Lower Manhattan’s Local News
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The Broadsheet Inc. | 212-912-1106 | editor@ebroadsheet.com | ebroadsheet.com
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Rents Within Reach for 50 Years
Lower East Side’s Depression-Era Equivalent to Gateway Plaza Preserves Affordability Through 2069
City Council member Margaret Chin has brokered an agreement that will preserve affordability for rental tenants at Knickerbocker Village, a giant apartment complex in the Two Bridges neighborhood, which was built by a public-private partnership in the 1930s.
The complex bears striking similarities to Battery Park City’s largest residential development, Gateway Plaza. Both boast multiple buildings (12 on the Lower East Side and six in Battery Park City), surrounding a central garden. Each has a similar number of apartments: 1,590 for Knickerbocker Village and 1705 in Gateway Plaza. And the two projects were conceived as bulwarks of affordability.
Perhaps most crucially, they were each made possible by federal funds, administered through a New York State program, called the Private Housing Finance Law (PFHL), Article IV of which creates an unusual form of corporation, known as a Limited Dividend Housing Company. This law provides developers with low-interest loans, and other subsidies, in exchange for a promise that the apartments they build will remain affordable. The “limited dividend” provision refers to a cap on the amount of profit that developers are legally allowed to take out of such a project. Any funds above this threshold, rather than being disbursed to investors, were deposited in an escrow account, reserved for maintenance and capital repairs.
That law says, “no shareholder, partner or beneficiary of a trust having an interest vested in possession in any housing company formed hereunder shall receive any distribution on capital in any one year in excess of six per centum per annum,” meaning six percent each year. These terms were attractive to developers in the 1933, when the Fred F. French company broke ground on Knickerbocker Village, shortly after the onset of the Great Depression. They were alluring once again, in the late 1970s (as New York was experiencing the worst crash in real estate prices since the Depression), when the LeFrak Organization started building Gateway Plaza.
But conditions that seem reasonable in hard times can begin to appear onerous (at least to developers) when market conditions become favorable, and the return on capital rises to much more than six percent each year. The corporation founded by Mr. French (he died shortly after Knickerbocker Village was completed) sold the complex in the 1970s, after which it passed through a succession of owners. In 2004, when New York’s real estate market was reaching unprecedented valuations, Cherry Green properties (the current landlord at Knickerbocker Village) sought permission to exit the State’s Article IV program, which would have had the effect of annulling all affordability protections at Knickerbocker Village. The owners received approval from the commissioner of the State Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR), the agency that oversees and regulates Limited Dividend Housing Companies. This prompted a lawsuit, in which the State Supreme Court ruled that DHCR and its commissioner have no legal authority to permit such an exit.
This is the point at which the similarities between Knickerbocker Village and Gateway Plaza end. In 2009, Gateway Plaza’s landlord was negotiating with its own landlord, the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA), from which agency LeFrak rents the ground beneath the buildings, through the year 2069. The LeFrak Organization was seeking concessions on their ground lease, in exchange for extending affordability protections at Gateway, which were set to expire that year. One of LeFrak’s demands was consent from the State to withdraw from the Limited Dividend Housing Company program, which the New York Supreme Court had a few years earlier barred Knickerbocker Village from exiting.
But not all claimants are alike in the eyes of the law. The Private Housing Finance statutes were amended in 1962 and 2003. One of the changes enshrined in the new version of the law was that any Limited Dividend Housing Company organized after 1962 could, with the consent of the DHCR commissioner, exit the program. Local elected officials, who were scrambling to avoid an expiration of affordability protections at Gateway, arranged for this approval.
This meant that LeFrak was able to realize a benefit that the landlord at Knickerbocker Village could only dream of: The funds in the escrow account set aside for maintenance and capital repairs (which had been accumulating all profit above six percent, each year for decades) suddenly became liquid, and reverted to the owner. In LeFrak’s case, this windfall amounted to many tens of millions of dollars.
In another contrast, affordability protections were fully preserved at Knickerbocker Village, where a one-bedroom apartment today rents for $810 per month, and a three-bedroom units are priced at $1,250. In Gateway Plaza, under the 2009 agreement, rent stabilization was preserved only for then-current tenants. In the years since, attrition and churn have led to fewer than half of all Gateway households receiving any rent protection, and market-rate rents now price studios at more than $3,000 per month, while two-bedroom units go for more than $5,000 per month.
Since losing the 2004 court battle, Knickerbocker Village’s landlord has continued to search for a way to emulate LeFrak’s success in extracting cash from Gateway Plaza. In 2006, DHCR ordered the owners to stop holding meetings with tenants about a possible conversion of the complex to a condominium or cooperative structure.
And in 2014, Knickerbocker Village management applied to DHCR for permission to impose an across-the-board rent increase of 13 percent, arguing that the extra funds were needed for maintenance and repairs. This sparked fury among low-income tenants, who argued that the jump would create an insurmountable financial burden. Tenant leaders also claimed that the alleged financial hardship Cherry Green was using to justify the increase was self-inflicted, arguing that the landlord had deliberately “warehoused” an inventory of large apartments, by keeping them vacant (and thus off the rent rolls) for years at a time, rather than leasing them to new tenants at the legally required modest rates — possibly in hope of renting or selling these valuable units at much higher prices if a privatization plan were ever approved.
Much of this uncertainty appears to have been rendered moot by the City Council legislation spearheaded by Ms. Chin. Under the terms of this measure, Cherry Green will receive a tax abatement of $3 million per year, for the next 50 years. This amount (which reduces the complex’s property tax to about $400,000 a year, a discount of slightly more than 88 percent) coincides almost exactly with the increased income that the landlord anticipated would be derived from the proposed rent increase.
In exchange, Knickerbocker Village’s landlord has agreed to abide by tighter limits on rent increases. The details of this cap are still being negotiated, and will be explored at a hearing hosted by DHCR this month. But the agreement appears to provide a framework for preserving affordability at Knickerbocker Village for the next half century.
“Combatting the housing crisis isn’t just about creating new affordable housing,” Ms. Chin said. “It’s also about protecting the precious affordable housing stock already in place. In neighborhoods like Two Bridges, we have seen the cost of this crisis as rising rents, gentrification, and a shrinking pool of affordable places to live threaten to fundamentally change the community and displace longtime residents.”
“To meet the challenge before us, we must pursue an all-in strategy to maximize every resource,” she continued, “including saving as many affordable units as possible. By preserving all 1,590 housing units, this resolution will help to ensure Knickerbocker Village remains a home for working New Yorkers and seniors on fixed incomes.”
And this is the point at which the similarities between Knickerbocker Village and Gateway Plaza may (or may not) resume. Current affordability provisions at Gateway are slated to expire in seven months, at which point even the minority of tenants who are protected against huge rent increases will see their leases revert to market rates. Whether elected officials and the BPCA, all of whom are aggressively working to preserve and extend Gateway affordability protections, will have success similar to Ms. Chin’s effort at Knickerbocker Village remains to be seen.
Matthew Fenton
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Today’s Calendar
November 5, 2019
10:30AM
Zumba Jumpstart
6 River Terrace
Join a fitness dance party with upbeat Latin music of salsa, merengue, hip-hop, and more! Enthusiastic instruction creates a fun community of dancers who learn new steps each week. Bring your friends and share in this fit and fun dancing community. 6 River Terrace. Battery Park City Authority
6:30PM
An Evening with Jung Chang and the Soong Sisters
China Institute
Jung Chang, author of bestseller Wild Swans, launches her newest work, Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China, in a conversation about China’s past, present, and future. The book examines the lives of three of the most famous women in modern China: the Soong sisters, whose families and marriages changed the fate of an embattled China through civil war and revolution. $20, $30 40 Rector Street.
7PM
TimesTalks: Martha Stewart & Questlove
Tribeca Performing Arts Center
Conversation about food, music and creativity with co-founder of The Roots, D.J., producer, best-selling author and culinary entrepreneur Questlove, and Emmy Award-winning media authority Martha Stewart.The duo will discuss Questlove’s upcoming book, “Mixtape Potluck,” in which he imagines the ultimate potluck dinner party, inviting more than 50 chefs, entertainers and musicians to bring along their favorite recipes. The result is not only an accessible, entertaining cookbook, but also a collection of Questlove’s diverting musical commentaries and the creative relationship between music and food. $55 199 Chambers Street.
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Upcoming Community Board meetings this week:
November 5 Office closed – Election Day November 6 CB1 Battery Park City Committee November 7 CB1 Transportation & Street Activity Permits Committee |
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Today in History
November 5
1138 – Lý Anh Tông is enthroned as emperor of Vietnam at the age of two,beginning a 37-year reign.
1605 – Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes is arrested.
1768 – Treaty of Fort Stanwix, The purpose of the conference and treaty was to adjust the boundary line between Indian lands and British colonial settlements set forth in the Royal Proclamation of 1763. The British hoped a new boundary line would bring an end to the costly and frontier violence. Indians hoped a new, permanent line might hold back British colonial expansion.Rather than secure peace, the Fort Stanwix treaty helped set the stage for the next round of hostilities between Native Americans and British colonists along the Ohio River, which would culminate in Dunmore’s War.
1831 – Nat Turner, American slave leader, is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Virginia.
1862 – American Indian Wars: In Minnesota, 303 Dakota warriors are found guilty of rape and murder of whites and are sentenced to hang. 38 are ultimately executed and the others reprieved.
1872 – Women’s suffrage in the United States: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time, and is later fined $100.
1895 – George B. Selden is granted the first U.S. patent for an automobile.
1911 – After declaring war on the Ottoman Empire on September 29, 1911, Italy annexes Tripoli and Cyrenaica.
1914 – World War I: France and the British Empire declare war on the Ottoman Empire.
1940 – Franklin D. Roosevelt elected to a third term.
1968 – Richard Nixon is elected as 37th President of the United States.
1990 – Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the far-right Kach movement, is shot dead after a speech at a New York City hotel.
2006 – Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, and his co-defendants Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, are sentenced to death in the al-Dujail trial for their roles in the 1982 massacre of 148 Shi’a Muslims.
2007 – China’s first lunar satellite, Chang’e 1, goes into orbit around the Moon.
Births
1615 – Ibrahim of the Ottoman Empire (d. 1648)
1854 – Paul Sabatier, French chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1941)
1855 – Eugene V. Debs, American union leader and politician (d. 1926)
1893 – Raymond Loewy, French-American engineer and designer (d. 1986)
1941 – Art Garfunkel, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1943 – Sam Shepard, American playwright and actor (d. 2017)
Deaths
425 – Atticus, archbishop of Constantinople
1942 – George M. Cohan, American actor, singer, composer, author and theatre manager/owner (b. 1878)
1946 – Joseph Stella, Italian-American painter (b. 1877)
1979 – Al Capp, American cartoonist (b. 1909)
1989 – Vladimir Horowitz, Ukrainian-American pianist (b. 1903)
1991 – Robert Maxwell, Czech-English, publisher, and politician (b. 1923)
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National Lighthouse Museum
Model Ship Show
Ship Model Show
This coming Saturday, November 9, the Ship Model Society of New Jersey will be hosting a show at the National Lighthouse Museum on Staten Island featuring models of different kinds of ships.
Models will be on display and their builders will demonstrate the steps taken to build the Lilliputian vessels. The Society’s members span all skill levels, from neophyte to highly accomplished, with a wide range of interests, from gadget guru to historical re-creator.
If you are a model ship builder and would like to participate and even display your model in this event, please contact the museum to make arrangements as soon as possible. If you have a ship model in need of repair or you need an appraisal, bring it along!
Admission for this exhibit is included in your museum entrance fee.
General Admission: Adults $5, Seniors (65+) & Military $4, Students (12+) $3, Children under 12 & Members FREE
National Lighthouse Museum, 718-390-0040,
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Click to 30 seconds of morning sounds on the esplanade
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RECENT NEWS
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Quay to the Future
Hudson River Park Trust Hints at Estuarium Partnership with River Project
A discussion at the October 15 meeting of the Waterfront, Parks & Cultural Committee of Community Board 1 (CB1) pointed toward a possible resolution of a question that has remained unanswered for years: Will a highly regarded non-profit that has served Lower Manhattan for decades continue to have a home on the waterfront?
Matthew Fenton
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Lower Manhattan Forecast: It’s Getting Cloudier
Downtown Alliance and BPCA Expand Free Wireless Coverage by 1.5 Million Square Feet
The Battery Park City Authority and Downtown Alliance have teamed up to bring improved or new free WiFi service to an additional 1.5-million square feet of outdoor space in Rockefeller, Teardrop, and Wagner Parks along the Hudson River in Battery Park City.
The next phase of the project, slated for 2020, will aim to cover large swaths of the Battery Park City’s Esplanade. For more information about free WiFi coverage in Lower Manhattan, please browse: www.downtownny.com/wifi
Matthew Fenton
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A Bridge Too Few
Community Leader Rallies Support to Halt Planned Demolition of Pedestrian Span Over West Side Highway
A Battery Park City resident and community leader is mobilizing support to preserve the Rector Street Bridge, the pedestrian span that is slated for demolition as a newer overpass at nearby West Thames Street (which unofficially opened in September) is gradually integrated into the local streetscape.
Bob Schneck spoke during the public comment session of the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) board meeting on Tuesday, pointing to a petition drive he has spearheaded, and noting that, “I have collected more than 1,800 signatures by residents who want to keep the bridge. Rector Street lines up with almost every subway line in Lower Manhattan, and ferries on both ends.”
Matthew Fenton
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Putting the Tension in Detention
City Council Approves de Blasio Controversial Plan for New Jail Complex in Lower Manhattan; Legal Challenges Likely
The administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio won City Council approval on October 17 for a modified version of its controversial plan to erect a new, skyscraper prison in Lower Manhattan, as part of a wider scheme to close the City’s notorious detention complex on Rikers Island, and replace it with four, large “borough-based jail” facilities-one in each county, except Staten Island.
At the session during which the plan was approved, City Council member Margaret Chin said, “to my constituents-I hear you.
Matthew Fenton
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The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Shoot
Chin Pushes Legislation to Rein in Production Permits
City Council member Margaret Chin is co-sponsoring a package of bills to clamp down on rampant film and television production in Lower Manhattan.
Although the new laws, if enacted, will have City-wide effect, their impact would be especially significant in the square mile below Chambers Street, where dozens of movies and TV shows commandeer local streets (sometimes for days at a time) each year.
Matthew Fenton
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Eyes To the Sky
October 28 – November 10
Worldview: Origin of our Sun, solar system, ourselves
During the dark time of year here in the northeast, our visual environment is more of the moon and stars than earthly phenomena. In this “Eyes to the Sky”, as in a post a few weeks ago, I offer you the opportunity to reflect on the natural world as revealed to us by astronomers and astrophotographers. I have the pleasure of presenting the words and images of astrophotographer and educator Terry Hancock, the creator of “Fly Like an Eagle” , the nebula image featured above. To read more…
by Judy Isacoff
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Things That Make You Go ‘Hmm…’
Lawsuit Over Similarity Between One World Trade and Architecture Student’s Design Moves Ahead
One thing is reasonably certain: In 1999, Jeehoon Park, then a student at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture, created a design for a very tall building with a large square base tapering to a smaller square top. In Mr. Park’s vision, the square formed by the roof was rotated 45 degrees relative to the one at the ground level, so that the center-points on each side of the quadrilateral below corresponded to the corners of the one above, and vice versa. And instead of four vertical walls, the structure’s facade consisted of eight elongated triangles.
That structure was never built. Or was it?
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You Can Hit-and-Run,
But You Can’t Hide
Driver Alleged to Have Run Over Tribeca Pedestrian in May Indicted for Separate Manhattan Traffic Death
The New York County District Attorney’s Office has indicted Jessenia Fajardo, a resident of the upstate town of Walden in two separate incidents involving reckless driving that caused injury to pedestrians. The more serious of these took place on July 19, when Ms. Fajardo is accused of having run a red light on the Upper West Side and then slamming into an elderly couple in a crosswalk. One of these pedestrians, 62-year-old Alfred Pocari, was killed, while the second (whose name has not been released) was seriously injured.
When police took Ms. Fajardo into custody at the scene of the July incident, they discovered that she was also involved in a similar (albeit less gravely serious) incident two months earlier. To read more…
Matthew Fenton
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What’s In Store?
Amid a Booming Economy, Lower Manhattan Retail Space Languishes
A new report from City Comptroller Scott Stringer finds that in one Lower Manhattan zip code — 10013, which covers parts of western Tribeca SoHo, and the Canal Street corridor in Chinatown — there are 319 empty retail spaces, comprising almost 300,000 square feet of unused property. To read more…
Matthew Fenton
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Adding Insult to Penury
Ridership Survey Indicates That Ferry Coming Soon to Battery Park City Primarily Serves Affluent Riders
An analysis of who uses the NYC Ferry service, which the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to expand to Battery Park City next year, shows that riders are primarily white passengers who earn more money than average New Yorkers.
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RiverWatch
Cruise Ships in New York Harbor
Arrivals & Departures
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Tuesday, November 5
Mein Schiff 1
Inbound 7:00 pm (Bayonne) in port overnight
Wednesday, November 6
Mein Schiff 1
Outbound 10:00 pm (Bayonne) Norfolk, VA/Florida/Bahamas/La Romana, Dominican Republic
Silver Wind Inbound 12:15 pm in port overnight
Thursday, November 7
Silver Wind
Outbound 5:30 pm Norfolk, VA/Charleston, SC/San Juan, PR
Many ships pass Lower Manhattan on their way to and from the Midtown Passenger Ship Terminal. Others may be seen on their way to or from piers in Brooklyn and Bayonne. Stated times, when appropriate, are for passing the Colgate clock in Jersey City, New Jersey, and are based on sighting histories, published schedules and intuition. They are also subject to tides, fog, winds, freak waves, hurricanes and the whims of upper management.
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Damascus on the Hudson
Lower Manhattan’s Old Syrian Quarter
Today, the stretch of Greenwich and Washington Streets between Battery Place and Albany Street — bisected by the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel entrance — is known by the forgettable name, “Greenwich South.” By all appearances it is an orphan of a neighborhood that never quite coalesced. But nothing could be further from the truth. A century ago, before the World Trade Center or the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel (the two giant public works projects that decimated this once-thriving quarter), it was an ethnic enclave as vibrant as Little Italy or Chinatown. To read more…
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Wildlife in Lower Manhattan
The dogwalking and jogging crowd on the esplanade yesterday morning had quite a show, when an unidentified Buteo (Buzzard Hawk) lazily flapped past a few heads and landed on a branch to enjoy his breakfast: a tasty pigeon.
Alison Simko
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Aesthetic Inventory
BPCA’s Public Art Collection Represents Multiple Layers of Value
The Battery Park City Authority, has completed an inventory and appraisal of its public art collection. This is part of a broad effort to take stock of the Authority’s ongoing role as a patron and custodian of pieces that represent an integral thread in the fabric of the community, as evidenced by the fact that space and funding for public art were both set aside decades ago, in the neighborhood’s first master plan, before the first building was erected.
Matthew Fenton
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Keep It Light
Condo Boards Question Need for South End Avenue Redesign After Installation of Traffic Signal
At the October 2 meeting of the Battery Park City Committee of Community Board 1, Battery Park City Authority president B.J. Jones was apprised by the leader of a coalition of condominiums along South End Avenue of that group’s ongoing reservations about the Authority’s plan to revamp the thoroughfare.
Pat Smith, the board president of the Battery Pointe condominium (at South End Avenue and Rector Place) told Mr. Jones, “before you go too far on South End Avenue, please remember that six condo boards, representing more than 1,000 households along South End Avenue, from Albany down to West Thames, don’t want you to do this.” To read more…
Matthew Fenton
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Music to Our Ears
When she was ten, Julie Reumert was selected
to sing at a celebration marking the birthday of
Margrethe ll, Queen of Denmark. As a girl growing up in Copenhagen, Ms. Reumert performed with the Saint Anne Girls Choir as a soprano and a soloist.
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Saloon Scuffle
Residents Riled about Tribeca Tavern
More than a dozen concerned Tribeca residents turned out for the September meeting the Licensing and Permits Committee, which weighs in on the granting or renewal of liquor licenses.
They showed up to voice concerns about MI-5, a bar located at 52 Walker Street, which has been a source of local complaints as far back 2007.
Neighbors of the bar allege that it operates as a dance club (in violation of its current license, which is now up for renewal), and that loud music penetrates the upper floors of the residential building located above the bar as late as 4:00 am. To read more…
Matthew Fenton
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Sin of Omission
City Agency Leaves Cash-Strapped Local Museum Off Roster of Cultural Institutions
The City’s Department of Cultural Affairs has omitted from its list of dozens of New York-based cultural institutions that receive public support the museum that chronicles the oldest community anywhere in the five boroughs.
Matthew Fenton
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Condo Embargo
BPCA Puts the Brakes on Conversions of Rental Buildings within Community
Residents of rental apartments in Battery Park City who fear being thrown out of their homes as developers plan to convert those buildings to condominiums can rest a little bit easier, according to the Battery Park City Authority. At the October 2 meeting of the Battery Park City Committee of Community Board 1, Authority president Benjamin Jones said, “I want to talk about some of the potential condo conversions that people are concerned about. We have been very clear with developers over the last year, and then some, about our position — that we want to preserve the rental housing that exists in Battery Park City.” To read more…
Matthew Fenton
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Out of Their Depth
Volleyball Players Rescued from Hudson, After Jumping Into River to Retrieve Ball
Two young men were pulled from the waters of the Hudson River on Saturday morning, after jumping from the Battery Park City Esplanade to retrieve a volleyball that went over the railing, near North Cove Marina.
The men, whose names have not been released, were playing volleyball on the court that overlooks that yacht basin at approximately 11:40 am, when a wild serve sent their ball into the Hudson. Impulsively, they both leaped in after it.
Matthew Fenton
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Vertical Values
Costs to Rent or Own in Lower Manhattan Are Matched by Lofty Local Earnings
A slew of recent reports documents what everyone who lives or works in Lower Manhattan already sensed in their bones: This is a mind-numbingly expensive place to call home.
In September, RENTCafé issued a new analysis of the most expensive neighborhoods for renters in the United States that finds northern Battery Park City (zip code 10282) is the priciest enclave in America, with an average rent of $6,211 per month. Coming in at second place is zip code 10013, which covers western Tribeca, along with part of Soho. To read more…
Matthew Fenton
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From Bunker to Incubator
New Arts Center on Governors Island Will Provide Studio Space and Cultural Programming
Lower Manhattan has a new cultural hub. The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Trust for Governors Island have partnered to create the LMCC Arts Center at Governors Island, a 40,000-square foot studio space and education facility, housed within a restored 1870s ammunition warehouse — a relic from the days when the island was a military outpost.
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Rapport to the Commissioner
CB1 Makes Exception to New Policy; Okays Naming Street for Former NYPD Commissioner
A public figure from the 1980s may soon be honored by having a street co-named in his memory, if Community Board 1 gets its way. The panel recommended that Benjamin Ward, New York’s first African-American police commissioner, be commemorated by rechristening one block of Baxter Street as Benjamin Ward Way.
This comes on the heels of a controversial decision by CB1 in 2018 to decline such a request on behalf of James D. McNaughton, who, on August 2, 2005, at age 27, became the first New York City Police officer to be killed in action while serving in “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
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Flipped Again
Onetime Non-Profit Nursing Facility Sold to Anonymous Buyer for Five Times Original Price
If there is an Exhibit A in the case of fevered speculation in Lower Manhattan real estate, it must be Rivington House
After purchasing the block-long, 150,000-square-foot structure (located at 45 Rivington Street, near the Williamsburg Bridge), the developer, the Allure Group, paid the City an additional $16 million to remove the deed restriction that limited the property to its legacy use of non-profit, residential healthcare. To read more…
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Breaking It Down
Composting Catches on in Battery Park City
You’re probably heard of the farm-to-table movement. Thanks to the Battery Park City Authority’s compost initiative, there’s a burgeoning table-to-earth movement in this Lower Manhattan community.
What happens to the scraps after you’ve dropped them in the bin? How do your apple peels and corn husks turn into rich, beneficial compost?
The Broadsheet set out to investigate. To read more…
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Death Came Calling at the Corner of Wall and Broad Streets, in Lower Manhattan’s First Major Terrorist Attack
As the noon hour approached on a fall Thursday morning in 1920, a horse-drawn wagon slowly made its way west down Wall Street toward “the Corner,” the high-powered intersection of Wall and Broad. Its driver came to a gentle stop in front of the Assay Office, where stockpiles of gold and silver were stored and tested for purity. But theft was not his motive.
John Simko
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Cass Gilbert and the Evolution of the New York Skyscraper
by John Simko
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The Broadsheet Inc. | 212-912-1106 | editor@ebroadsheet.com| ebroadsheet.com
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