutions of higher learning during the area’s recovery in the years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 is being sued by the City’s Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) over allegations of predatory lending practices, among other forms of alleged misconduct. Berkeley […]

Area residents and community leaders are sounding a chorus of alarm about pedestrian safety concerns in and around Battery Park City. At the November 27 meeting of Community Board 1 (CB1), resident Allison Turkel rose during the public session, holding her two-year-old daughter, Sloan, to say, “I am very concerned about the intersection of West […]