The BroadsheetDAILY ~ July 24

City Council Overrules CB1 on Naming Tribeca Intersection for NYPD Officer Killed in Iraq

New York City Police Officer and U.S. Army Staff Sergeant James McNaughton: born April 13, 1978; died August 2, 2005.

The City Council on Tuesday overturned a preliminary determination made by Community Board 1 (CB1) last October, by deciding to approve a proposal to co-name the Tribeca intersection of West Broadway and Lispenard Street in honor 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.”

Co-naming is an honorary geographic designation in New York, under which a street or intersection retains its original label, but a second sign is also attached to a nearby lamp post, denoting the additional, commemoratory name. In this case, the Tribeca location was chose because it is outside the Transit Police station at which Officer McNaughton worked. CB1 decided to reject that proposal in October, for multiple reasons having to do with fairness and the lack of consistently applied standards for such requests.

In a vigorous debate, CB1 members voiced competing priorities. Susan Cole began by saying, “I having nothing but pride for this young man, but we’ve been very clear about co-naming. We have refused to do this for abolitionists,” she added, in a reference to proposals in 2006 and 2009 to rename the same intersection for David Ruggles, an African-American opponent of slavery who led more than 600 former slaves to freedom, and who once lived in Lispenard Street. (CB1 also rejected that proposal.) “I’m not against a plaque or dedicating a tree, but co-naming would set a terrible precedent,” Ms. Cole said. “We should do something, but not a co-naming.”

Marc Ameruso countered that, “in other cases, plaques have been more appropriate, but we shouldn’t be against co-naming in all cases. As a veteran of Afghanistan, I’m in favor of this.”

Pat Moore, who chairs CB1’s Quality of Life Committee, noted that, “we did decide as a board that we’re against co-naming, and we turned down the Ruggles proposal, even though he lived on Lispendard. If we didn’t do that, why are we co-naming for someone who didn’t live there?”

	Bob Townley

Bob Townley said, “we need to view things in the context of local community. In this case, the local community is our precinct and that should be our framework. It is important that we act as a community, and support the community that this man was a part of. Let’s give them what they’re asking for, which is nothing compared to what happens every day to police.”

Mr. Townley continued, “this is not setting a precedent, and if the abolitionist was turned down, we should bring that up again. McNaughton was fighting for the same thing the abolitionist was fighting for. We need to honor both. We should not get technical now, but instead support this proposal and then look at these things in the future in a different way.”

Tammy Meltzer

Tammy Meltzer, chair of CB1’s Battery Park City, said, “co-naming is not the best way to honor someone who has lived a life of service, but every single subway entrance now has an electronic component. In this age of technology, it would be great if every entrance to that subway station had a digital banner across it honoring him in greater depth. That would be a way to convey information.”

Alice Bank, who chairs CB1’s Environmental Protection Committee, said, “I live on Lispendard Street and remember the proposals for David Ruggles. But I would feel uncomfortable naming this for any individual, whether David Ruggles or James McNaughton.”

Alice Blank: “CB1 has had immense loss and many heroes who merit recognition, from September 11, to the more recent terror attack in Hudson River Park, and the many heroes fallen in the line of duty. The community must rightly be very careful to be fair to all those worthy of honor.”

She added, “this officer was an unbelievably important hero. But there are not enough streets, or room on these street signs. And there’s no end in sight, especially with all of the people who died on September 11. So I support finding another way.”

“Trees are one example,” she observed. “There are hundreds of trees in Tribeca, and they could have plaques in front of them. But co-naming is troubling, because when do you say no?”

Laura Starr said, “I didn’t know we had a policy about co-naming streets, and would like to know what it is.”

This led to a months-long effort to update and clarify CB1’s criteria for street co-naming proposals, led by Reggie Thomas, chair of the Transportation & Street Activity Committee. Mr. Thomas outlined those guidelines at the May 23 meeting of CB1, saying, “we have had a very rich, interesting, unique and somewhat horrifying experience with street co-namings. This is an emotional issue, but an operational issue as well.”

He explained that CB1 was increasing the minimum time of community involvement from 15 to 20 years. The new guidelines also explain that, “Manhattan Community Board 1 is unique, given its narrow street grid, historical street names, and a history of human loss — and as a result, requires us as a Board to review applications for street co-namings with an additional level of stringency and great care.”

The criteria also require that, “a prospective honoree must be deceased, and be a New York City resident or native, and/or an individual of great significance to New York City,” while further reserving the distinction for, “an individual whose death occurred under extraordinary circumstances of crime, accident, disease, social circumstance or the death itself leads to a greater awareness within society of the cause of death and a concerted effort to solve the problem.”

Officer McNaughton’s parents (both retired NYPD officers) weep in May, 2017, as his name is added to the National Law Enforcement Memorial, in Washington, D.C.

Officer McNaughton’s case meets some (but not all) of these criteria. He was born on Long Island, but lived in Queens at the time of his death. He entered the Police Academy in 2001, and served until his death in 2005. The loss of his life in combat in Iraq qualifies as, “extraordinary circumstances.” But he would seem to be disallowed by a provision that says, “an individual already named on a public memorial within Community Board #1 will also be discouraged.” (Officer McNaughton’s name already appears on the NYPD Memorial in Battery Park City, as well as a bronze plaque within the Tribeca subway station where his police unit was headquartered.)

Decisions about co-naming streets are ultimately made by the City Council. But, as a procedural matter, they come first before the local Community Board within which the street is located, so that the panel can issue an advisory opinion. When CB1 rejected the co-naming proposal honoring Officer McNaughton in October, City Council member Margaret Chin, who represents Lower Manhattan, said, “we honor those who have served in our Armed Forces, as well as the brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. One of those heroes is Police Officer James D. McNaughton — who not only served our City, but our country as well. To honor his memory, and the wishes of his family and colleagues at NYPD Transit District Two, it is my hope that the Community Board will reconsider this co-naming application and give Officer McNaughton the public designation his sacrifice and service to our City deserves.”

CB1 did not revisit the proposal to co-name West Broadway and Lispenard Street after Officer McNaughton, but the City Council moved ahead nonetheless. On Tuesday, that body’s Parks & Recreation Committee (which oversees street co-namings) considered a bill that will designate dozens of streets and intersections throughout the five boroughs with honorary names.

City Council member Margaret Chin: “Officer McNaughton embodied the very best of the NYPD — selflessness, duty and honor.”

Ms. Blank appeared at this sessions, and rose to speak when public comment was invited. She began by noting that she was speaking only for herself, and observed that, “we are very much aware that state street co-naming happens all over the City. CB1 has bylaws that they are not very much in favor of co-naming, because of the number of streets, the difficulty of getting to those streets, the history, density, and the extraordinary number of people who merit honors for all the tremendous amount of tragedy that CB1 has seen.”

“We all appreciate the vitally important role of the police in our community,” she continued, “and that of the fallen officer whose life was tragically lost during valorous service in Iraq. But when a Community Board votes against co-naming a street, it has an important reason for doing so. And its members do not expect that their views will be disregarded without directly engaging them, without sharing any reason, and without confronting the community’s reasoning. This small act raises large questions about the integrity of our Community Board process. The Council should consider allowing the community and the Community Board to have an opportunity to further discuss and consider these street co-namings.”

“CB1 has had immense loss and many heroes who merit recognition, from September 11, to the more recent terror attack in Hudson River Park, and the many heroes fallen in the line of duty,” she concluded. “The community must rightly be very careful to be fair to all those worthy of honor.”

After she spoke, the Committee voted unanimously to approve the street co-naming bill that will authorize the designation of West Broadway and Lispenard Street in honor of Officer McNaughton, along with nearly 100 other, similar designations. Shortly afterward, the Council as whole approved the same bill.

Afterward, Ms. Chin said, “Officer McNaughton embodied the very best of the NYPD — selflessness, duty and honor. In addition to serving in Transit District Two, Jimmy was an Army reservist. In the weeks after September 11, 2001, he patrolled the subways to reassure his fellow New Yorkers during a time of extreme fear and anxiety. When the Iraq War began, Jimmy was redeployed and joined his fellow officers at Camp Victory, in Baghdad, to train Iraqi police officers. While guarding the camp in 2005, a sniper’s bullet ended Staff Sergeant McNaughton’s life. He was only 27 years old. He became the first NYPD officer killed in Iraq, and his legacy lives on in the memories held by his family, friends and his fellow NYPD officers. I am proud that my colleagues on the New York City Council approved the co-naming to ensure Jimmy’s legacy is never forgotten.  Now, people walking by — especially young people — will see Officer McNaughton’s name and look into his story and the sacrifice he made for our country.”

To the Editor,

Since there are no official surveys to record the use and users of the bridge, I have undertaken one.

Bumptious Bumpkins Make for Bus Bumpy Ride for Locals

Lower Manhattan community leaders are grappling with concerns about crowding, safety, and possible criminal activity surrounding the Connection shuttle bus, operated by the Downtown Alliance, which ferries riders around Lower Manhattan, free of charge.

For several years, apprehension about spurious ticket sellers hawking fake boarding passes to boats that purport to bring tourists to the State of Liberty have overlapped with concerns about the Connection bus.

Stalled Tower at 125 Greenwich Street May Be Headed to Foreclosure

	The 88-story building, where construction work has stalled due to financial setbacks

The troubled residential tower at 125 Greenwich Street may be facing foreclosure by lenders who say the development team has defaulted on the terms of several mortgages.

In May, work stopped on the building when multiple construction contractors filed liens against the developers for some $40 million in unpaid fees. This prompted several creditors — most prominently, the United Overseas Bank — to file notice with New York courts that they are owed $199 million in mortgage payments. The bank’s overall loan to the developers of 125 Greenwich is more than $450 million, and it is only one of half a dozen creditors.

New Artist Work Space in World Trade Center Part of Creative Surge in Lower Manhattan

	A rendering of the artist work space now being readied

Silver Art Projects, a public service project supported by Silverstein Properties(operator of the World Trade Center complex) is kicking off a new artist residency program at Three World Trade Center.

Under this initiative, dozens of artists (working across a broad range of media and disciplines) will be invited to share more than 40,000 square feet of free studio space on the tower’s 50th floor, which will be given over in its entirety to this program.

To Broadsheet Editor;

re: BroadsheetDAILY “The BPCA Gets a Credit Limit Increase” July 16, 2019

It is interesting to see that the Battery Park City Authority will be getting half a billion dollars to protect the community from climate change, which it will mostly spend on building flood barriers that will exacerbate climate change. Relatively little will be spent on actually stopping climate change.

If this were only happening in Battery Park City, it might not be a major issue. But this is not the case. The same is occurring in the Financial District, in the Lower East Side, elsewhere in the city, and nationwide. Almost all of the hundreds of billions of dollars of public funding that is being allocated to address climate change in the US is being used to buy a lot of concrete and steel, which will emit a lot of greenhouse gases, and provide short-term protection at best.

Arguably, this is what happens when one tries to address a global problem at the local level. Everybody has an incentive to protect their little patch, and not to worry about the larger whole. But if we were to instead spend the same many billions of dollars on actually stopping climate change, we could probably do it.

It is a bit like going to the moon. All it takes is some people in power with a vision and a will. The money is there, and if given the chance the American people can solve almost any technical problem.

July 22 – August 4, 2019

	Aldrin at Tranquility Base

It was a three-day journey from Earth to the Moon for the three Apollo 11 astronauts aboard the spaceship, or command module, Columbia, headed for the first landing of humans on the moon. Columbia – named for the historical epithet for the Americas – lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the morning of July 16, 1969. Soon after launch, Columbia docked with the lunar module, the Eagle, a vehicle designed to land two of the astronauts on the Moon while the third stayed with Columbia until the moonwalk was completed.

Former Governors Island Overseer Takes Helm at World Trade Center Performance Venue

	Leslie Koch

The Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center, now under construction at the World Trade Center, has a new president — Leslie Koch. Ms. Koch will be most familiar to Lower Manhattan residents as the guiding hand behind the Trust for Governors Island.

Her decade-long tenure there, which saw seasonal visitation rise from 8,000 per season to more than 600,000, ended in 2016.   To read more…

Albany Legislature Okays Half a Billion in New Bond Debt for BPCA

The State legislature has enacted a measure that will allow the Battery Park City Authority to take on up to half a billion dollars in new bond debt, in order to fund resiliency measures throughout the community, as well as to underwrite other capital projects.

The bill, sponsored in the Assembly by Yuh-Line Niou (who represents Battery Park City south of Vesey Street) and in the Senate by Brian Kavanagh (who represents all of Battery Park City), grants permission to the Authority… 

Federal Report Foresees More Frequent Flooding for Lower Manhattan

Superstorm Sandy floods West Street

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.

The Tale of the Ticker Tape,

or How Adversity and Spontaneity

Hatched a New York Tradition

What was Planned as a Grand Affair became a Comedy of Errors

	New York’s first ticker-tape parade erupted spontaneously from bad weather and an over-zealous stockbroker.

While the festivities in New York Harbor didn’t go as scripted that afternoon, the spontaneous gesture it generated from the brokerage houses lining Broadway famously lives on more than a century later.

     On October 28, 1886, Liberty Enlightening the World was to be unveiled to New York City and the world as it stood atop its tall base on Bedloe’s Island. But the morning mist had turned to afternoon fog, blurring the view of the statue from revelers on the Manhattan shore and the long parade of three hundred ships on the Hudson River.

Borough President Expresses Concerns about Jail Plan, But Gives Okay

	Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer: “There is an overwhelming sentiment that we must remember: Rikers Island must close.”

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer has given her approval to a plan by the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio to construct a 1.27 million-square-foot prison complex Downtown.

In a determination issued on Friday, Ms. Brewer wrote that, “there is an overwhelming sentiment that we must remember: Rikers Island must close.”

CB1 Calls for Delay in New Staten Island Ferry Route That Will Use Local Terminal

Community Board 1 (CB1) is pushing back against a plan by the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio to launch in 2020 a new ferry service from Staten Island that will bring to the Battery Park City ferry terminal more than 60 new vessels each day, carrying as many as 2,500 passengers.

At the June 25 meeting of CB1, Tammy Meltzer, who chairs the Board’s Battery Park City Committee, explained, “the City’s Economic Development Corporation [EDC] had never spoken to the Battery Park City Committee, the Waterfront Committee, or anybody at CB1. They never came and did a presentation for CB1 about new routes they want to do, before they proposed putting boats at Brookfield ferry terminal from 6:00 am to midnight.”

Paul Hovitz Concludes 27 Years of Service on Community Board 1

	Fledgling Firebrands: Mr. Hovitz (right), Mr. Townley (center), and Mr. Goldstein (left) at a meeting of Community Board 1 in the early 1990s

After nearly three decades of building schools, fighting for affordable housing, championing cultural institutions, and generally making Lower Manhattan a better place to live, Paul Hovitz has stepped down from Community Board 1 (CB1), where he has served as vice chairman for three years, and previously presided as chair of the Youth & Education Committee.

State Lawmakers Bark ‘Belay That’ to Water-Borne Marketing Messages

	The advertising barges operated by Ballyhoo Media

The ubiquitous advertising barges that have become anathema for Lower Manhattan residents over the past year have attracted hostile attention from members of the State Senate and Assembly.

Bills were enacted in the closing days of the legislative session that would ban the 60-foot catamaran — bearing an electronic sign capable of rendering high-definition, full-motion video, similar to the “jumbo-tron” panels that adorn multiple buildings in Times Square — from continuing to conduct its business in New York’s waters.

Governors Island Passengers Are Going in Style with Launch of New Vessel

	Governors1

Visitors to Governors Islandembarking from Lower Manhattan now have a new way to get to the beloved greensward that has become Downtown’s equivalent of Central Park.

The new vessel, Governors 1, a 132-foot-long, 40-foot-wide ferry was built over the last two years at a cost of $9.2 million in the Warren, Rhode Island shipyard of Blount Boats, from a design by Seattle-based Elliott Bay Design Group.

Concerns about Crowding and Noise Surround City Hall Plan for New Staten Island Route to Battery Park City

The administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio is planning to launch in 2020 a new ferry service from Staten Island that will bring to the Battery Park City ferry terminal more than 60 new vessels each day, carrying as many as 2,500 passengers.

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Local Leaders Raise Concerns about Traffic and Crowding from Planned Events Venue at Brookfield

	Brookfield Place