Lower Manhattan’s Local News
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Governor Cuomo has issued an executive order requiring all people in New York to wear masks or face coverings in public, including when taking public or private transportation or riding in for-hire vehicles.
More information: coronavirus.health.ny.gov/home or call 1-888-364-3065.All non-essential workers must continue to work from home and schools and everyone is required to maintain a 6-foot distance from others in public
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Don’t Stand So Close… Or Else
Social Distancing No Longer Dependent Upon Voluntary Compliance
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The crowds gathered at Pier 45, near Christopher Street, over the weekend of May 1, were drawn by warm weather and seemed largely oblivious of social distancing guidelines.
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Over the weekend, two areas of the Hudson River Park became laboratories for an experiment in how to enforce the social distancing measures that public officials believe are necessary to help contain the spread of the pandemic coronavirus.
At a Friday press conference, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that Piers 45 and 46 (located along the Hudson River waterfront, near Christopher and Charles Streets, respectively) would be patrolled by NYPD officers, with orders to limit crowd sizes, and authority to issue summonses or make arrests, if they deemed necessary.
“Why are we doing this? Because it saves lives,” Mr. de Blasio explained. “And that’s what we’re going to tell people from the beginning. If you’re going in, you’re going in for a limited period of time. We’re not going to let it get too crowded. We’re going to start using this kind of approach in these parks. If it works and we need to use it in other places, we’ll do that. But the idea is proactive — NYPD and other agencies are there before people show up in numbers. We set the tone from the beginning. We think this is going to help a lot.”
The same policy was also imposed at Domino Park, a popular waterfront enclave in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. These moves appear to have been triggered by widespread reports of large, densely packed crowds gathering in popular green-spaces throughout the five boroughs, over the weekend of May 1, when unusually warm weather provided an irresistible lure for tens of thousands of New Yorkers weary of the confinement imposed by quarantine measures.
“We had some parks last weekend that were more crowded than they should have been,” Mr. de Blasio told reporters. “It wasn’t just some stray individuals — it was really just the physical reality of the park.”
“Hudson River Park was one of the places where we saw too many people too close together,” he continued. “We’re going to proactively limit the number of people who can be in any given area right there. We’re going to have the NYPD working with other agencies from the very beginning of the day, limiting the number of people who go in. Obviously offering people face coverings as well and keeping an eye to make sure the number of people never reaches too high a point. And when it does, obviously asking people to move out and make more space — make sure there’s turnover. We’re going to try that approach, see if that gets us where closer to where we need to be.”
But the choice of venue for these experiments may have been driven by a separate consideration. Last week, CBS-TV News broke a story that analyzed the statistics behind police enforcement of social distancing measures in New York.
It showed that between mid-March and May 5, NYPD officers had recorded about one million contacts with the public related to social distancing, which led to 368 summonses and 120 arrests. But among those arrested or issued summonses, more than 67 percent were black, 24 percent were Hispanic, and fewer than 7 percent were white.
In this context, waterfront parks in Greenwich Village and Williamsburg, two largely gentrified communities, may be part of an attempt by City Hall to equalize enforcement across the full demographic spectrum of New York.
This Saturday and Sunday, the weather was less balmy than last weekend, and there was no immediate information available about how effective or successful the trial runs proved to be.
Matthew Fenton
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Over this past weekend, the Manhattan Youth Downtown Community Center on Warren Street, distributed art supplies for kids and their families and masks for anyone who needed one.
Spreading the word that wearing a mask and social distancing is the best way to beating the pandemic, Bob Townley and his staff, donned their own masks as they distributed the bags of art supplies and masks to the community.
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Letters
To the editor:
Re: What Comes Next? Assembly Member Proposes Post-Pandemic New Deal
The BroadsheetDAILY May 4
The well is dry.
The middle class is sick of paying taxes in a city that caters to people with their hands out and illegals and trains that are filled with homeless.
After companies see how people can work at home, what companies would be stupid enough to stay in New York and pay high rents.? Seriously, who will stay?
After the pandemic there will be a population shift to the south and Midwest like no one has ever seen before.
The subways are disgusting The elderly were murdered in nursing homes by a governor who sent covid patients back rather than sending them to Jacob Javits.
Florida treated the elderly as most vulnerable and saved them. NYC is fast approaching Venezuela and Latin American countries where the Uber-wealthy ride around in limousines surrounded by hovels.
Policies like Yuh-Line Niou: drive the middle class out of NY.
Bianca Juarez
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Community Board Meetings This Week
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Monday May 11
6PM
Land Use, Zoning & Economic Development Committee
AGENDA
1) 100 William Street, Board of Standards and Appeals application for special permit to allow the operation of a physical culture establishment (Orangetheory Gym) – Resolution
Small Business Working Group
1) Small Business Working Group Mandate and Objectives – Discussion
2) Short-term business assistance and relief – Discussion
3) Long-term economic recovery – Discussion
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Tuesday May 12
5:30PM
AGENDA
1) After-school funding for calendar year 2021-22: Presentation by Bob Townley – Possible Resolution
2) Proposed legislation on H.R. 6563 (116) bill to create $2 billion fund for providing remote learning resources: Presentation by Dennis Mihalksky and Jeff Mihok – Discussion & resolution
3) Learning and Planning for Fall 2020. Conversations with Lower Manhattan Principals – Discussion & Possible Resolution
• Renny Fong, Principal, PS 130
• Jacqui Getz, Principal, MS 297
• Terri Ruyter, Principal, PS / IS 276
• Kelly Shannon, Principal, PS 41
• Maggie Siena, Principal, PS 343
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Wednesday May 13
6PM
Licensing & Permits Committee
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Thursday May 14
6PM
Landmarks & Preservation Committee
AGENDA
1) 74 Leonard Street, extension of existing elevator bulkhead to provide 6th Floor elevator access – Resolution
2) 84 South Street, application for NYC Parks Department Concession – Resolution
3) 75 Broadway, application for glass window replacement – Resolution
4) 180 Water Street, application for restoration and development of the existing Seaport District memorial light tower – Resolution
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NEWS FROM PREVIOUS EDITIONS
OF THE BROADSHEETDAILY
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Pandemic Progress
Rate of Local Infections Continues to Decline
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A total of 703 residents of Lower Manhattan (among 2,400 who have been tested) are confirmed to have been infected by the pandemic coronavirus, according to statistics released by the City’s Department of Health (DOH). These numbers are current as of Thursday afternoon (May 7).
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Quittance for Those Who Never Quit
Gateway Tenants Say Thanks for Being There During the Tough Times
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Tenants at Gateway Plaza, Battery Park City’s largest residential complex, have partnered with their landlord to raise tens of thousands of dollars to thank staff members for keeping the facility running during the pandemic coronavirus.
The project began in April, when a group of residents came together and launched a GoFundMe page, asking neighbors to contribute to a fund that would be distributed among Gateway employees. Within two weeks, the GoFundMe page had accumulated more than $25,000.
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A Call to Alms
Community Leaders Partner with Food Charity to Feed Downtown Residents in Need
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In the best of times, some 1.4 million New York City residents chronically suffer from what is called “food insecurity.” But these are not the best of times. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has shuttered stores, isolated the elderly and handicapped in their homes, and posed multiple other challenges for those whose grip on daily sustenance was already tenuous before the onset of the crisis. To read more
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‘The Doctor Told Me My Chances Were 50-50’
A Widely Admired Community Leader Recalls Her Life-and-Death Battle with COVID-19
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Daisy Paez, a Lower East side activist who has served for years as a local District Leader, is a universally revered matriarch among Downtown’s political and community family. She recently returned from more than a month of hospitalization, during which she nearly died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the pandemic coronavirus.
“It felt like somebody just snatched me from my life and threw me into this horrifying ordeal,” she recalls. “In the beginning, I remember hearing how people would get really ill, and that if you had a cough or a high fever, you needed to see a doctor. But I was fine. Then, in the last week of March, I started feeling sick. I went to the CityMD urgent care facility on Delancey Street, and they gave me a flu test, which came back negative. They also gave me a test for COVID-19, and told me the results would be available in about five days.”
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Letters
Esplanade Traffic
To the editor:
I am finding it impossible to walk on the esplanade with all the speeding bicyclists and runners (most not wearing face masks).
After the bike path was built on West Street, I believe biking on the esplanade where elderly and children walk is far too dangerous – even pre-pandemic.
Maria K.
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What Comes Next?
Assembly Member Proposes Post-Pandemic New Deal
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Yuh-Line Niou, who represents Lower Manhattan in the New York State Assembly, is pushing for a comprehensive package of legislation to address a broad range of needs that are expected to follow the ongoing crisis sparked by the pandemic coronavirus.
The 25 bills she is sponsoring include measures to help with joblessness, housing affordability, healthcare, childcare, and rising poverty rates, as well as tax reform that seeks to relieve the burden on low-income individuals and small businesses, while raising revenue from people and firms with the resources to pay more.
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Merchant Munificence
Alliance Throws a Lifeline to Lower Manhattan Small Businesses
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Jessica Lappin, Downtown Alliance president: “There is not one storefront business in New York City that has been spared by COVID-19. Every one of them is struggling. We are stepping up to do what we can to help stores keep their lights on.”
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The Downtown Alliance is launching a new program to help storefront businesses in Lower Manhattan, via which it plans to give away $800,000 in grants.
The Small Business Rental Assistance Grant program aims to offer immediate help to shops currently providing vital services to residents and essential workers in Lower Manhattan during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and is funded with contributions from Brookfield Properties, Silverstein Properties and the Howard Hughes Corporation, as well as $250,000 from the Alliance itself.
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Remembering a Fallen Healer
A Local Leader Recalls Tribeca’s Nisar Quraishi
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Russ Schulman, a longtime resident of Tribeca and the associate executive director at Manhattan Youth, says of Dr. Nisar A. Quraishi, “he was my primary care physician for decades, and a trusted friend.”
Dr. Quraishi, who died from COVID-19 (the disease caused by the pandemic coronavirus) in April, at age 73, was a Tribeca pioneer, hanging out a shingle in 1976 at the then-new Independence Plaza, just a few years after earning a degree in medicine in his native Pakistan. To read more…
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Where the Sidewalk Forfends
Data Scientist Finds That Downtown Footpaths Impede Social Distancing
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Although Lower Manhattan is among the communities least affected by the pandemic coronavirus anywhere in the five boroughs, it faces one increased risk that most other neighborhoods do not. A new analysis shows that narrow sidewalk widths in the square mile below Chambers Street make it especially difficult to practice social distancing here.
Meli Harvey, a senior computational designer at Sidewalk Labs — an urban innovation organization owned by Google, which aims to improve civic infrastructure through technological solutions — has completed an inventory of sidewalk widths throughout the five boroughs. To read more…
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An April Intervention
The Hunter and the Hunted, Along with a Haunted Onlooker
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Isaiah Berlin famously observed that, “the fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” A Lower Manhattan resident thought of this on a Saturday afternoon in mid-April, when Downtown was locked down, but he ventured outside — desperate for fresh air, seeking signs of life — and was confronted by this tableaux in the Battery. The raptor perched on the park bench knew one big thing: that he was too large to get beneath the seat, where his lunch awaited. And the squirrel below knew one little thing: that he was safe as long as he stayed where he was.
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CLASSIFIEDS &PERSONALS
Swaps & Trades
Respectable Employment
Lost and Found
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SHSAT TUTORING
Stuyvesant HS graduate
available for SHSAT tutoring. $40/hr. Zoom or in-person
Nurse’s Aide
Caring, experienced Nurse’s Aide seeks PT/FT position.
Excellent references
ELDERCARE:
Available for PT/FT Exp’d. Refs
Experienced Elder Care
Able to prepare nutritious meals and light housekeeping.
Excellent references
HOUSEKEEPING/ NANNY/ BABYSITTER
Available for PT/FT . Wonderful person, who is a great worker. Refs avail
Worked in BPC. Call Tenzin
347-803-9523
Seeking Full-Time Live-In Elder Care
12 years experience, refs avail
I am a loving caring hardworking certified home health aide
Marcia 347 737 5037
IT AND SECURITY SUPPORT
Expertise in 1-on-1 tutoring for all ages.Computer upgrading & troubleshooting. Knowledgeable in all software programs.
347-933-1362. Refs available
If you would like to place a listing, please contact
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1647 – Peter Stuyvesant arrives in New Amsterdam to replace Willem Kieft as Director-General of New Netherland, the Dutch colonial settlement in present-day New York City.
1812 – Prime Minister Spencer Perceval is assassinated by John Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons, London.
1820 – HMS Beagle, the ship that will take Charles Darwin on his scientific voyage, is launched.
1846 – President James K. Polk asked for and received a Declaration of War against Mexico, starting the Mexican–American War
1862 – American Civil War: The ironclad CSS Virginia is scuttled in the James River northwest of Norfolk, Virginia.
1894 – Pullman Strike: Four thousand Pullman Palace Car Company workers go on a wildcat strike in Illinois..
1945 – World War II: Off the coast of Okinawa, the aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill is hit by two kamikazes, killing 346 of its crew. Although badly damaged, the ship is able to return to the U.S. under its own power.
1949 – Israel joins the United Nations.
1953 – The 1953 Waco tornado outbreak: An F5 tornado hits downtown Waco, Texas, killing 114.
1960 – In Buenos Aires, Argentina, four Israeli Mossad agents capture fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann who is living under the alias of Ricardo Klement.
1973 – Citing government misconduct, Daniel Ellsberg has charges for his involvement in releasing the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times dismissed.
1987 – In Baltimore, the first heart–lung transplant takes place. The surgery is performed by Dr. Bruce Reitz of the Stanford University School of Medicine.
1997 – Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer, defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player in a classic match format.
Births
1722 – Petrus Camper, Dutch physician, anatomist, and physiologist (d. 1789)
1801 – Henri Labrouste, French architect and academic, designed the Sainte-Geneviève Library (d. 1875)
1811 – Chang and Eng Bunker, Thai-American conjoined twins (d. 1874)
1888 – Irving Berlin, Belarusian-American pianist and composer (d. 1989)
1904 – Salvador Dalí, Spanish painter and illustrator (d. 1989)
1918 – Richard Feynman, American physicist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1988)
1928 – Yaacov Agam, Israeli sculptor
1940 – Herbert Müller, Swiss race car driver (d. 1981)
1946 – Robert Jarvik, American cardiologist, developed the artificial heart
Deaths
912 – Leo VI the Wise, Byzantine emperor (b. 866)
1871 – John Herschel, English mathematician, astronomer, and chemist (b. 1792)
1960 – John D. Rockefeller Jr., American businessman and philanthropist (b. 1874)
1988 – Kim Philby, British double agent (b. 1912)
2006 – Floyd Patterson, American boxer and actor (b. 1935)
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Hostel Intentions
Downtown Hotel Business May Be an Enduring Casualty of Pandemic
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As local travel and tourism have ground to a halt in the wake of the pandemic coronavirus, one Downtown business sector is undergoing what may be a permanent transformation. By any reasonable yardstick, the hotel business in Lower Manhattan has been drastically overbuilt — the result of nearly two decades of giddy speculation, by developers.
Today, there are 37 hotels operating in the square mile below Chambers Street, offering more than 7,900 rooms, according to the 2019 Lower Manhattan Real Estate Year in Review, a report from the Downtown Alliance. To read more…
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COVID-19 and your pets.
A Guide from the Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare
how to care for your pet during the COVID-19 Pandemic
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‘As Sick as I’ve Ever Been in My Life’
One Survivor’s First-Person Account of Grappling with the Coronavirus
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(Editor’s Note: This narrative was supplied to the Broadsheet by a Battery Park City resident who has asked to remain anonymous.)
When I first heard about this, back in late January or early February, I wasn’t sure how it was different from a more serious version of seasonal flu, because the narrative was familiar — starting in Asia, and coming from some kind of animal population. The one difference I remember noting was that this sounded much more contagious.
After that, I didn’t think much more about it for several weeks, other than to frame it as a kind of “second” flu season. But near the end of February, the beginning of March, my perception changed, along with everybody else’s. This was clearly different, because of how it had jumped to humans, and how aggressively it was spreading. To read more…
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WANTED:
Your Coronavirus story in one hundred words.
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New Amsterdam Market returns in virtual format, as a service to the growing community of purveyors, distributors, producers and other small businesses who are creating regional, sustainable, regenerative, healthful, and equitable food systems.
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A pair of peregrin falcons are back in Lower Manhattan, high above 55 Water Street. Click to watch a live camera as they care for their young.
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395 South End Avenue,
New York, NY 10280
212-912-1106
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No part of this document may be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher © 2020
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