The BroadsheetDAILY ~ 3/17/21 ~ GPTA to Host Annual Meeting for Residents Tomorrow Night

Tenets for Tenants

GPTA to Host Annual Meeting for Residents Tomorrow Night

Tomorrow (Thursday, March 18) the Gateway Plaza Tenants Association (GPTA) will host its annual meeting, which will include updates by the organization’s board, the election of board members, as well as a question-and-answer session.

Also on the agenda—presentations by elected officials, including United States Congressman Jerrold Nadler, State Senator Brian Kavanagh, State Assembly member Yuh-Line Niou, and City Council member Margaret Chin. (For a link to join this online session, which begins at 7:00 pm, please browse: http://www.gpta.org)

The meeting is open to all Gateway residents. Voting in elections is limited to tenants who are current paid GPTA members. (Annual dues are $25, and anyone wishing to join should browse: http://www.gpta.org/join) Any member wishing to run for a seat on the GPTA board is welcome to nominate themselves at the meeting. Anyone wishing to ask questions is requested to submit them via email to gatewayplazata@gmail.com.

Gateway residents, like millions across the City, faced the challenges brought with the pandemic over the past year. As GPTA president Rosalie Joseph notes, “throughout this year, we took an active role within Gateway, working with management on a range of COVID-related issues. We were fortunate to have gotten personal protective equipment donated to us during the year, which we distributed in Gateway. We also held two food drives to help New York City communities in need, plus other efforts to support our neighbors through this difficult time.”

Robin Forst, GPTA vice president, reflects that the last year has been difficult for many in the community. “As we see great progress toward a return to a more normal way of life, we look forward to reconnecting with members of the Gateway community, including those who moved into Gateway over the past year,” she adds.

“We’re pleased that Battery Park City Authority and Lefrak have agreed to a ten-year extension of the quasi-rent stabilization agreement that has protected tenants, in residence as of 2009, from excessive renewal rent increases,” reports GPTA secretary Jeff Galloway. “We’re also pleased that the class-action settlement has now been implemented.” That settlement has generated rent credits—up to a month or more for some tenants—to current residents and checks for former tenants that are proportional to the rent those residents paid from April 2008 through early 2020.

Matthew Fenton

Letters

To the editor,

Thank you Bob Townley for your recent letter regarding the newest monument to victims of The Storm.

I would like to add that that formerly open space was not an empty void. It was a frame for the beautiful, magnificent, natural, life-enhancing, (use your imagination and add your comments here), mighty Hudson River.

I hope the monument is beautiful and placed where it does not obscure what is already there—water, sky, air. There are many great artists but none have yet to beat Mother Nature.

Betty Heller

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To the editor,

I lived for many years at 41 River Terrace. My children grew up there.

There is currently a proposal to put a monument aside the benches on River Terrace. This is where the elderly sit and others congregate.

I would not put it there. If it must be in BPC, I would put it below the steps by the water. It would do well in another place where the sentiment would be more apparent. The area where the most people fell victims to this horrible pandemic.

That section where the monument would be is heavily trafficked. Tourists and residents alike use that space.

Just my opinion.

Bob Townley

The Unkindest Cut of All

CB1 Seeks to Make Sense of Inconsistent Sidewalk-Street Connections

Community Board 1 is pushing the de Blasio administration to close a legal loophole so obscure that it confuses even police. The technicality is centered on curb cuts (the dips in sidewalks and curbs that connect to an adjoining street, making it easier for wheelchairs, baby carriages, and disabled pedestrians to cross) at t-intersections, where one road dead-ends into a perpendicular street.

While it is ordinarily illegal to park in front of a curb cut, this prohibition was, in 2009, removed from curb cuts at T-intersections—provided there was not a stop sign, traffic light, or painted crosswalk at the same location. To read more…

Debt and Taxes

Mayoral Contender Has Ideas for How to Spend Battery Park City Money

In a debate among mayoral contenders on Thursday, New York City Comptroller and City Hall-hopeful Scott Stringer reiterated his plan to divert more than $400 million in excess revenue from the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) to the cash-strapped New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA).

In the debate, aired on the NY1 news channel, Mr. Stringer said, “I would implement as mayor my idea to move $40 million a year in Battery Park City Authority funds directly to NYHCA to repair broken windows and boilers.”

A Decade of Development

Lower Manhattan Quietly Becomes Home to Equivalent of a New Neighborhood – Almost None of It Affordable

In the ten-year period that ended in 2020, Lower Manhattan absorbed the equivalent of an additional Battery Park City, through the number of new households created by real estate development, according to an analysis from the Department of City Planning.

Community District 1—a collection of neighborhoods encompassing 1.5 square miles, bounded roughly by Canal, Baxter, and Pearl Streets and the Brooklyn Bridge — saw the creation of 6,477 new housing units in the decade that begin in 2010. To read more…

Downtown Calendar

Wednesday March 17

6PM

Community Board 1 Executive Committee

Live Remote Meeting – https://live.mcb1.nyc

AGENDA

1) 2021 Municipal Elections and Polling Site Taskforce – Discussion & Possible Resolution

2) Analysis of Studies & RFPs for FiDi/Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan – Discussion

3) Committee reports

7:30PM

China Institute

Much is known about the lives of the emperors who lived behind the vermilion walls of the Forbidden City. But what of the women? In the third program of a series commemorating the 600th anniversary of the Forbidden City, Jan Stuart, top China curator at the Smithsonian, and Di Yajing, architecture expert from the Palace Museum, will share objects and spaces used by the women of the imperial court. Following that, Jay Xu, director of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, will join them in a wide-ranging conversation about life within the walls of the Forbidden City. Wang Xudong, director of the Palace Museum, will open the program with thoughts on conservation of the Forbidden City for the next 600 years. Free

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Thursday March 18

6PM

Health & Human Services Subcommittee

Live Remote Meeting – https://live.mcb1.nyc

AGENDA

1) COVID-19 Vaccine Overview – Presentation by Dr Renuka Gupta, Associate Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and Chief of Medicine at NY-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital

2) State of the City’s Response to COVID-19 – Updates

6:30PM

Quality of Life & Service Delivery Committee

Live Remote Meeting – https://live.mcb1.nyc

AGENDA

1) Hate Crimes and Bias Attacks Against the Asian Community – Discussion

2) Gaps in COVID-19 Recovery Relief for Owner-Occupied Housing – Discussion & Resolution

3) Justice Considerations from the Mayor’s 2021 State of the City – Discussion

CLASSIFIEDS & PERSONALS

Swaps & Trades, Respectable Employment, Lost and Found

To place a listing, contact editor@ebroadsheet.com

A Guide To Lower Manhattan’s 2021 Light Installations

Winter is a little brighter in Lower Manhattan, where you can bask in a whole bunch of colorful light installations this season.

There are two Downtown Alliance-sponsored public art projects on loan from Amsterdam’s Light Art Collection at the public plaza adjacent to 85 Broad.

The sculpture “C/C,” designed by Singapore-based artist Angela Chong, is a bench for seating that transforms into a colorful LED light show at night.

“Talking Heads,” designed by Hungarian artist Viktor Vicsek, is made up of two massive heads dotted with 4,000 LED lights that change to reveal different facial expressions in conversation.

Another Alliance sponsored installation is Ziggy. At the public plaza at 200 Water Street, this interactive piece by design studio Hou de Sous uses cords tied to a steel structure illuminated by colorful lights to create exciting views of the surrounding landscape. You can enter the installation from all angles, and sit on the several “gateways” that serve as benches. At night, Ziggy’s lights add an inviting extra pop of brightness.

Head up Water Street to the Seaport and find “Electric Dandelions,” created by artist Abram Santa Cruz and LA-based art collective Liquid PXL and presented by The Howard Hughes Corporation. In daylight, the ten 28-foot steel-and-acrylic structures look like dandelion flowers; at night, LED lights turn the structures into colorful, rhythmic animations.

(sponsored content)

Quid Pro No?

Another FiDi Renter Seeks Recompense for Years of Rent Overcharges

The wave of Financial District tenants going to court to demand restitution from years of illegally high rent gathered further momentum on Tuesday, when another tenant at 50 Murray Street filed court papers arguing that she is entitled to rent stabilization protection along with reimbursement for six years worth of overcharges, and triple damages.

Heather Horn moved into 50 Murray Street in May, 2014, at an initial rent of $4,695 per month. Since then, according the documents filed with the new York State Supreme Court, she has renewed her lease six times, and her rent has increased by almost 26 percent, to $5,900.

9/11 Victim Compensation Fund Report

More Survivors than Responders Now are Submitting Claims

The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) has released its annual report for 2020, which documents some significant developments.

Over the course of its ten years of operation thus far, the VCF has awarded $7.76 billion to more than 34,400 individuals who have suffered death or personal injury as a result of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and their aftermath. The vast majority of these injuries take the form of illness caused by exposure to toxic materials that were released by the destruction of the World Trade Center.

TODAY IN HISTORY

March 17

Julius Caesar

45 BC – In his last victory, Julius Caesar defeats the Pompeian forces of Titus Labienus and Pompey the Younger in the Battle of Munda.

180 – Marcus Aurelius dies. Commodus is now the only emperor of the Roman Empire.

1762 – First St Patrick’s Day parade in NYC

1776 – British forces evacuate Boston to Nova Scotia during Revolutionary War

1836 – Texas abolishes slavery

1854 – First park land purchased by Worcester, Massachusetts

1876 – General Crook destroy Cheyennes and Oglala-Sioux Indian camps

1899 – Windsor luxury hotel in NYC catches fire, 92 die

1917 – Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates the throne

1927 – US government doesn’t sign League of Nations disarmament treaty

1957 – Dutch ban on Sunday driving lifted

1963 – Elizabeth Ann Seton of NY beatified (canonized in 1975)

1991 – NJ raises turnpike tolls 70%

2008 – New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer resigns after a scandal involving a high-end prostitute. David Paterson becomes acting New York State governor.

Birthdays

1834 – Gottlieb Daimler, Germany, engineer/inventor/designed 1st motorcycle

1919 – Nat “King” Cole, Montgomery Ala, singer (Unforgettable, Mona Lisa)

1938 – Rudolf Nureyev, Russia, ballet dancer/choreographer (Kirov)

1944 – John Sebastian, NYC, singer (Loving Spoonful, Welcome Back Kotter)

Anniversaries

1905 – Eleanor Roosevelt marries Franklin D. Roosevelt later 32nd US President in New York

1955 – Writer Anaïs Nin marries actor Rupert Pole at Quartzsite, Arizona, while still married to her first husband

1967 – Novelist Alice Walker weds civil rights lawyer Melvyn Leventhal in New York City

Deaths

180 – Antonius Marcus Aurelius, [Marcus Verus], Emperor of Rome, dies at 58

461 – Saint Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, dies in Saul (according to legend)

1764 – George Parker, English astronomer, dies

1853 – Christian Doppler, Austrian physicist, dies at 49

1956 – Irene Joliot-Curie, French physicist, Nobel laureate, dies at 58

1974 – Louis I Kahn, Estonia/US architect, dies at about 73

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