The BroadsheetDAILY June 11, 2019

Brewer to Host Town Hall Meeting Tonight on de Blasio Jail Plan

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer: “No project this sweeping should ever go forward without robust input and involvement from the surrounding community’s residents, businesses, civic organizations and service providers.”

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer will host a Town Hall meeting tonight (Tuesday, June 11) to give constituents a chance to advise her about whether to support or oppose the plan by Mayor Bill de Blasio to build a new, 1.2 million-square-foot jail complex on White Street, slated to rise 45 stories and house more than 1,400 prisoners.

The meeting, which will begin at 6:00 pm, will be held at the Student Center of Pace University, located at One Place Plaza, located across the street from City Hall and along the south side of the Brooklyn Bridge. Admission is free, but space is limited, so attendees (who can sign up to speak) will be accommodated on a first-come, first-served basis.

Tonight’s meeting represents a critical juncture in the process of obtaining legal approval for City Hall’s plan for the new jail. It comes on the heels of a stinging rebuke from Community Board 1 (CB1), which passed a resolution at its May 28 meeting recommending that the City Planning Commission veto the proposal. This resolution was based, in part, on what CB1 called an, “opaque site selection and lack of community input,” while calling the proposed structure, “grossly out of scale.”

The City’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) entails six stepsfor any proposed use of publicly owned land, such as the White Street location of the current Manhattan Detention Complex, where the de Blasio administration plans to build the new jail. The first of these was certification by the City Planning Commission of the application. Next came the verdict rendered by CB1 (following a similar resolution, by Community Board 3), which is legally required, but advisory. The third step is approval (of rejection) by the Borough President.

Ms. Brewer has said that she plans to issue her determination (which, like that of the CB1 and CB3, is non-binding) in early July. Although Ms. Brewer has not yet indicated where she will land on this issue, she has been a persistent critic of the de Blasio administration’s approach to community engagement. In September, she decried, “the administration’s disappointing rush to scope the project without adequate community input,” while also noting that, “an expanded detention complex in Lower Manhattan is necessary, but no project this sweeping should ever go forward without robust input and involvement from the surrounding community’s residents, businesses, civic organizations and service providers.”

A rendering that illustrates the bulk and shape of the new, 1.2 million-square-foot prison complex that Mayor Bill de Blasio proposes to erect in Lower Manhattan.

In November, when City Hall abandoned an earlier plan to locate the new jail on Centre Street, she said, “the administration needed to change course on the location for the new facility, but the core problem here was that City Hall wanted to announce its plan before engaging with the community on how to craft it. I hope that in the coming weeks and months, City Hall will engage in a more bottom-up process that builds support in Chinatown and Lower Manhattan, makes people feel like they were actually heard, and improves the plan — instead of repeating the mistakes that got us here.” She added, “it’s not too much to ask that we restart the process, actually listen to the community, and get the land use part of this right. The mayor must take the time to actually listen to what the neighborhood has to say, minimize the bad, and maximize the good.”

Even if Mr. de Blasio’s plan is rejected by Ms. Brewer, ULURP can proceed to the fourth step: review by the City Planning Commission. This body does have the legal authority to stop a proposal such as the de Blasio plan, provided that it weighs in within 60 days. But because a majority of its 13 members are appointed by the Mayor, approval appears to be a fait accompli.

The next meaningful chance to consider the plan comes in the fifth segment of ULURP, review by the City Council. Here, the outcome has the force of law, but is difficult to predict. By tradition, the Council as a whole defers to the member within whose district a land use proposal falls. Council member Margaret Chin, while supportive of criminal-justice reform, has expressed serious skepticism about the Mayor’s vision for a new jail in Lower Manhattan. But, in a high-profile push such as the one mounted by the de Blasio Administration, it is possible that other Council members may be successfully lobbied by City Hall to ignore convention and support the plan, regardless of how Ms. Chin votes. The City Council has 50 days to accept or reject the proposal.

The sixth, and final, step in ULURP is Mayoral Review. If the jail plan successfully runs each of the first five gauntlets in the process, however, approval by City Hall is a virtual certainty. All of these steps, in the aggregate, can take a maximum of 205 days — with some extensions possible if one or more steps must be repeated. This would peg the final decision for sometime in October of this year. But ULURP can also proceed much faster, and multiple published accounts say the de Blasio Administration is hoping to have final ULURP approvals in place by this summer.

In the meantime, however, the Town Hall meeting that Ms. Brewer will host this evening may play a pivotal role in whether she ultimately gives her support to the plan for a massive new jail in Lower Manhattan, and decides to oppose it.

Cuomo Announces List of Possible Locations in Battery Park City for Hurricane Maria Memorial

	Governor Andrew Cuomo at Sunday’s  Puerto Rican Day Parade.

At Sunday’s Puerto Rican Day Parade, Governor Andrew Cuomoannounced that his administration is pushing ahead with plans for a memorial to Hurricane Maria — the cataclysmic storm that claimed more than 3,000 lives in Puerto Rico in September, 2017 — which will be located in Battery Park City.

Mr. Cuomo’s office also announced Sunday that his administration has narrowed the potential sites for such a memorial within Battery Park City down to six possibilities.

Shakespeare Downtown will stage an open-air production of “Hamlet” at Castle Clinton National Monument in the Battery, Thursday through Sunday (June 13 to 16), starting at 6:30 pm each night. (The same schedule will repeat the following week, June 20 to 23.)

Admission is free, on a first-come, first-served basis. Shows starts at 6:30 pm, but anyone wishing to attend should arrive by 6:00 pm, for the best chance of getting tickets. For more information, please browse: ShakespeareDowntown.org.

New Installation at World Trade Center Cultivates Symbols of Remembrance and Renewal

	The Rice Paddy installation at the Oculus Plaza of the World Trade Center complex

A bit of wisdom often attributed to Confucius holds that, “if your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for ten years, plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children.” By this yardstick, Lower Manhattan, where half a dozen high-performing schools have opened in recent years, has the century plan covered, and is doing reasonably well in the decennial stakes, with hundreds of trees flourishing along the Esplanade, in the Battery, and around the World Trade Center campus. But Downtown has been woefully deficient on a per-annum basis — until now.

On Thursday, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (which manages the World Trade Center complex) unveiled Rice Paddy — a living, growing installation that will incubate five varieties of rice between now and the Harvest Moon Festival in late September, when dozens of chefs will gather at the site to create unique, original dishes designed to be  an homage to rice.

Tribeca Traffic Island Remains Forlorn,

Despite Developer Promises in Exchange for Zoning Variance

The Tribeca building now nearing completion on Sixth Avenue, between Franklin and White Streets, was made possible only after the City granted a zoning variance, allowing a larger (and therefore more valuable) structure on the site than would have been possible under prevailing regulations.

Community Board 1 is trying to hold a developer to a bargain made five years ago, but never memorialized in writing. The deal committed builder DDG, which is erecting a large new residential and retail structure on a tiny former parking lot in Tribeca, to refurbish a nearby traffic island into a small park.To read more…

Time for a rousing, old-fashioned parade.

On Friday, June 14, Lower Manhattan’s Flag Day parade begins at 12pm at City Hall Park, marches down Broadway and passes the grandstand at Fraunces Tavern, at the intersection of Broad and Pearl Street.

Join school bands, local dignitaries, veteran groups and others, all celebrating the stars and stripes. Enjoy $1 admission to the Fraunces Tavern Museum on this special day.

Borough President and City Council Member  Hold Rally to Underscore Objections to Planned Development at Two Bridges

	The four towers proposed by developers (visible on the right) as described by the de Blasio administration as “minor modifications” to nearby (and much smaller) existing structures.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and City Council Margaret Chin  held a rally outside the Municipal Building to build support for their ongoing lawsuit against the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio, over City Hall’s plans to erect a string of super-tall towers along the East River waterfront in Lower Manhattan.

To the editor,

I really appreciate Gail Brewer and Margaret Chin for standing up for the people of my community. We are hard working people that don’t deserve to be crunched out by high rise buildings that no one will be able to afford to live in.

Don’t we deserve space, sunlights and a say as to what our community should look like?

To the Editor,

Since the GPTA Rally for Rent Stabilization ended abruptly when the skies opened up, I did not get the chance to express my gratitude to many and to convey some important information.

On behalf of GPTA and all of Gateway, I want to express our sincere gratitude to Congressman Nadler, City Comptroller Scott Stringer, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, and Council Member Margaret Chin for joining us at the rally and standing with us in solidarity (and in the rain).

I would also like to acknowledge the GPTA Board.  We all we are all so fortunate to have an Executive Committee with vast knowledge and expertise working for us…

Without the help of the Battery Park City Authority, BJ Jones, Eric Munson, Nick Sbordone, Nidia Reeder, and the wonderful staff at BPCParks, this rally would not have been possible. Thank you.

If you want to stay up-to-date on what is happening, please take a moment and email the words, “I’M IN” to stabilization@gpta.org.  We will keep you informed of any updates and let you know what you can do to help.

Thank you all… let’s keep up the fight!!!

To the Editor:

The article, “Pupil Protection,” published April 1, 2019, notes the unfortunate shortage of School Crossing Guards (SCGs) in our area, especially at and around PS89 in Battery Park City.  It’s been two months since the article appeared, and there seem to still be no “permanent” crossing guards for PS89.

As a parent, every day I see the dangers to our kids posed by irresponsible drivers creeping into crosswalks at red lights, blocking crosswalks with their vehicles, out-of-state cars illegally turning right-on-red, and others speeding to make green or yellow lights; that’s in addition to equally irresponsible bicycle riders heading the wrong way on streets, careening through red lights, riding on sidewalks, and speeding recklessly along the West Street bikeway.  I would love to see multiple SCGs posted at the intersections around PS89 (and other schools).  It would especially be nice to have local residents as crossing guards since they would have a familiarity with the neighborhood, and also have a more heightened and direct interest in its safety.

For anyone interested, our NYPD Neighborhood Coordination Officers can be contacted with questions at 212-334-6462, or dinah.bodden@nypd.org (Officer Bodden) and arif.tasoren@nypd.org (Officer Tasoren).  A

lso, there is an online registration at:  https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/civilians/school-crossing-guard.page.

Ben Franklin

June 10 – 23, 2019

Jupiter shines all night. Sun’s longest day

A pivotal celestial event occurs this evening, June 10: Planet Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, rises in the southeast opposite the setting Sun in the northwest. The king of the planets, a brilliant star-like light, will be visible all night. Now at magnitude -2.61, it is the brightest celestial body in the night sky second only to the moon (-12.23m).

This evening, Jupiter climbs above the horizon at 8:14pm as the sun sets opposite at 8:26pm. In the morning, the planet sets in the southwest as the Sun rises in the northeast. Tomorrow morning, the 11th, Jupiter sets at 5:32am; sunrise is at 5:24am. Jupiter and Sun are positioned on either side of Earth. The astronomical term for this phenomenon is “opposition”.

It will be about an hour after sunset, when the sky darkens, that unaided eyes will first observe the great planet above the southeastern skyline. The planet’s arc is rather low to the horizon. Go to a location with an unobstructed view where you may have observed Scorpius the Scorpion’s heart star, Antares. Jupiter appears to the left of red Antares all night.

The Full Strawberry or Honey Moon follows Jupiter into the sky in the southeast on June 17. Jupiter comes up at 7:44pm, moon at 8:54pm. Moon, Jupiter and red Antares form a splendid diagonal. The Full Moon will be visible approaching the southwest horizon at dawn on both the 17th and 18th .

On June days and into mid-July we find the king of the sky, our Sun, present for over 15 hours. The summer solstice occurs on June 21 at 11:54am. Sunset on the solstice is 8:30pm. Study the illustration for more about summer solstice.

A Stele for Survivors Honors Those Who Came Back, and Those Who Chose to Settle Downtown After the Dust Settled

On Thursday morning, the World Trade Center complex unveiled a new monument: the Memorial Glade, which honors people whose health (or whose lives) were taken from them not on September 11, 2001, but in the years that followed, because they were exposed to toxins in the aftermath of the Twin Towers’ collapse.

Chin Pushes to Renew Victim Compensation Fund

City Council member Margaret Chin is mobilizing local support for an effort at the federal level to restore funding and make permanent the Victim Compensation Fund, which offers financial awards to responders and survivors of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

This proposed federal measure would renew and make permanent the Victim Compensation Fund that was created by a 2011 law, the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which was renewed in 2015.

To the Editor:

I watched the transfer of the bridge spans in person on Wednesday, but seeing your video was AWESOME!

Thanks for sharing that!

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, NJ, 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.

Governors Island Trust Considers a Plan to Activate the Island’s Perimeter

Local Elected Officials Say ‘Avast’ to Water-Borne Ads, But Company Claims City Is Out of Its Depth

The advertising barges operated by Ballyhoo Media have become the focus of stepped-up enforcement efforts by City officials in recent weeks.

The advertising barges that have become a pet bête noire for Lower Manhattan residents were the focus of a discussion at the April 23 meeting of Community Board 1 , where Paul Goldstein, who chairs that panel’s Waterfront, Parks, & Cultural Committee, offered an update, saying, “those floating billboards that you’ve seen on both the east and west sides — the  good news is that the City is cracking down on them. Both the Mayor and the Council say they find it unacceptable. So they are imposing fines and enacting laws to restrict it.”  To read more…

City Plans Temporary Flood Protection Measures for Downtown

An illustration of the short-term solutions during storm conditions that include  ‘tiger dams’ deployed to supplement Hesco barriers.

The administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio is formulating short-term strategies to protect the South Street Seaport and the Financial District from sea-level rise and future extreme-weather events.

Although Not Yet a Shore Thing, Proposal for Brooklyn Bridge Beach Takes a Step Forward

	A rendering of the proposed  Brooklyn Bridge Beach

After multiple rounds of funding since 2013, the proposed Brooklyn Bridge Beach — a project supported by elected officials, community leaders, and the public — may be inching closer to reality.

The plan, backed by all of these constituencies, aims to create a crescent-shaped wedge of sand along the East River waterfront, just north of the South Street Seaport, where park-goers could wade knee deep in tide. If built, it would become the sole access point at which Lower Manhattan residents could step into the water that surrounds them, rather than merely looking at it.

Hudson River Park Trust Seeks Development on Pier 40

	The 14-acre former cruise ship terminal situated along the Hudson River waterfront, near West Houston Street.

The Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT), in collaboration with local elected officials, is seeking to revise its enabling legislation to allow for commercial development at Pier 40.

“The major issue is that there need to be changes to the legislation that created the Hudson River Park, because Pier 40 is sinking,” explained Anthony Notaro, chair of Community Board 1 (CB1) at an April 26 meeting.

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