The BroadsheetDAILY ~ The News of Lower Manhattan 9/26/19

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CB1 Makes Exception to New Policy; Okays Naming Street for Former NYPD Commissioner

A public figure from the 1980s may soon be honored by having a street co-named in his memory, if Community Board 1 (CB1) gets its way. The panel recommended over the summer that Benjamin Ward, New York’s first African-American police commissioner, be commemorated by rechristening one block of Baxter Street (between White and Walker Streets) as Benjamin Ward Way.

This comes on the heels of a controversial decision by CB1 in 2018 to decline such a request on behalf 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.”

This led to a months-long effort, earlier this year, to update and clarify CB1’s criteria for street co-naming proposals, led by Reggie Thomas, then chair of the Transportation & Street Activity Committee. Mr. Thomas outlined those guidelines at the Board’s May 23 meeting, 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.”

	Benjamin Ward, the first African-American to serve as New York City’s police commissioner, from 1984 to 1989

The new criteria 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.” Commissioner Ward’s case would seem to be disallowed this provision, insofar as he died of old age, 13 years after retiring as the NYPD’s Commissioner.

In this case, however, CB1 decided to waive its own recently enacted policy, noting in its resolution that, “the application was received by CB1 in November 2018, prior to CB1’s decision to review its co-naming guidelines,” and that, “the revised co-naming guidelines require that signatures of support be attained in a one-block radius, an additional requirement that would have forced the applicant to receive 75 percent of the signatures of Chatham Towers, a housing complex to the east of the co-naming location with hundreds of residential units.”

“Given the unique circumstances of the situation,” the resolution continued, “CB1 members believed that it would be onerous and unfair to require the applicant to further delay the application in order to satisfy this additional requirement, and alternatively the applicant received a letter of support from the president of the board of Chatham Towers.”

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 Civic Center location was chosen because it is close both to One Police Plaza and the Manhattan Detention Complex, which Mr. Ward oversaw as the City’s Corrections Commissioner, before taking the helm at the Police Department.

Battery Park City Resident Charged with Two Home Invasions, and Sexual Abuse

In a story first reported by the New York Post, music industry executive Adam Lublin, a resident of the Tribeca Pointe building at 41 River Terrace was taken into custody on Monday after a woman who lives on his floor called police Sunday evening, charging that he had entered her unlocked apartment while she was asleep, and that she awoke to find him touching her vagina. She added that she had previously noticed multiple undergarments missing from her home in recent weeks.

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Onetime Non-Profit Nursing Facility Sold to Anonymous Buyer for Five Times Original Price

After purchasing the block-long, 150,000-square-foot structure (located at 45 Rivington Street, near the Williamsburg Bridge), the developer, the Allure Group, paid the City an additional $16 million to remove the deed restriction that limited the property to its legacy use of non-profit, residential healthcare.

City Transportation Study Finds That Lower Manhattan Bus Service Is Among Most Sluggish in Five Boroughs