Trinity Church Awards to Multiple Downtown Public-Service Groups
Above: Trinity’s priest-in-charge, the Reverend Phil Jackson: “This year’s grantees are giving a voice to the voiceless and implementing innovative programing to help those most in need in their communities.” Below: Borough of Manhattan Community College, located in Tribeca, is the beneficiary of a $2-million grant from Trinity Church to assist homeless students.
Trinity Church, the Episcopal parish in Lower Manhattan, has donated $2 million to the Borough of Manhattan Community College, located on Chambers Street, to help offer housing to homeless students enrolled at the school. The funds will be used to construct a residential facility near the campus that will provide shelter to as many as 50 students for up to three years. The accommodation is expected to be open by this spring.
A 2019 survey of students at the City University of New York system (of which BMCC is a part) found that of the 22,000 respondents, 55 percent reported experiencing housing insecurity in the previous year, while 14 percent had experienced actual homelessness.
The BMCC grant is part of a slew of recent donations by Trinity to Lower Manhattan public-service organizations. The Church also recently donated $300,000 to the Leadership and Public Service High School, located at the intersection of Thames Street and Trinity Place. Another contribution (of $150,000) went to the Freedom Agenda project at the Urban Justice Center (located on Rector Street), which seeks to empower formerly incarcerated individuals.
These gifts cap a record year of giving by Trinity Church, which included $46 million in contributions to non-profit organizations and public-service groups around the nation and throughout the world, up from $33 million in 2021.
Reverend Phil Jackson, Trinity’s priest-in-charge, said that the recipients, “are giving a voice to the voiceless and implementing innovative programming to help those most in need in their communities.
“These grants are a response to the needs of our time,” he added, “which have been exacerbated by the global pandemic, and we are pleased to be able to assist the organizations that are doing this good work.”
Matthew Fenton
Beside the Pointe
At 41 River Terrace, Affordability Provisions Extended for Low-Income Residents But Not for Middle-Income Renters
The Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) announced Tuesday that it had reached an agreement to preserve 70 affordable rental apartments in the Tribeca Pointe building through the year 2069. The deal will require that the building owner, Rockrose, continue to offer deeply discounted rents to residents of 70 apartments within the 340-unit structure. These households are set aside for residents earning below either 40 or 50 percent of the “area median income” (AMI). This income bracket currently ranges from $33,440 to $41,800 (for a household consisting of one person), and goes as high as $47,720 to $59,650 (for a household of four).
When Tribeca Pointe opened in 1999, these requirements translated into $343 or $429 per month in a studio (for those earning up to 40 or 50 percent of AMI, respectively), $368 or $459 for a one-bedroom apartment, and $441 or $451 for a two-bedroom unit. Today, the same formulas (which cap rent at 30 percent of the two income thresholds) restrict rent on a studio apartment, inhabited by one person, to $836 (for a tenant earning below 40 percent of AMI) or $1045 (for a renter earning below 50 percent of AMI).
What Never Went Up in the First Place, Still Comes Down…
Lower Manhattan Site Purchased for $390 Million Being Shopped for Half-Off
In a story first reported by the Real Deal, the financial distress plaguing property investment firm China Oceanwide Holdings (itself part of the wider contagion surrounding Shenzhen-based real estate firm, Evergrande) has led to a fire-sale price for a trophy Lower Manhattan parcel.
The company purchased 80 South Street (located between John Street and Maiden Lane) from the Howard Hughes Corporation in 2016 for $390 million. This transaction included a companion site, at 163 Front Street, that shares a mid-block border with 80 South Street. The combined parcel, plus air rights from nearby lots purchased and assembled by Howard Hughes, gave China Oceanwide the right to build a tower with a height of more than 1,400 feet, enclosing more than one million square feet of interior space. To read more…
Join China expert and diplomat Nicholas Platt, who will share the story of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 1973 trip to China at Richard Nixon’s behest. Platt, who was the Foreign Service Control Officer for that historic visit, handled the negotiations—with plenty of challenges on both the American and the Chinese sides.
6PM
Community Board 1 Landmarks & Preservation Committee
In this lecture, Desmarais will discuss recent discoveries about the Count de Rochambeau’s army that counter popular assumptions—focusing primarily on the recently published diary of the Count de Lauberdière, which includes details that are not covered in any other French diaries. Serving as an aide-de-camp on General Rochambeau’s staff, the young and well-educated Lauberdière provided a unique perspective of the war, including descriptions of the French army’s camp in Newport, the long march to Yorktown, the siege and capture, and a fascinating examination of the people and their distinctive colonial culture. This lecture will take place via Zoom. Free
The pandemic has highlighted health inequities that disproportionately impact vulnerable populations by creating and exacerbating poverty and leading to decreased life expectancy throughout the world. Join the Rev. Phillip Jackson as he speaks to leaders and experts, exploring how people of faith can advocate for those most affected by these inequities. Free
Online film streaming. Part concert film and part comedy, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979, Allan Arkush) is about a student who leads a rock rebellion against the school administration with help from the Ramones. Registration required. Free
During the last year of her life, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sat down with Moment editor-in-chief Nadine Epstein to discuss the Jewish women she found inspiring. In Epstein’s new intergenerational book RBG’s Brave and Brilliant Women: 33 Jewish Women to Inspire Everyone, she profiles the women Ginsburg identified and reflects on each of their stories. The trailblazers in the book, like Ginsburg herself, each fought to forge a better world rather than accepting it as it was. Join the Museum of Jewish Heritage and Moment for a program celebrating RBG’s Brave and Brilliant Women, featuring Epstein in conversation with author and journalist Abigail Pogrebin.Free; suggested $10 donation
CLASSIFIEDS & PERSONALS
Swaps & Trades, Respectable Employment, Lost and Found
We can help you easily declutter and organize your overstuffed closets, jammed bookcases, bursting cabinets and drawers, and enormous stacks of paper to put your home in “company is coming” condition.
Providing Companion and Home Health Aide Care to clients with dementia.Help with grooming, dressing and wheelchair assistance. Able to escort client to parks and engage in conversations of desired topics and interests of client. Reliable & Honest
78 year old refined intellectual gentleman having a passion for cruises and travel seeking a male or female caregiver/companion in exchange for all expense paid venture on the ocean. Only requirement is relationship comfort between us and ability to help with physical care regarding the limitations and restrictions of COPD.
New Council Member on Development and Diversity, Prison Plans and Affordability
Newly inaugurated City Council member Christopher Marte reflected on the Lower Manhattan district he now represents, and some of the issues facing the community, in a January 4 interview with WNYC radio.
“We have some of the wealthiest [residents] in Battery Park City and Tribeca,” Mr. Marte told host Brian Lehrer, “but we have people who live beneath or close to the poverty line, whether it’s in the Smith houses, or people who live in rent-stabilized apartments. And they come from all over the world. There are the Fujianese community on East Broadway, and Dominicans, Puerto Ricans.”
SLA Okays New Performance Venue in FiDi, Despite Opposition from Local Leaders
Over the objections of Community Board 1 (CB1) and hundreds of local residents, the State Liquor Authority (SLA) has approved the application for a license to serve alcohol by Submursive, a production company that wants to open a 100,000-square-foot performance venue, spread across seven floors of 20 Exchange Place, in the Financial District.
A Onetime Haunt of Ponies, Plutocrats, and Club Rats Will Get a Room with a View
Tribeca will soon have a new (albeit invisible) penthouse apartment, if the City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission is guided by the advice of Community Board 1. At its November meeting, the Board recommended that the LPC give its okay to a proposal to add a rooftop structure to 157 Hudson Street, located between Laight and Hubert Streets, opposite the Holland Tunnel rotary.
The T-shaped building has a storied history. Erected in 1867, it was originally designed to serve as a multi-story stable for the hundreds of draft horses kept at the ready by the newly founded American Express Company. This was an era when the firm was primarily engaged in the secure shipment of valuable cargo, almost a century before the invention of credit cards. To read more…
Lenders Who Fronted Millions to Operators of Pier A Allege Fraud
Investors who lent more than $16 million to the operators behind the shuttered restaurant at Pier A, on Battery Park City’s southern border allege that the borrowers, “used a fraudulent scheme to squeeze out of the Project all the fees and distributions for themselves that they could before shutting the doors.”
In a development first reported by property industry newsletter the Real Deal, the lenders (Tribeca-based New York City Waterfront Development Fund II) filed suit in Manhattan Supreme Court in November, seeking the return of $16.5 million (the original amount of the 2011 loan, none of which has been repaid), along with $2.63 million in accrued interest, plus attorney’s fees and court costs.
The defendants in this action are a partnership between the Poulakakos restaurant family (who operate numerous Lower Manhattan eateries) and the Dermot Company (a developer of garden apartment complexes around the United States that more recently branched out to New York projects, such as the conversion of Brooklyn’s landmarked Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower into condominium residences). To read more…
Lower Manhattan Greenmarkets
Tribeca Greenmarket
Greenwich Street & Chambers Street
Every Wednesday & Saturday, 8am-3pm
Food Scrap Collection: Saturdays, 8am-1pm
Open Saturdays and Wednesdays year round
Bowling Green Greenmarket
Green Greenmarket at Bowling Green
Broadway & Whitehall St
Open Tuesday and Thursdays, year-round
Market Hours: 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Compost Program: 8 a.m. – 11 a.m.
The Bowling Green Greenmarket brings fresh offerings from local farms to Lower Manhattan’s historic Bowling Green plaza. Twice a week year-round stop by to load up on the season’s freshest fruit, crisp vegetables, beautiful plants, and freshly baked loaves of bread, quiches, and pot pies.
Fulton Street cobblestones between South and Front Sts. across from McNally Jackson Bookstore.
Locally grown produce from Rogowski Farm, Breezy Hill Orchard, and other farmers and small-batch specialty food products, sold directly by their producers. Producers vary from week to week.
SNAP/EBT/P-EBT, Debit/Credit, and Farmers Market Nutrition Program checks accepted at all farmers markets.
TODAY IN HISTORY
January 13
1942 – Henry Ford patents a plastic automobile, which is 30% lighter than a regular car.
532 – The Nika riots break out, during the racing season at the Hippodrome in Constantinople, as a result of discontent with the rule of the Emperor Justinian I.
1815 – War of 1812: British troops capture Fort Peter in St. Marys, Georgia, the only battle of the war to take place in the state.
1840 – The steamship Lexington burns and sinks four miles off the coast of Long Island with the loss of 139 lives.
1888 – The National Geographic Society is founded in Washington, D.C.
1893 – The Independent Labour Party of the United Kingdom holds its first meeting.
1893 – U.S. Marines land in Honolulu, Hawaii from the USS Boston to prevent the queen from abrogating the Bayonet Constitution.
1908 – The Rhoads Opera House fire in Boyertown, Pennsylvania kills 171 people.
1910 – The first public radio broadcast takes place; a live performance of the operas Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci are sent out over the airwaves from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.
1939 – The Black Friday bushfires burn 20,000 square kilometers of land in Australia, claiming the lives of 71 people.
1942 – Henry Ford patents a plastic automobile, which is 30% lighter than a regular car.
1953 – An article appears in Pravda accusing some of the most prestigious and prominent doctors, mostly Jews, in the Soviet Union of taking part in a vast plot to poison members of the top Soviet political and military leadership.
1966 – Robert C. Weaver becomes the first African American Cabinet memberwhen he is appointed United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
1978 – United States Food and Drug Administration requires all blood donations to be labeled “paid” or “volunteer” donors.
1982 – Shortly after takeoff, Air Florida Flight 90, a Boeing 737 jet, crashes into Washington, D.C.’s 14th Street Bridge and falls into the Potomac River, killing 78 including four motorists.
1985 – A passenger train plunges into a ravine in Ethiopia, killing 428 in the worst railroad disaster in Africa.
1990 – Douglas Wilder becomes the first elected African American governor as he takes office as Governor of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia.
1993 – Space Shuttle program: Endeavour heads for space for the third time as STS-54 launches from the Kennedy Space Center.
2012 – The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia sinks off the coast of Italy due to the captain Francesco Schettino’s negligence and irresponsibility. There are 32 confirmed deaths.
2018 – A false emergency alert warning of an impending missile strike in Hawaii caused widespread panic in the state.
Births
1400 – Infante John, Constable of Portugal (d. 1442)
1477 – Henry Percy, 5th Earl of Northumberland (d. 1527)
1832 – Horatio Alger, Jr., American novelist and journalist (d. 1899)
1935 – Rip Taylor, American actor and comedian (d. 2019)
1949 – Brandon Tartikoff, American screenwriter and producer (d. 1997)
1955 – Jay McInerney, American novelist
Deaths
86 BC – Gaius Marius, Roman general and politician (b. 157 BC)
703 – Jitō, Japanese emperor (b. 645)
1625 – Jan Brueghel the Elder, Flemish painter (b. 1568)
1864 – Stephen Foster, American composer and songwriter (b. 1826)
1941 – James Joyce, Irish novelist, short story writer, and poet (b. 1882)
1978 – Hubert Humphrey, pharmacist, academic, and politician, 38th Vice President of the United States (b. 1911)
Credit: Wikipedia and other internet and non-internet sources
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