The BroadsheetDAILY ~ News of Lower Manhattan ~ 2/25/20

Enoteca on the Hudson

City Winery Prepares to Open at Pier 57

A rendering of City Winery’s new, soon-to-open location on Pier 57, with the Little Island Park (now under construction) visible at left.

As Lower Manhattan has morphed into a residential community and dining destination, another ongoing evolution has attracted less notice: Downtown is becoming a performing arts district. The highest-profile illustration of this shift is the Perelman, which (thanks to the largesse of its eponymous benefactor) has become the shorthand name for the World Trade Center Performing Arts Center that is slowly rising out of the ground near the intersection of Vesey and Greenwich Streets. But the opening of this facility is still several years away.

In the meantime, music lovers can look forward to the April debut of City Winery, at Pier 57 (within the Hudson River Park), near West 15th Street. Occupying 32,000 square feet within a 1950s steamship dock that is also being remodeled to serve as office space for Google, the new restaurant, wine bar, and music hall will replace the legendary venue of the same name that vacated its decade-old home on Varick Street last summer, forced out by Disney’s purchase of the entire block, with plans to build a massive new headquarters there.

The new City Winery will seat 100 in its restaurant space, with room for 350 in its concert venue. All rooms will have views of the nearby Little Island Park (which consists of undulating, tulip-shaped platforms) now being constructed at Pier 55. Another amenity likely to draw passersby into City Winery is the two-acre park now being laid out on the roof of Pier 57.

Founder Michael Dorf (who made his reputation as the creator of the Knitting Factory music venue) opened City Winery in 2008, and quickly built it into a musical and viticultural powerhouse, with branches in Nashville, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. The venues are noted for an eclectic roster of musical acts, and for a diverse selection of wines — made possible by a custom-developed tap system that dispenses fine reds and whites from a dozen-plus aluminum tanks and more than 300 wooden barrels. A large part of the wine list comes from blends made on the premises, for City Winery is one of the small handful of functioning wine-making facilities in the five boroughs of New York. Mr. Dorf’s passion for wine may also be familiar to Lower Manhattan residents who have visited his other restaurant, City Vineyard, located on Pier 26 (near North Moore Street), also in the Hudson River Park.

Like the Knitting Factory before it, City Winery became famous as an “intimate” venue, where headline acts performed for audiences numbering in the hundreds, rather than the thousands. Among the artist that City Winery will welcome to Pier 57 after its April opening are Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes, Sinead O’Connor, and the Mountain Goats.

Mr. Dorf, who is the father of three children, has lived in Tribeca since 1994. In addition to running a successful restaurant empire, he has built a reputation as a philanthropist in recent years. He created the Tribute series at Carnegie Hall, which has partnered with artists like Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Sedaka, Elton John, REM, The Who, Neil Young, the Rolling Stones and Paul Simon to raise more than $1 million for charitable causes. Mr. Dorf is also the founder of Tribeca Hebrew (an after-school Hebrew program in Lower Manhattan) and Downtown Arts Development (which oversees the New York Jewish Music and Heritage Festival).

———————————————————————

CB1 Skeptical about New Performance Venue in FiDi

	A performance venue, planned for  20 Exchange Place, has sparked opposition  in the Financial District.

In a preliminary vote, the Licensing & Permits Committee of Community Board 1 has enacted a resolution calling upon the State Liquor Authority to reject an application by Ermusive, a production company that wants to open a new performance venue in the basement of 20 Exchange Place, in the Financial District.

The first addition to Downtown’s bike grid will consist of dedicated cycling lanes on Broadway and Whitehall Street, extending from City Hall southward to Bowling Green and the Staten Island Ferry, where this route will link with the existing Waterfront Path, which connects the Battery to bike easements on the East River shoreline and in Battery Park City.

2PM

5:30PM

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

6PM

7:30PM

CLASSIFIEDS & PERSONALS

Swaps & Trades  ~  Respectable Employment ~ Lost & Found

212-912-1106   editor@ebroadsheet.com

HOUSEKEEPING/NANNY/BABYSITTER

Available starting September for PT/FT.

ELDERCARE

Available for PT/FT elder care.  Experienced. References Angella

 347-423-5169 angella.haye1@gmail.com

EXPERIENCED ELDER CARE

Able to prepare nutritious meals and light housekeeping

Municipal Think Tank Urges City to Weigh BPCA Takeover

The City’s Independent Budget Office, a publicly funded agency that provides nonpartisan information on critical issues confronting the City, is proposing that the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio consider a municipal takeover of Battery Park City.

This recommendation hinges upon the unique, hybrid nature of the community, which was built on acreage newly created from landfill in the 1970s.  To read more…

Tenants at Another Financial District Building Seek Class-Action Status in Suit Against Landlords

A map, compiled by New York University’s Furman Center (which advances research and debate on housing, neighborhoods, and urban policy) illustrating the dozens of Lower Manhattan buildings — erstwhile office towers, converted to residential use — that have benefited from the 421-g program.

 February 25

Photos and information culled from Wikipedia and other internet sources

Alliance Readies First Steps in Master Plan to Balance Beauty with Security Around Stock Exchange

	A rendering of the proposed street furniture the Downtown Alliance wants to install on Broad Street.

The Downtown Alliance is preparing to implement the first phase of a master plan unveiled in May, 2018, which aims to transform the “frozen zone” — a 3,000-feet security perimeter surrounding the New York Stock Exchange, which has enclosed (and limited access to) 19 acres of the Financial District since shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. To read more…

City Council Announces Design Competition to Improve Pedestrian Access to Brooklyn Bridge

Some 15,000 pedestrians and 3,600 cyclists compete with each other and souvenir vendors for as little as ten feet of width on the deck of the Brooklyn Bridge

The City Council has partnered with the Van Alen Institute (a New York nonprofit architectural organization, dedicated to improving design in the public realm) in sponsoring a contest to incubate fresh ideas for better pedestrian access to the Brooklyn Bridge.  To read more…

Longtime Residents, Neither Rich Nor Poor, Face an Uncertain Future Downtown

	The approximate number of new apartments created between 2010 and 2018.

The administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio has released an updated version of its Where We Live NYC affordable housing plan, which contains some striking insights about Lower Manhattan.

The report finds that between 25 and 30 percent of all local rental units are rent stabilized, while market-rate apartments comprise between 35 and 42 percent of all units. To read more…

Battery Park City’s annual art exhibition opened on Sunday, January 26.

  To read more…

After Two-Year Hiatus, Work to Resume at St. Nicholas Church

Work is slated to resume soon on the construction of the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church within the World Trade Center site. The striking design (shown here in a rendering) by architect Santiago Calatrava, who also created the nearby Oculus, has made the structure one of Lower Manhattan’s most eagerly anticipated new buildings.

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced on January 2 that a newly formed non-profit organization will raise funds and underwrite the completion of the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, within the World Trade Center Complex.

The building, designed by renowned architect Santiago Calatrava (who additionally created the nearby Oculus, also in the World Trade Center) is slated to replace the histo precious parish church that fell among the victims of September 11. To read more…

Much-Touted Crackdown on Placard Parking Not All It Was Cracked Up to Be

Epicenter of a Notorious Slum Proposed for Commemoration

The Five Points gang, a criminal organization that drew its members from the ethnic immigrant populations that inhabited the neighborhood.

In 1831, the City government considered a petition that warned, “that the place known as “Five points” has long been notorious… as being the nursery where every species of vice is conceived and matured; that it is infested by a class of the most abandoned and desperate character.”

A decade later, Charles Dickens, visiting New York, wrote of the same Lower Manhattan neighborhood that had inspired the petition, “what place is this, to which the squalid street conducts us? A kind of square of leprous houses, some of which are attainable only by crazy wooden stairs without. What lies behind this tottering flight of steps? Let us go on again, and plunge into the Five Points…. To read more…

	In an instant, both wagon and horse were vaporized, and the closest automobile was tossed twenty feet in the air. Incredibly, the iconic bronze of George Washington surveys the devastation from the steps of the Sub-Treasury without so much as a scratch.

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.