The BroadsheetDAILY ~ 3/9/21 ~ Lower Manhattan Quietly Becomes Home to Equivalent of a New Neighborhood – Almost None of It Affordable

A Decade of Development

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

A map from the Department of City Planning quantifies where the most (and fewest) new apartments have been built in Lower Manhattan, between 2010 and 2020, when more than 6,400 dwellings were created.

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. During this same period, there was a slight retrenchment of 55 apartments disappearing from the local tally, mostly because adjoining units were combined by their owners to create larger dwellings. This yields a net gain of 6,422 apartments — a pace of development of approximately one new dwelling being created every 13 hours, 365 days per year, for a decade

For comparison, there are approximately 6,200 apartments in all of Battery Park City, which took more than 30 years to build. This appears to mean that in the decade that ended last year, Downtown welcomed slightly more new housing units than exist in all of Battery Park City.

The City Planning data show that this local growth (measured in terms of households per acre) was not evenly distributed. The Civic Center and Seaport neighborhood (Broadway to the East River, north of Maiden Lane and stretching a few blocks beyond the Brooklyn Bridge) saw the most precipitous growth, with more than 60 new units per acre. Southern Tribeca (West Street to Broadway, north of Vesey Street and south of Chambers Street) followed at a slightly less fevered clip of between six and ten new apartments per acre. Eastern FiDi (Broadway to the East River, south of Maiden Lane, north of Beaver Street) and Northern Battery Park City saw moderate expansion of between three and six new units per acre. Greenwich South (Broadway to West Street, south of Vesey Street and north of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel) and Northern Tribeca (north of Chambers Street and south of Canal Street) trailed with three or fewer new dwellings per acre. Southern Battery Park City, which was largely built out by 2010, experienced no net change in the number of households. And Southern FiDi underwent a slight contraction of around three units per acre, mostly due to consolidation of apartments into larger units.

During the same ten-year period, a separate data set (from the City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development) shows that only 149 units of new affordable housing have been created in Lower Manhattan, at three development sites: 56 Fulton Street, 118 Fulton Street, and 460 Washington Street. This means that approximately 2.3 percent of the new housing units created Downtown between 2010 and 2020 were set aside for anybody but those who could pay the most for them.

Matthew Fenton

They Plan to Unpave the Parking Lot, and Put Up a Paradise

The East Side Competes with the Hudson as Downtown’s Go-To Waterfront Destination

Although the Hudson River Park has emerged in recent years as a focus of Lower Manhattan community life, it may soon have a rival. Planning and development for an East River waterfront park are roughly a decade behind the political dialog and physical construction surrounding the West Side’s network of piers and esplanades, but are nonetheless gathering momentum. To read more…

Letter

To the editor,

To place a monument in Battery Park City is yet another example of a Manhattan prejudice as the only city borough that matters.

Without question “the inevitable monument to New Yorkers who have perished as a result of the pandemic” should be situated in the neighborhoods that have suffered the most during this horrible year.

There are certainly venues in other boroughs under the control of the Governor (if that is the compelling reason) which would be much more suitable and located in underserved neighborhoods.

Just to name a couple that immediately come to mind: in Brooklyn, East River State Park or Shirley Chisholm State Park, and in the Bronx, Roberto Clemente State Park.

Louis Kleinman

Today’s Downtown Calendar

Tuesday March 9

Seaport District

Fitness classes via Instagram released every Tuesday and Thursday, featuring Trooper Fitness, Pure Barre and Lyons Den Power Yoga. Free

5PM

Museum of Jewish Heritage

After World War II, Argentina became home to one of the world’s largest communities of Holocaust survivors at the same time as the country provided refuge to many former Nazis. Today, this complex legacy of the Holocaust interacts with other legacies of violence in Argentina, including the 1976 to 1983 dictatorship and the 1994 AMIA bombing. Explore issues of justice, truth, and memory in Argentina in this virtual program, which will be co-presented with the Museo del Holocausto de Buenos Aires. $10

6PM

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

AGENDA

1) Status on COVID-19 vaccines for NYC educators – Discussion

2) New York Harbor School Pool – Update

6PM

Skyscraper Museum

Skyscraper Museum webinar. Adrian Smith is the architect of more than 4,500 meters ­­– nearly 2.8 vertical miles – of skyscrapers. He has been the designer for eight structures in SUPERTALL! 2020: including Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the current world’s tallest man-made structure at 828 meters, (2,716feet!) and Jeddah Tower, under construction in Saudi Arabia, which when completed will reach at least 1,000 meters. In his talk, “Supertall / Megatall: How Tall Can We Go?” Smith will explore how the skyscraper captured the imagination of the public while becoming widely popular to the architectural profession. He will focus on the stories behind his designs, including projects completed while Design Partner at SOM Chicago, including Jin Mao, Nanjing Greenland, and Burj Khalifa, and AS+GG projects Jeddah Tower, Chengdu Greenland Tower, 1 Dubai, and Biophilic Tower. He will discuss how each design was conceived for their specific sites and the successes and unique challenges of each project. Free

7PM

Brookfield Place

Test your trivia IQ at home with your friends and family! Follow along on Zoom and enter your answers via Kahoot, as you compete for a variety of fun BFPL prizes with hosts The Union of Quizzers. Free

7PM

Pen Parentis

This Pen Parentis Literary Salon features readings and roundtable with the outstanding writers Angela Himsel, Dylan Landis, and Bryan VanDyke. Interactive Q&A with audience participation. Free

8PM

China Institute

Travel with us live to Chengdu, the cosmopolitan capital of Sichuan province, a city known equally for its teahouses and leisurely lifestyle, it spicy hot pot, and its funky rap scene! Local experts will share the secrets of the hot and spicy flavors of Sichuan cuisine, one of the “Four Great Traditions” of Chinese cooking and one of China’s most popular culinary exports. Join us to learn about Sichuan classics like mapo dofu, dandan noodles, and hot pot, and about the mouth-numbing Sichuan mala, or 麻辣,spice that makes them all sizzle! Free

A Satiety of Cenotaphs

Attempting to Prevent a Monumental Mistake

Community Board 1 is trying to preclude the possibility that the inevitable monument to New Yorkers who have perished as a result of the pandemic coronavirus might be situated in Battery Park City.

This is not an idle concern. Governor Andrew Cuomo has recently ordered the construction of two similar memorials within the community: the Mother Cabrini Memorial (which opened last October, and is located overlooking South Cove) and another to commemorate Puerto Rican victims of 2017’s Hurricane Maria (which is now under construction at Chambers Street and River Terrace).

Mr. Cuomo appears to have settled on Battery Park City for his recent spurt of memorial building, at least in part, because it is one of the few areas of New York City that, as chief executive of the State government, he controls directly.

Make more music! Make more art!

For 30 years, the Church Street School for Music and Art has been helping downtowners do just that. On March 10, from 7:30pm to 8:30pm, the Church Street School is hosting The Event, Virtual, its annual fundraiser.

Last year’s partygoers fondly remember the 2020 Event as the last social function many attended before pandemic reality hit. This year, The Event takes place online, offering brilliant musical performances, special guest appearances, and auctions with live bidding. Attendees are invited to then cap the night off at a Zoom after-party.

Tickets and sponsorships are available at multiple price points, including a discounted ticket for families currently enrolled at Church Street School and school alums. View auction items here; get ticket details here.

Above, in a photograph taken before the pandemic, Lisa Ecklund-Flores, executive director of the Church Street School, stands at the school’s White Street front door and welcomes families inside.

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.

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Downtown Depreciates

Reports Show That Lower Manhattan Properties Are Dwindling in Value

A range of reports indicates that the Downtown real estate market has imploded in the wake of the recession brought on by the pandemic coronavirus. The Downtown Alliance’s “2020 Lower Manhattan Real Estate Year in Review” documents that office leasing fell by almost 70 percent from 2019 levels, to deeper troughs than those that followed the 2008/2009 financial crisis, while local office vacancies spiked to 20-year highs.

Perhaps the most radical undoing, however, was on the residential front. “According to our research, an estimated 40 percent of the local population left amid the pandemic,” To read more…

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 9

George Burns and Gracie Allan

141 BC – Liu Che, posthumously known as Emperor Wu of Han, assumes the throne over the Han dynasty of China.

1009 – First known mention of Lithuania, in the annals of the monastery of Quedlinburg.

1566 – David Rizzio, private secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots, is murdered in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, Scotland.

1815 – Francis Ronalds describes the first battery-operated clock in the Philosophical Magazine.

1841 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in the United States v. The Amistad case that captive Africans who had seized control of the ship carrying them had been taken into slavery illegally.

1842 – The first documented discovery of gold in California occurs at Rancho San Francisco, six years before the California Gold Rush.

1954 – McCarthyism: CBS television broadcasts the See It Now episode, “A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy”, produced by Fred Friendly.

1956 – Soviet forces suppress mass demonstrations in the Georgian SSR, reacting to Nikita Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization policy.

1959 – The Barbie doll makes its debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York.

1997 – Comet Hale–Bopp: Observers in China, Mongolia and eastern Siberia are treated to a rare double feature as an eclipse permits Hale-Bopp to be seen during the day.

Births

1454 – Amerigo Vespucci, Italian cartographer and explorer (d. 1512)

1824 – Amasa Leland Stanford, American businessman and politician, founded Stanford University (d. 1893)

1833 – Frederick A. Schroeder, German-American businessman and politician, 18th Mayor of Brooklyn (d. 1899)

1918 – Mickey Spillane, American crime novelist (d. 2006)

1934 – Yuri Gagarin, Russian colonel, pilot, and astronaut (d. 1968)

1943 – Bobby Fischer, American chess player and author (d. 2008)

Deaths

1888 – William I, German Emperor (b. 1797)

1989 – Robert Mapplethorpe, American photographer (b. 1946)

1994 – Charles Bukowski, poet, novelist, and short story writer (b. 1920)

1996 – George Burns, American actor and comedian (b. 1896)

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