The BroadsheetDAILY ~ News of Lower Manhattan ~ 1/15/20

Renewed Victims Compensation Fund Extends Cutoff Date for Registration

Following last summer’s passage of a new law that extends (and expands funding for) the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund (VCF), the Fund will be accepting claims until it sunsets in 2090. Another benefit of passage is that the cutoff date by which current claimants must register for the VCF has been pushed back to July 29, 2021.

	Kimberly Flynn, the director of 9/11 Environmental Action

Kimberly Flynn, the director of 9/11 Environmental Action, a non-profit advocacy group whose mission is to ensure that those who were affected by September 11 (physically or emotionally) get the specialized health care they need, commented, “the best possible news is that on July 29, 2019, the ‘Never Forget the Heroes: James Zadroga, Ray Pfeifer, and Luis Alvarez Permanent Authorization of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund Act’ was signed into law. This means that the VCF is now permanent through 2090, and that all the devastating cuts to responder and survivor awards that were announced in February, 2019 have been restored. The fund is open for the next 70 years, so survivors and responders will be able to file claims for illnesses that manifest in the near term, or that may not manifest until well into the future. This outcome was the right and just thing to do. It was made clear to the Congress that sadly, the wave of illness caused by World Trade Center toxic exposures will not be going away anytime soon. People who get sick from September 11, including those exposed as children, are going to need access to the VCF for a long time. That access is now assured.”

The new law also establishes a new set of timelines. The first is a changed registration deadline for current claimants, which is now July 29, 2021. In this context, it is worth noting that the only requirement for VCF registration is to document physical presence within the exposure zone (essentially, Manhattan south a line formed by Canal and Clinton Streets) on September 11 or in the months that followed. Nobody registering for the VCF is required to demonstrate that they are currently ill with any of the 100-plus diseases covered by the Fund.

Completing the registration process (which can be done online or over the phone, free of charge) does not mean that an applicant is filing a claim for financial compensation, or will necessarily do so in the future. It merely guarantees that such a person will be able to, if the need arises in the years to come. This could be a crucial opportunity for people who may have been exposed to toxic debris as a result of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, given the decades-long latency periods of some diseases associated with such contaminants. The consensus view among all experts and stakeholders is that everyone who might be eligible for the VCF should register. There is no downside to taking this step, and for many individuals affected by the events of September 11, 2001, it may someday provide crucial support.

The new registration deadline of July 29, 2021, recently announced by the VCF, will be welcome news to many survivor claimants. Many previous claims for compensation were denied because applicants had failed to register by earlier deadlines, or because they had failed to file claims within two years of being certified as suffering from an illness to September 11th exposure. Anybody from that population is now eligible to register and file a claim (before July 29, 2021), and their applications will no longer be considered late, or rejected for that reason.

“The revised policy,” a spokesman for the VCF explains, “is intended to address the concerns about claimants who missed prior deadlines because they did not know that the VCF existed or was open to them, did not know that their conditions, or the death of their loved one, was related to September 11th-exposure, or did not realize that they were eligible to file a VCF claim or that the VCF would be available to provide relief on a more permanent basis.”

The “exposure zone” within which people who live, worked,ed or attend school in Lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001, or in the months that followed, must have been present to claim compensation for illness related to exposure to toxic debris.

At a recent public forum, Rupa Bhattacharyya, the VCF’s Special Master, elaborated that, “our mission — my mission — revolves around three tenets: being fair to the claimants, faithful to the statute, and defensible to the taxpayers. While that is fairly straightforward, there are many moving parts involved in making sure those expectations are continually being met.”

Ms. Flynn adds that, “the VCF has heard the survivor community. The Special Master should be applauded for making this important policy change regarding the registration deadlines that so many survivors had missed, largely because they mistakenly believed the VCF was open only to responders, or because they simply did not know that their illnesses qualified them to file a claim. These survivors got letters from the VCF telling them they were not eligible to file a claim because the failed to ‘register timely.’ This new change by the VCF will allow many claims to move forward immediately. This is a fair remedy, and something that will come as a big relief for lots of survivors.”

The VCF website (www.vcf.gov), in addition to offering an online registration portal, contains a wealth of supporting information. The VCF Helpline can be reached at 855-885-1555, during normal business hours.

1PM

Hundreds of Local Storefronts Remain Rented to Corporate Brands

	Forlorn mannequins populate the window at the former Saks Fifth Avenue space within Brookfield Place, shortly after it closed, in December, 2018.

A new report from the Center for an Urban Future (CUF), a public policy think tank that uses data-driven research to bring attention to overlooked issues, documents that the proliferation of chain stores in Lower Manhattan has decreased slightly during the past 12 months, but at a slower rate than for the City as a whole.

Edward Teller

69 – Otho seizes power in Rome, proclaiming himself Emperor of Rome, beginning a reign of only three months.
1559 – Elizabeth I is crowned Queen of England in Westminster Abbey

1759 – The British Museum opens to the public.
1870 – A political cartoon for the first time symbolizes the Democratic Party with a donkey (“A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion” by Thomas Nast for Harper’s Weekly).
1889 – The Coca-Cola Company, then known as the Pemberton Medicine Company, is incorporated in Atlanta.
1919 – Great Molasses Flood: A wave of molasses released from an exploding storage tank sweeps through Boston, Massachusetts, killing 21 and injuring 150.
1936 – The first building to be completely covered in glass, built for the Owens-Illinois Glass Company, is completed in Toledo, Ohio.
1943 – The Pentagon is dedicated in Arlington, Virginia.
1967 – The first Super Bowl is played in Los Angeles. The Green Bay Packers defeat the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10.
1973 – Vietnam War: Citing progress in peace negotiations, President Richard Nixon announces the suspension of offensive action in North Vietnam.
1976 – Gerald Ford’s would-be assassin, Sara Jane Moore, is sentenced to life in prison.
1981 – Pope John Paul II receives a delegation from Solidarity (Polish trade union) at the Vatican led by Lech Walesa.
1991 – The United Nations deadline for the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from occupied Kuwait expires, preparing the way for the start of Operation Desert Storm.
2001 – Wikipedia, a free wiki content encyclopedia, goes online.
2005 – ESA’s SMART-1 lunar orbiter discovers elements such as calcium, aluminum, silicon, iron, and other surface elements on the Moon.
2009 – US Airways Flight 1549 ditches safely in the Hudson River after the plane collides with birds less than two minutes after take-off.

1716 – Philip Livingston, American merchant and politician (d. 1778)
1754 – Richard Martin, Irish activist and politician, co-founded the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (d. 1834)
1870 – Pierre S. du Pont, American businessman and philanthropist (d. 1954)
1902 – Saud of Saudi Arabia (d. 1969)
1908 – Edward Teller, Hungarian-American physicist and force behind the H-bomb (d. 2003)

1909 – Jean Bugatti, German-French engineer (d. 1939)
1909 – Gene Krupa, American drummer, composer, and actor (d. 1973)
1918 – Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egyptian colonel and politician, 2nd President of Egypt (d. 1970)
1929 – Martin Luther King, Jr., American minister and activist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1968)
1945 – Vince Foster, American lawyer and political figure (d. 1993)

936 – Rudolph of France (b. 880)
1896 – Mathew Brady, American photographer and journalist (b. 1822)
1955 – Yves Tanguy, French-American painter (b. 1900)
1993 – Sammy Cahn, American songwriter (b. 1913)
2001 – Leo Marks, cryptographer, playwright, and screenwriter (b. 1920)
2007 – James Hillier, Canadian-American computer scientist and academic, co-invented the electron microscope (b. 1915)
2011 – Pierre Louis-Dreyfus, French soldier, race car driver, and businessman (b. 1908)
2019 – Carol Channing, American actress (b. 1921)

Photos and information culled from Wikipedia and other internet sources

Lower Manhattan Sales and Rentals Rebound Slightly, But Condo Prices May Founder on Looming Supply Glut

A trio of new reports documents the state of flux in Lower Manhattan home prices, both rental and owner-occupied.

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

Cuomo Announces Planned Expansion of Museum of Jewish Heritage

	The Museum of Jewish Heritage

At his annual State of the State address, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo included on his list of dozens of proposals an announcement that he was directing the Battery Park City Authority to develop an expansion plan for the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, located within Wagner Park, on Battery Place.

On New Year’s Eve, Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed a bill passed earlier this year by both houses of the State legislature that would have allowed limited commercial development on Pier 40, the massive former cruise ship terminal on the Hudson River waterfront, adjacent to Houston Street, which covers 14 acres and now houses athletic and recreational facilities.

Such development would have helped to fund operations for the Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT), which oversees the four-mile-long riverfront park that stretches from the Battery to West 59th Street.

“Pier 40 is a very key element of the Hudson River Park,” noted Paul Goldstein, who chairs the Waterfront Committee of Community Board 1 (CB1), at an April meeting.  To read more…

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Class-Action Suit on Behalf of Gateway Tenants Reaches Proposed Settlement

Attorneys representing Gateway Plaza residents in a class-action suit that began in 2014 have reached a tentative settlement with the LeFrak Organization, the landlords at Battery Park City’s largest residential complex, which they value at $42 million.     To read more…

January 6 – 19, 2020

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 Judy Isacoff

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…

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	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.