New Hub for Families in Tribeca Offers Music, Dance, Parkour, and More
The 18,000-square-foot Tribeca facility (spread across two levels)
includes spaces dedicated to work, play, and learning.
Tribeca has a new place for kids to play, parents to work, and families to bond. Cocoon, located at 316 Greenwich Street, at the base of Independence Plaza (in the space once occupied by Food Emporium) is an 18,000-square-foot facility, spread across two levels, that includes a 2,000-square-foot outdoor, private patio.
The facility is dominated by a large rumpus room/parkour gym for kids, with nooks designed for children as young as a few months, and equipment engineered for young adventurers as old as six years. Surrounding this area is a hive of semi-private alcoves that are flexible enough to accommodate everyone from working parents who are keeping one on their toddlers, to small classes. Throughout the space, air is continually circulated by a custom-designed ventilation system (with HEPA filters) that drives clean, double-filtered air through the facility. Other amenities include a nursery, pumping pods (for nursing moms), charging stations, creative spaces, and a 4,000-square-foot indoor/outdoor obstacle course.
For newborns through 18 months, the course and class offerings include Baby Buds Art Lab, Toddler Music Studio, and Toddler Art Lab. Happenings (for the same group) include Story Time & Mindfulness, Hide & Seek, Dance Party, and Gratitude Gather. For kids 18 through 36 month, courses include Nature Park & Play, Ballet & Modern Dance, NORY Science & Robots, SocRoc Soccer, and Preschool Prep. Children three to five years old can choose from the Magic Clubhouse, Dance Style & Choreography, and Parkour Tumble Play.
Alliance For Downtown New York Hosts 2021 Shred-A-Thon
And Clothing Drop-Off
After a year like the one we all just endured and the promise of a brighter day emerging, the idea of “spring cleaning” takes on new energy and meaning.
Now is the time to round up all the old clothes and unwanted documents that have been piling up and bring them over to Fulton Street (between Cliff and Gold Streets) for the Downtown Alliance’s annual dual shred-a-thon and clothing drop-off Saturday, April 17 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
A shredding truck parked on Fulton Street will securely dispose of and recycle all your sensitive documents, tax receipts, junk mail and old bills.
The Alliance is also partnering with NYC clothing recycler Wearable Collections, which is providing a bin to collect all dry, used clean clothing including shoes, sneakers, belts and hats, as well as household items such as linens, towels and handbags.
Rain or shine, the Alliance will be there to dispose of your much-loved old outfits and no-longer-needed memories, minus a few items (e.g., carpeting, rugs, bath mats, comforters, pillows, large luggage). This spring will be even sweeter when you’ve got some extra space.
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CLASSIFIEDS & PERSONALS
Swaps & Trades, Respectable Employment, Lost and Found
needed for filing, packaging/mailing items, and computer work including spreadsheets. Handyman skills helpful. $25/hour, approximately 12 hours/week. email cathy@riverprojectnyc.org.
TUTOR AVAILABLE FOR HOMEWORK SUPPORT
Stuyvesant HS student available for homework help. All grades especially math. References available upon request
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…
Park Preservation Push
Resiliency Plans Clash with Public Space Concerns
The Battery Park City Authority, as part of its ongoing plans to safeguard the community against climate change, sea-level rise, and future extreme-weather events, has identified the potential need to install gates above the Department of Environmental Protection’s “main interceptor” sewer pipe, which will run beneath a planned flood wall to protect against water surges. To read more…
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.
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.
1524 – Giovanni da Verrazzano sailing for King Francis of France sights land around area of Carolinas. While his place of birth in a small village south of Florence or in Lyon France is debatable, what is not is that Giovanni da Verrazzano (1485–1528) was said to always considered himself a Florentine.
Consider that only twenty years earlier had Columbus, a Genoan sailing for Spain, ‘discovered’ a New World. A navigator by profession, he jumped at the chance to work aboard the Pensee as it embarked for the coast of America around 1508 when he was in his early twenties.
Fifteen years later in 1523, King Francis 1 of France commissioned Verrazano to explore the coast from New Found land to Florida seeking new trading routes to the Far East. Within four months Verrazano had four ships set to sail, but after a series of weather and mechanical setbacks, the Dauphine was the only vessel to reach the coast of present day North Carolina.
In the upcoming days and weeks he sailed north stopping in New York Harbor,which he described as a lake and mentioned the Lenapae Indians living there. His third voyage ended with his death, as one version tells it he was killed and eaten by the natives. Another story says the Spanish executed him at sea for piracy.
When the bridge linking Staten Island to Brooklyn was in the planning stages there was a big push to name the bridge after Verrazano. Robert Moses was against the idea for two reasons, ” It’s too long a name and I never heard of the guy”.
It is intended that a reconstructed La Dauphine will cross the Atlantic to arrive at New York Harbor, possibly in time for the five hundredth anniversary of the European discovery of the harbor by Verrazano on April 17, 2024.
1644 – 200 members of Peking imperial family/court commit suicide in loyaltyto the Emperor
1687 – Explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle, searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River, is murdered by his own men
1863 – The SS Georgiana, said to have been the most powerful Confederate cruiser,is destroyed on her maiden voyage with a cargo of munitions, medicines and merchandise then valued at over $1,000,000. The wreck was discovered on the same day and month, exactly 102 years later.
1883 – Jan Matzeliger invents first machine to manufacture an entire shoe
1917 – US Supreme Court upheld 8-hr work day for railroad employees
1931 – Nevada legalizes gambling
1932 – The Sydney Harbour Bridge is opened
1942 – FDR orders men between 45 and 64 to register for non-military duty
1965 – The wreck of the SS Georgiana, was discovered by then teenage diver and pioneer underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence exactly 102 years after its destruction
1969 – Chicago 8 indicted in aftermath of Chicago Democratic convention
The Chicago Eight: Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman,Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, Bobby Seale, Lee Weiner, John Froines and David Dellinger were indicted for conspiracy and inciting a riot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.Froines and Weiner were acquitted on all charges. The other five were convicted of inciting to riot, but the convictions were overturned on appeal.
1973 – Dean tells Nixon, “There is a cancer growing on the Presidency”
1978 – 50,000 demonstrate in Amsterdam against neutron bomb
1987 – PTL leader Jim Bakker resigns after sex scandal with Jessica Hahn
1994 – Largest omelet (1,383sq ft) made with 160,000 eggs in Yokohama Japan
1995 – Five die by poison gas in Japanese subway
2004 – A Swedish DC-3 shot down by a Russian MiG-15 in the 1950s is finally recovered after years of work. The remains of the crew are left in place, pending further investigations.
2013 – NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity discovers further evidence of water-bearing minerals
Birthdays
1589 – William Bradford, governor of Plymouth colony for 30 years
1813 – David Livingstone, Scotland, explorer (found by Stanley in Africa)
1888 – Josef Albers, German/US graphic artist/painter/writer (Bauhaus)
1904 – John J Sirica, US federal judge (Watergate hearings)
Anniversaries
1924 – American poet e.e. (Edward Estlin) Cummings marries first wife Elaine Orr. The marriage lasts less than 9 months.
Divorces
1996 – Winnie Mandela divorces Nelson after 38 years of marrage
Deaths
1644 – Chongzhen, last Ming Emperor of China, commits suicide
2005 – John De Lorean, American automobile engineer (b. 1925)
2008 – Sir Arthur C. Clarke, English science fiction author and inventor (b. 1917)
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