The BroadsheetDAILY – 4/28/22 – Wagner Park Resiliency Tour this Afternoon

The Broadsheet – Lower Manhattan’s Local Newspaper

Anti-Inundation Perambulation

Wagner Resiliency Tour Scheduled for this Afternoon

Claudia Filomena, Director of Capital Projects at the Battery Park City Authority, holds an elevation pole as Justine Cuccia, chair of the Community Board 1 Battery Park City Committee, looks up and gauges how high the future terraces of Wagner Park will be.

In a few months, construction will begin on the South Battery Park City Resiliency Project, a flood barrier system that, within a couple years, will extend from the north side of the Museum of Jewish Heritage through Wagner Park and across Pier A Plaza.

The Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) is making efforts to educate the public about its resiliency plans. One of the best ways to understand the changes in store for the Battery Park City landscape is to take a BPCA-led resiliency walking tour. This afternoon at 4pm, a pre-construction site tour around the South BPC Resiliency Project site will take place and is open to all. (A similar walking tour took place last Saturday.)

In this rendering of the future Wagner Park pavilion, note the height differential between the sidewalk and the rising path of the new tree-lined allées.

Participants will receive a multi-page handout of renderings, and as the group walks around the site, tour leaders will answer questions and describe what’s to come, using a long pole to show elevations.

As part of the South Battery Park City Resiliency Project, Wagner Park will be reconstructed with multiple new terraces acting as flood barriers. The Wagner Park pavilion will be demolished, redesigned, and rebuilt closer to Battery Place, with larger restaurant space and a community room. A seven- to eight-foot-high floodwall will be glass-topped where it hugs the Museum of Jewish Heritage. At the inlet between Wagner Park and Pier A, a new platform will extend over the water and eco-concrete will be used to enhance the marine habitat.

Click here for more information about the tour and this project—its duration, which trees will be destroyed, where the temporary sidewalk will be, etc.—as well as the flood risks that Lower Manhattan faces in the coming years.

Dispossessed Downtown

Controversial Homeless Shelter in FiDi Slated to Close

The administration of Mayor Eric Adams has decided to close a homeless shelter in the Financial District that was opened by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio as an emergency measure during the COVID pandemic. In a story first reported by Gothamist, the Radisson New York Wall Street Hotel (located at 52 William Street, near Pine Street) will cease to operate as a facility for homeless people by the end of June.

Letters

[Re: It Would be an Abomination; Local Leaders Consider Pragmatic and Aesthetic Aspects of Cobblestones,April 25, 2022]

To the editor,

As a disabled person who lives on Vestry Street my opinion is that the cobblestones should stay. DOT could learn how to lay cobblestones if assigned the task. My physical therapist has me walk on the cobblestones for balance. I have a tricycle that I ride over the cobblestones. It’s hard on the bike but it’s fun.

Cathy Drew

——————–

To the editor,

To use such an environmentally unfriendly material as asphalt is a throwback to 1950’s thinking.

1). It is impossible to make any surface 100% safe for walkers. At some point people must take their own responsibility as to where they are going. Suggestions: As a public aid, one possibility would be to put concrete paths in the middle of long cobblestone stretches, and to have similar paths at both ends of streets. For vehicles/bikers, etc., signage could be placed at entrances of streets with simple appropriate warnings.

2). In addition, asphalt would increase the ‘heat island’ effect even as we are trying to reduce it. To even consider using an environmentally unsound petroleum product such as asphalt is truly beyond belief!

Louis Kleinman

Amending the Authority

Niou and CB1 Push Longer Leases, Caps on Cost Hikes, and a Voice for Residents

State Assembly member Yuh-Line Niou has introduced a pair of bills in the Albany legislature that closely track recent resolutions by Community Board 1 (CB1), and address a trio of issues that have long vexed local leaders.

Springtime at Liberty Community Gardens

Ready to get their hands in some dirt, downtown gardeners came out for Liberty Community Gardens first gathering of the season, on April 23. Dana and Sarah, master gardeners from BPC Parks, stopped by with gifts of seeds and seed pots, and lots of good advice. Mindy tended her blackberry vines. Mike offered homemade cookies. Katie admired her pansies. Sean brought tomato seedlings grown on his windowsill to share. Heidi neatened the tool bin. Judy pruned her rosebush. Jeneane, Yana, and John and his kids got together to talk about what to plant along the borders. And Chris, the newest community gardener, checked out his plot for the first time.

‘It Would Be an Abomination’

Local Leaders Consider Pragmatic and Aesthetic Aspects of Cobblestones

Community Board 1 (CB1) is weighing whether to recommend that the City tear up historic cobblestone streets in Tribeca and resurface them with asphalt. A resolution debated at the Board’s March meeting notes that the City’s Department of Transportation (DOT) rebuilt seven local cobblestone streets more than a decade ago, and observes, “it almost immediately became apparent that the cobblestone work on these streets was poor, as they began to deteriorate, including loose blocks, disintegrating mortar, and emerging depressions.”

Building a Greener Community

Recognizing the Inevitability of Climate Change Impacts, Battery Park City Action Plan Aims to Make Neighborhood Carbon-Neutral by Mid-Century

The Battery Park City Authority has released its Climate Action Plan, which aims to transition by 2040 to 100 percent of the community’s electric power coming from renewable energy sources, along with a 99 percent reduction in transportation emissions by 2050.

Eyes to the Sky

April 25-May 2, 2022

Venus & Jupiter meet; Dark Sky Week

Fanciful and mythic, timeless and of the moment, this celestial tableau depicts early morning harbinger of summer constellations with planets on the move in late April through early May, 2022. Notice the two unlabeled dots on the lower left of the diagram, above the horizon near the “E” and under the Great Square of Pegasus. The smaller point of light represents planet Jupiter, the larger is Venus. They are approaching each other. Find details below.

Illustration: Judy Isacoff/StarryNight 7

Enjoy spectacular morning stargazing: refer to the diagram, above. Radiant planet Venus appears in the east as if a great star rising in the darkness at daybreak, captivating as the rising Sun but without the need to look away from its steady light. Venus and Jupiter appear closer to one another each day. Look as often as possible to see the distance between them shrink. Be present especially on the mornings of April 29 through May 2. Their closest approach occurs April 30 and May 1, a spectacular planetary conjunction not to be seen again until the year 2039.

Open the following resources for ways to be a part of assuring a healthy Earth Day every day, and protecting dark skies for the vitality of all living beings.

International Dark Sky Week began on Earth Day, April 22, and extends through Saturday, April 30. Recommended reading: Why Light Pollution is a Solvable Environmental Crisis.

Judy Isacoff

THIS WEEK’S CALENDAR

THURSDAY, APRIL 28

4pm

In-person; meet at First Place and Battery Place

Learn more about the South Battery Park City Resiliency Project on this walking tour. Please register in advance. Free.

5:30pm

In person; Irish Hunger Memorial

Ukrainian Village Voices will perform a selection of songs meant to preserve and revive the polyphonic singing style of Ukraine’s seasonal celebrations and lyrical music. Free.

6pm-8pm

In person; South Street Seaport

The Knickerbocker Orchestra presents jazz master Vince Giordano and members of his celebrated band The Nighthawks at this fundraiser. $125 per person.

6:30pm

Online; Fraunces Tavern Museum

Zoom lecture presented by Catherine Prescott & Mary Tsaltas-Ottomanelli. This installment of Tavern Tastings explores the history of whiskey: its creation, rise in popularity during the 18th century in North America, and how its role in the economy of the burgeoning United States incited a rebellion. Free; suggested donation of $10.

8pm

Livestreamed; Gibney

Dance performance. $15-$20.

FRIDAY APRIL 29

11am – 5pm

In person; South Street Seaport Museum

On Saturdays and Sundays, visit the exhibitions and the ships of the South Street Seaport Museum for free. At 12 Fulton Street, see “South Street and the Rise of New York” and “Millions: Migrants and Millionaires aboard the Great Liners, 1900-1914,” and at Pier 16, explore the tall ship Wavertree and lightship Ambrose.

CLASSIFIEDS & PERSONALS

Swaps & Trades, Respectable Employment, Lost and Found

To place a listing, contact editor@ebroadsheet.com

Lower Manhattan Greenmarkets

Tribeca Greenmarket

Greenwich Street & Chambers Street

Wednesdays and Saturdays, 8am-3pm (compost program: Saturdays, 8am-1pm)

Bowling Green Greenmarket

Broadway & Whitehall St

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 8am-5pm (compost program: 8am-11am)

The Outdoor Fulton Stall Market

91 South Street, between Fulton & John Streets

Indoor market: Monday through Saturday,11:30am-5pm

CSA pick-up: Thursday, 4pm-6pm; Friday, 11:30-5pm

Outdoor market: Saturday 11:30am-5pm, May through Thanksgiving

Today in History

April 28

The Kon-Tiki raft, made of nine balsa tree trunks lashed together, can be seen at the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo, Norway.

585 – War between Lydia and Media ended by solar eclipse

1635 – Virginia Gov. John Harvey accused of treason and removed from office

1686 – First volume of Isaac Newton’s “Principia” published

1788 – Maryland becomes seventh state to ratify the Constitution

1789 – Mutiny on the Bounty: Captain William Bligh of the British ship Bounty and 18 of his men are set adrift by mutinous sailors led by Fletcher Christian.

1881 – Billy the Kid escapes from prison in New Mexico

1947 – Thor Heyerdahl and a five-man crew set sail from Peru aboard the primitive raft Kon-Tiki and arrived in Polynesia three and a half months and 4,300 miles later, proving his theory that people from South America could have crossed the Pacific in ancient times.

1952 – WW II Pacific peace treaty takes effect

1965 – US marines invade Dominican Republic, stay until October 1966

1967 – Muhammad Ali refuses induction into army & stripped of boxing title

1969 – Charles de Gaulle resigns as president of France

1977 – American defense employee Christopher Boyce convicted for selling secrets to the Soviet Union

1980 – Cyrus Vance, President Carter’s Secretary of State, resigns

2001 – Millionaire Dennis Tito becomes the world’s first space tourist when he boards a Russian supply mission to the International Space Station

2018 – Indian government says electricity has reached every Indian village

2019 – Victor Vescovo makes the deepest dive ever to the bottom of the Mariana trench at 10,927m (35,849ft), and finds a plastic bag

Births

1442 – Edward IV, King of England (1461-70, 71-83)

1882 – Alberto Pirelli, Italian industrialist

1916 – Ferruccio Lamborghini, Italian automobile manufacturer (d. 1993)

1926 – Harper Lee, author (To Kill a Mockingbird)

1937 – Saddam Hussein, [At-Takriti], Al-Awja, President of Iraq (1979-2003)

1930 – James Baker III, Houston, Sec of Treasury (1985-88), Sec State (1989-92)

1950 – Jay Leno, comedian/talk show host (Tonight Show)

1960 – Elena Kagan, Supreme Court Judge (2010-)

Deaths

1865 – Samuel Cunard, shipping magnate (b. 1787)

1936 – Foead I, king of Egypt (1922-36)

1945 – Benito Mussolini, Fascist leader (Italy), executed at 61

1992 – Francis Bacon, Irish/British abstract painter, dies at 82

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