The BroadsheetDAILY ~ News of Lower Manhattan ~ 12/18/19

Downtown Traffic May Ease as Congress Okays Change to Verrazzano Toll

The Verrazzano Bridge is located more than eight miles from Lower Manhattan, but multiple studies indicate that tolling patterns there have a significant impact on traffic congestion here.

The United States Senates is poised to enact federal legislation that will modify the tolling regimen on a bridge barely visible on the horizon from Lower Manhattan, but this may nonetheless reduce traffic congestion Downtown.

The final version of the federal spending bill that has already passed the House of Representatives, and is expected to pass the Senate (where is has bi-partisan support) before the end of this week, requires that the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge abandon its policy of charging double-tolls in for eastbound drivers, while westbound vehicles cross free of charge.

“This change will help reduce truck congestion, and the air pollution and traffic it causes,” said Senator Charles Schumer. “This will benefit thousands of New York City residents in Brooklyn, Manhattan and on Staten Island.”

“After more than two decades working on this issue, the House-passed FY2020 spending bills include language that ends the federal prohibition of split-tolling on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge,” said Congressman Jerrold Nadler. “Restoring split-tolling will greatly improve traffic and congestion in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan.”

U.S. Congressman Jerry Nadler (center) and City Council member Margaret Chin (left) look on as MTA chief Patrick Foye describes a plan to reinstitute two-way tolling on the Verrazzano Bridge.

Under ordinary circumstances, this would be a question for City Hall, since both ends of the Verrazzano Bridge sit within the five boroughs of New York City. But in this case, the City Council, the Mayor, and even the Governor are all reduced to an advisory role, because the United States Congress enacted a law in 1986 prohibiting the MTA from collecting tolls in both directions on the span. This bill was sponsored by then-U.S. Congressman (and later Staten Island Borough President) Guy Molinari, in response to pressure from his constituents, who complained about air pollution from Verrazzano’s toll plaza. (This made the Verrazzano-Narrows the only bridge in the United States with a tolling policy mandated by the federal government.) Pollution ceased to be an issues in 2017, however, when cashless tolling was implemented on the Verrazzano.

Such a change matters to Lower Manhattan residents because, although the Verrazzano is eight miles away from Lower Manhattan, its tolling pattern is a significant contributor to Downtown traffic patterns, as a result of perverse financial incentives. Traffic (especially large trucks, for which bridge and tunnel tolls are much costlier that for passenger cars) seeks the path of least expense. As a result, each day, more than 1,000 trucks making a round trip between New York and New Jersey cross the Verrazzano on their way into the City, and then exit via the Holland Tunnel, which collects no toll on westbound traffic, but does charge for vehicles moving eastward.

This counter-clockwise vortex brings into Downtown’s already-congested streets many hundreds of trucks that would otherwise never enter Manhattan, but choose the route because the combination of the free East River crossings, such as the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges, with the Holland Tunnel, gets them to New Jersey free of charge. On the last leg of this journey, vast fleets of trucks use Kenmare, Broome, and Canal Streets as an interstate highway, on their approach to the Holland Tunnel.

According to a 2018 study performed by Sam Schwarz Engineering, collecting a toll for cars headed in both directions (rather than levying double that amount, but only on cars headed from Brookyln to Staten Island, as is the case now) could would divert up to 130 cars per hour, during peak driving periods, away from Lower Manhattan.

A separate study, commissioned by the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority — the arm of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) that oversees the Verrazzano — earlier this year, predicted that imposing a toll in both directions on the span would largely eliminate this perverse incentive, and estimated that the bridge would gain an additional 4,361 New Jersey-bound vehicles each weekday. Of this number, the report estimated, some 38 percent (or slightly more than 1,650 vehicles) would otherwise use the Holland Tunnel, meaning that they would travel through Lower Manhattan (primarily via Canal Street) to get there. Almost all of the remaining 2,700-plus vehicles, the firm estimates, would also pass through Manhattan, but use either the Lincoln Tunnel or George Washington Bridge to cross the Hudson River into New Jersey.

Somewhat surprisingly, the MTA report also projected that the changed Verrazzano tolling policy would motivate approximately 4,325 additional vehicles originating in New Jersey to enter Manhattan each weekday via the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, or the George Washington Bridge. Of these, the firm estimates, 31 percent (or 1,340 vehicles) would come through the Holland Tunnel. In net terms, this would amount to a daily decrease of more than 300 vehicles (many of them large trucks) using Lower Manhattan streets to enter of leave the Holland Tunnel each weekday.

This legislation follows an October resolution from Community Board 1 (CB1) that noted, “pedestrian safety, health and quality of life in the Manhattan neighborhoods located around the entrance to the Holland Tunnel and along Canal Street are severely compromised by the congestion, exhaust fumes, and noise that are related to one-way tolling on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge,” and concludes that, “CB1 strongly urges the MTA to implement two-way tolling on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.”

The 2018 report from Sam Schwarz Engineering also noted that since 1986, when the Verrazzano stopped collecting tolls in both directions, and began charging a double-toll on westbound-traffic, both vehicular volume and statistics about accidents have spiked upward. Even in 1986, the effects of the change were apparent almost immediately. In the three years before the Verrazzano changed it tolls, one pedestrian was killed along Kenmore and Broome Streets. In the years that followed, the rate jumped to an average of one death per year.

5PM

ONE ART SPACE

Well, this is an interesting development: both the Hurricane Maria Memorial and a statue of St. Frances Cabrini gracing our neighborhood!

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…

City Landmarks Agency Agrees with CB1 about “Disaster and Affront”

A view of the facade proposed for 11 Hubert Street, which Mr. Ehrmann describes as, “a prison, guarding the residents from us.”

The City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission has concurred with Community Board 1 about a builder’s proposed plan for a new mansion at Hubert and Collister Streets, within the Tribeca West Historic District.

At its December 3 meeting, the LPC’s commissioners listened to a presentation from the builder and his team of architects.

When the presentation was done, the commissioners were unanimous in their disapproval.  To read more…

Cuomo Administration Decides on South Cove for Mother Cabrini Memorial

	The planting bed, south of South Cove, that the administration of Governor Andrew Cuomo has selected as the site for a memorial to Mother Cabrini.

On Friday, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that a planned memorial to Mother Cabrini — a 19th-century Italian-American who founded more than 60 organizations to help New York’s needy, and later became the first naturalized U.S. citizen to be canonized a Catholic saint — will be sited in the planting beds south of South Cove, the Battery Park City inlet at the foot of South End Avenue.

“This memorial will honor the legacy of Mother Cabrini — a great New Yorker and Italian-American — and the Commission chose a site that perfectly symbolizes her commitment to helping new Americans settle in the United States,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. “We want this memorial to pay tribute to the charity and goodwill she spread to countless others in her lifetime.”

Howard Hughes Practices Corporate Citizenship in the Seaport

	Howard Hughes staffers volunteering at the Bowery Mission.

If the giving season is an appropriate time to take stock of local philanthropy, one Lower Manhattan stakeholder has amassed an impressive record of thinking globally and acting locally.  To read more…

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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 passenger and propulsion problems, tides, fog, winds, freak waves, hurricanes and the whims of upper management.

Plan Floated to Span East River with Arch Containing Thousands of Apartments and New Transit Portal

	A view (looking northward, along the FDR Drive) lends perspective on what will, if built, be the largest building in the world in terms of interior square feet of space.

To those who claim that the age of monumental public works and historic pieces of civic infrastructure has ended in New York, Scott Baker has a succinct answer: “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Mr. Baker is the brains and the propulsive force behind an audacious new proposal to span the East River with a hybrid structure that would be part building, part bridge, and part mass transit conveyance, connecting the Dumbo/Vinegar Hill section of Brooklyn to the Manhattan neighborhood of Two Bridges.

Mr. Baker calls his plan, “RiverArch,” and describes it as, “a way to transform the skyline and the City with a structure like no other in the world, while also housing thousands of people and generating hundreds of millions of dollars per year in new tax revenue.”

Pondering Whether $300 Million and 16.5 Feet of Protection Will Matter

85 Broad Street parking garage after Sandy

At the October 29 meeting of the Battery Park City Authority board, Catherine McVay Hughes raised a potentially troubling question. As BPCA management reviewed plans to spend some $300 million on resiliency measures designed to protect the community against future sea-level rise, extreme-weather events, and climate change, she questioned one of the key assumptions upon which these plans are predicated.

“I think a lot of folks are looking at the depth-to-design elevation flood line,” Ms. McVay Hughes began. “And there was a report that was recently issued… [in which]  this technical expert suggested that the 16.5 feet needs to be raised another two to three feet. So I just wanted to make sure that what the Battery Park City will be planning to do will be adequate, as well.”

The metric to which Ms. McVay Hughes was referring comes from the lower end of the mid-range of predicted coastal flood heights for Lower Manhattan by the 2080s. A 2014 report by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, entitled “Climate Change in New York State,” noted that middle range for such predictions at the Battery was 16.5 to 18.3 feet. (The lowest bracket was 16.1 feet or less, while the most extreme scenarios ranged up to 19.9 feet.)

How a Nazi Sympathizer’s Tribeca Garage Could Become a Luxe Mansion

	The builder’s plans call for a 17,000-square-foot private home that will contain four bedrooms, ten bathrooms, a multi-car garage, and a basement-level indoor basketball court, as well as outdoor patio above street level.

Community Board 1 is pushing back, in unusually emphatic terms, against a builder’s plans for a new mansion in Tribeca. The property in question is located at 11 Hubert Street, near the corner of Collister Street.

The existing structure at 11 Hubert Street has a tangled pedigree. It was built in 1946 by Dietrich Wortman, who was born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1884, and emigrated to the United States, where he studied architecture at Columbia University.

Yesterday’s sunset, earliest of the year, down to the second, is at 4:28:30pm. Sunset time is seconds later beginning tomorrow, until it is nearly one minute later, 4:29:27 on December 15. Afternoons will be noticeably lighter by month’s end. Sunrise today, 7:08:02, is 12 minutes earlier than the latest sunrise, 7:20:13 on January 6.  To read more…

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A Living Remnant of a Vibrant Culture Comes to Battery Place

	“The Sorceress”

Written in 1878, “The Sorceress,” is one of the earliest works of Yiddish theater and the first formal theatrical production presented in America by the legendary Boris Thomashefsky, who emigrated to the United States in 1881, two years before the thriving Yiddish theater industry was banned in his native Imperial Russia.

He went on to found, almost singlehandedly, what became a vibrant genre in American theater — productions catering to Jewish immigrants from all the countries in the diaspora, presented in the one language they all spoke: Yiddish.

A Convenient Connection to the Airport Visible from Lower Manhattan Rooftops May Be Less Than Ten Years Away

	Seen from Newark Airport, the spires of Lower Manhattan appear almost close enough to touch. But antiquated transportation infrastructure makes the trip to Lower Manhattan, in some cases, longer than the flights from which travelers arriving at the airport have just disembarked.

The Regional Plan Association (RPA) recently partnered with the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association (DLMA) to build support for a proposed rail connection between Lower Manhattan and Newark Airport. A report the two organizations produced together, “Taking the PATH to Newark Airport,” summarizes the potential and the prospects for such a link, which local leaders have long pushed for.

Community-Focused Cultural Center Faces Uncertain Future, as Tourism Magnet Thrives

	The 9/11 Tribute Museum, at 88 Greenwich Street, which is endangered by skyrocketing property values in Lower Manhattan.

The 9/11 Tribute Museum, a highly regarded local cultural institution, is grappling with a precarious outlook, according to a story first published in Crain’s New York Business, which says that the space housing the facility, located at Greenwich and Rector Streets, may be sold out from under the organization by its landlord.

Council Member and Borough President Push for Transparency in Development

A proposed law now under consideration by the City Council would compel disclosure of air rights transfers that make possible “super-tall” towers, such as the one planned for 80 South Street, which would have a roof height greater than that of One World Trade Center.

Community Board 1 has endorsed a proposed new law — sponsored by a City Council member representing the Upper East Side and supported by Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer — that would require City government to notify local officials whenever development rights are transferred between building lots. Such transfers are often used by developers to maximize the zoning potential for the site of a planned skyscraper.

Your Next Neighbors Might Be Vastly Less Interesting, But Better Able to Pay High Rents

	Even as public art proliferates in Lower Manhattan artists themselves are being driven from the area by skyrocketing housing costs, a new report finds.

A new report from City Comptroller Scott Stringer documents that Lower Manhattan is undergoing an exodus of artists and other “creative economy” workers, who are being driven away primarily by skyrocketing costs for housing.

 To read more…

FiDi Renters Seek Recompense for Years of Rent Overcharges; Landlord Asks U.S. Supreme Court to Overrule Tenants’ Victory

A map, compiled by New York University’s Furman Center (which advances research and debate on housing, neighborhoods, and urban policy)illustrating the dozens of Lower Manhattan buildings — erstwhile office towers,converted to residential use — that have benefited from the 421-g program.

More Financial District tenants are going to court to demand restitution from years of illegally high rent, on the heels of a June ruling by New York State’s highest court, which found that as many as 5,000 Lower Manhattan apartments had been illegally deprived of rent stabilization benefits.

The first to file suit in the wake of this decision were Bruce Hackney and Timothy Smith, tenants at Ten Hanover Square, who brought their complaint in October.

At issue is the 421-g subsidy program, which was designed to encourage Downtown’s transformation into a residential district, by offering rich incentives (chiefly in the form of tax abatements) to developers who converted former office buildings — south of a line connecting Murray Street to City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge — into apartment towers.

Decades of Savings Needed to Purchase on Lavish Lanes

A trio of new analyses points to the self-evident conclusion that Lower Manhattan is a mind-numbingly expensive place to reside.

Tribeca’s Murray Street was calculated to be the third-most expensive anywhere in the five boroughs, with a median sales price of $5.4 million, and a volume of sales in excess of $364 million. To read more…

Nadler Sponsors Legislation to Make Lower Manhattan Heliopolis No More

Support is building among decision-makers to heed a decade long call by Lower Manhattan community leaders to enact a comprehensive ban on non-essential helicopter flights in New York’s airspace.

 To read more…

Seaport Structure Reborn as Flood-Proof Food Emporia as Owner Celebrates with Support for Local Charity

	The Tin Building as it will appear in 2021

The South Street Seaport’s historic Tin Building reached a milestone on Wednesday, when the last and highest structural beam was placed (after being ceremonially signed by dozens of well-wishers) within a reconstructed edifice, following an unprecedented, years-long effort to preserve it.

FiDi Renters Seek Recompense for Years of Rent Overcharges

	A map, compiled by New York University’s Furman Center (which advances research and debate on housing, neighborhoods, and urban policy) illustrating the dozens of Lower Manhattan buildings — erstwhile office towers, converted to residential use — that have benefited from the 421-g program.

In the wake of a June ruling by New York State’s highest court that tenants in Financial District rental buildings had been illegally deprived of rent stabilization benefits, a pair of apartment dwellers is litigating to recoup the money they lost by paying inflated, market-rate rents for years.

In October, Bruce Hackney and Timothy Smith, tenants at Ten Hanover Square, filed suit against their landlord, alleging that the owner’s, “failure to follow rent regulations was part of a fraudulent scheme to deregulate apartments in the building.” To read more…

Schools Agency Begins Belated Outreach Effort to Former Lower Manhattan Students at Risk of 9/11 Illness

The City’s Department of Education is partnering with the United Federation of Teachers union for an unusual mission: tracking down former New York City public school students who were pupils at Lower Manhattan schools on September 11, 2001 (or in the months that followed) and informing them that their health may be at risk. The project will also seek to put these students in touch with the World Trade Center Health Program and the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund. To read more…

Chin Pushes Legislation to Rein in Production Permits

	A late-night film shoot on  Tribeca’s Staple Street

City Council member Margaret Chin is co-sponsoring a package of bills to clamp down on rampant film and television production in Lower Manhattan.

Although the new laws, if enacted, will have City-wide effect, their impact would be especially significant in the square mile below Chambers Street, where dozens of movies and TV shows commandeer local streets (sometimes for days at a time) each year.  To read more…

Lawsuit Over Similarity Between One World Trade and Architecture Student’s Design Moves Ahead

Jeehoon Park’s 1999 design for a skyscraper with eight sides that taper between a square base and a square roof.

One thing is reasonably certain: In 1999, Jeehoon Park, then a student at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture, created a design for a very tall building with a large square base tapering to a smaller square top. In Mr. Park’s vision, the square formed by the roof was rotated 45 degrees relative to the one at the ground level, so that the center-points on each side of the quadrilateral below corresponded to the corners of the one above, and vice versa. And instead of four vertical walls, the structure’s facade consisted of eight elongated triangles.

That structure was never built. Or was it?

Amid a Booming Economy, Lower Manhattan Retail Space Languishes

	Vacant storefronts dot Downtown

A new report from City Comptroller Scott Stringer finds that in one Lower Manhattan zip code — 10013, which covers parts of western Tribeca SoHo, and the Canal Street corridor in Chinatown — there are 319 empty retail spaces, comprising almost 300,000 square feet of unused property.

BPCA Puts the Brakes on Conversions of Rental Buildings within Community

	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.