Last week the FiDi Association brought several local businesses and community members together to the Léman Preparatory School ballroom to provide a flavor of the neighborhood and promote the Downtown Alliance’s “Going Green” program, which aims to beautify the area’s parks.

Brylee Maxfield, the communications manager at Léman, said one goal of the evening was to show community members they don’t have to leave the Financial District to patronize certain businesses or experience a sense of community.

“The Financial District is the fastest growing neighborhood in the City,” added Melissa Andreev, president of the FiDi Association and general manager of local business Maison du Chocolat, which had a prominent table at the event.

“It’s a completely livable neighborhood,” said Andreev.

This may come as a surprise to those who remember a neighborhood which used to darken and all but close down as soon as employees left their office buildings.

Jason Stahl, who works for “Downtown Magazine,” said that simply is no longer true.

“The Financial District doesn’t shut down at five anymore,” he said. “You can see that from the development in the area.”

“I would live down here if I could afford it,” Stahl, a Hoboken resident, added.

Stahl said the founder of “Downtown Magazine” lives in Battery Park City herself and her love for the area comes across in the magazine.

The magazine, like many local businesses, was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy, but Stahl said they have made a strong comeback, including putting out an issue on “resiliency.”

Jessica Lai, who attended the event with friends as a Financial District resident, said there is definitely a sense of community and livability in the area.

“It feels homey, safe, comfortable,” she said. “People recognize each other.”

Real estate broker Santo Rosabianco, representing the company Rosabianco & Associates, called the neighborhood “an exceptional place to live.”

Rosabianco pointed to the area’s parks, subway lines, commercial growth and booming night life.

“There are more childbirths down here than in any other area,” said Rosabianco, adding new school districts are coming about and strollers can be seen all around the neighborhood.

“It’s not just tourists down here anymore,” he said, indicating the nearly 70,000 people live in the area.

“Post-9/11, people didn’t necessarily want to come down here,” said Rosabianco. “Now we’re growing mightily.”

Still, as Stahl indicated, affordability is an issue for many.

Rosabianco offered his own take on the matter: “Look, it’s full-service living down here,” he said. “It’s the best bet for your bargain.”

Parts of Lower Manhattan may spend the holidays and beyond hooked up to noisy, noxious generators if building management companies don’t soon finish necessary repairs.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, many downtown Manhattan buildings relied on emergency generators for power in an effort to return to normalcy. As of last week, Council Member Margaret Chin’s office reported 105 emergency generators were still operating downtown, providing electricity to these buildings.

While these generators may be necessary in an emergency, community members and elected officials are concerned over why they still have such a prominent presence downtown. The generators emit potent, potentially hazardous fumes and often deafening noises. They also appear to be running largely unregulated by city agencies, which have not demonstrated much oversight in the situation, according to downtown’s elected officials.

“Many of the streets in Lower Manhattan, particularly in the Financial District, are literally lined with [these] generators,” said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. “We all know that after 9/11, thousands of Lower Manhattan residents were exposed to air that caused serious health problems, and we cannot allow that to happen again.”

A Con Edison spokesperson explained that the buildings’ management companies are responsible for the generators still in place.

“They’re the ones who bore the brunt,” he said.

Chin’s office agreed that Con Edison is not to blame for the delay. The buildings’ management companies reportedly continue to push back the dates when they’ll be ready to reconnect to power, now giving time frames as late as April in some cases.

“Con Edison is willing and ready to hook these buildings back up,” said Kelly Magee, a spokesperson for the council member. “The buildings are not ready to receive power. The buildings have some kind of issue, whether it’s damage to the transformer or a part that needs a replacement—they’re unable to hook back up to the grid.”

Magee said these buildings’ management companies would not return their phone calls and there was no explanation as to why the dates kept getting pushed back. She speculated building management companies are taking advantage of this opportunity to make other repairs to their buildings. Without incentive for the management companies and enforcement by the city, she said there’s not enough pressure for the companies to act in a timely fashion.

Once a building is ready to be hooked back up to the Con Edison grid, only a quick inspection is necessary before this can take place.

Council Member Chin, whose Lower Manhattan district has many such generators, is disappointed in the city’s response thus far. She said her office has received many residential complaints over the last month and that she’s repeatedly reached out to the city and tried to work through official channels.

One woman called the council member’s office to complain she had fainted while exiting a downtown subway because of the overwhelming fumes released by the generators.

“The residents are contacting our office and saying they need help—these fumes are going right into their apartments,” explained Chin. “People have been very patient and they understand it’s an emergency, but week after week … it’s taking too long.”

“The Department of Health needs to provide solutions,” said Chin. “Now they’re saying seal off your windows with plastic—that’s not an appropriate way to live.”

“The phone calls are seriously disturbing,” added Magee.

Magee said the council member’s office has been working to get the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Mental Health and Hygiene to come out and regularly conduct inspections of the generators.

“What it seems like to us is in the beginning there was an emergency situation; a lot was done without much oversight, and it wasn’t until we asked for enforcement that the DEP started doing anything,” Magee said.

“We go and look around ourselves, and we can see the smoke spewing out,” she added. “The DEP needs to be down there every single day, and they need to get the dirty ones out.”

The council member said it seemed not much thought had been given to the generators’ physical placement either.

“To be listening to one 24 hours a day is a lot to ask of residents,” said Chin, who explained they were loud enough to drown out any conversation in the street.

Ryan Carlino works on Water Street, right by the river. He said he was not allowed to return to his office building until Dec. 4.

“We literally have to walk through a tunnel of generators to get to the entrance of our building,” he said. “There’s smoke everywhere. It constantly smells like diesel fumes.”

“I’m sure they’re safe, I guess,” he added. “They were OK’d by the EPA. But they look like they could blow up or electrocute someone at any point.”

The generators are also loud, according to Carlino. “The noise isn’t a huge inconvenience since you can’t hear them inside,” he said. “It’s just really weird and post-apocalyptic walking through them to get to work.”

When asked how he knew the generator had been approved by the EPA, Carlino said his company’s operations coordinators told workers the EPA had checked them out.

A Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson confirmed that DEP inspectors are going block by block in Lower Manhattan to ensure that all generators are properly certified and are meeting emissions standards, and the DEP has also teamed up with the city’s Health Department and the state Department of Environmental Conservation to monitor air quality. The agencies have installed three additional air testing sites since Hurricane Sandy and have not detected patterns of higher concentrations of particulate matter.

While they may technically be safe, the generators are still a huge nuisance. In many cases, residents cannot understand why the generators powering some commercial buildings must remain running all night.

“Imagine that happening continuously all day long and at night when people are supposed to be sleeping,” said Chin. “We have families and lots of young kids down here.”

Chin said the city has already established a rapid repair program with residential buildings, one which might soon have to extend to commercial buildings as well.

“It’s unacceptable that they will be there all winter,” she said. “If there are missing parts, get them.”
While the noise and pollutants affect residents and workers in the area, Chin is particularly concerned about generators operating directly outside of a downtown school complex.

“We need all the help we can get,” said Chin. “We want this done by Christmas. This is our Christmas present.”

Carlino is at least glad to be back in his own office building despite the generators. “We were up in Times Square,” he said. “It was awful.”

Photo By Dale Eisinger

It’s all a part of the “international mindedness” students are expected to learn at Léman.

“International mindedness means you are aware of the problems and ready to be involved in the solutions,” said Drew Alexander, head of the school. “It means you truly believe in community service as it relates to your own world and other parts of the world.”

Léman, a research-based school, has been a part of the Meritas international family of schools since last year, and the upper campus opened two years ago. This year, Léman has their first senior graduating class, and first exchange student program this year. Students regularly exchange with other Meritas students across the world via Skype in a program called Touchpoint, to discuss global issues, says Alexander.

“We want our students to see themselves as participants in global discourse,” says Emily Khan, the head of the English department at the upper school.

The Léman campus is impressive, with two pools, two gyms and a cafeteria staffed by classically trained chefs. The lobby of the school is a horseshoe-shaped room lined floor to ceiling in glass that overlooks the New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. The view, Khan says, is meant to inspire the visual arts students.

As part of the Meritas group, Léman high school students can have the opportunity to study philosophy for two weeks abroad in August at Oxford. As a growing school, students have access to an increasing number of clubs on campus including sports, robotics, fencing and music. Each lower-school student is required to take piano.

In the Léman classroom itself, class sizes range from 10-18 students, and teachers do not take on the “typical” teaching methodology, Khan says.

“We are student-centered, so we avoid lecturing in front of the classroom,” Khan says. “The students work together and achieve independence.”

Léman teachers try to take learning outside of the classroom as well. Khan recalls one instance this year when the class was studying gravestone epitaphs, and one of the students suggested visiting Trinity Church to look at the gravestones there, and they did.

Many of the learning experiences at Léman come from mixing cultures, and introducing the international students to the American lifestyle. This year, many of the exchange students celebrated their first Halloween, says Alexander. For the school’s Halloween party, the international students were excited and bought costumes.

“For them to experience that for the first time with students who grew up with Halloween, it is really an interesting moment,” Alexander says. “But at Léman, it happens every day.”

City Hall, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Reunite Greenwich Village, and unite Chinatown and the Lower East Side.

These were downtown Manhattanites’ two most common requests in the Districting Commission’s public hearing at New York Law School last week. This first of five hearings, one per borough, gathered public opinion on the upcoming revision of the city’s 51 City Council District boundaries.

Manhattan hosts 10 Council Districts, whose lines are distinct from its 12 Community Districts and its many informal neighborhoods, and which determine its communities’ political representation in City Hall. The New York City Charter requires that the Council District lines are redrawn every 10 years following each decennial census to reflect the city’s shifting demographics.

The hearing was, in Districting Commission Chair Benito Romano’s words, “the first stage” of the districting process. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council leaders appointed the 15-person independent Commission earlier in the summer, and the Commission is now spending two weeks meeting in the five boroughs to hear what local politicians, advocacy groups and everyday residents have to say about the current district boundaries. The first meeting reserved four hours for pre-scheduled speakers and walk-ins to speak their minds.

“What looks logical on a map is not necessarily the way to define communities,” argued one elderly Greenwich Village resident. She echoed the frustration of numerous Village locals who attended the hearing to tell the Commission that the current layout of Districts 1, 2 and 3 has fragmented the Village’s community.

“The cohesiveness is gone,” another resident agreed. She pointed to the Village’s recent failure in its fight against New York University’s expansion plan as the result of being represented by too many Council members.

“We want to restore and regain the historic center of that neighborhood,” entreated a third G.V. local.

Members of a number of Asian American advocacy groups stressed the importance of revising the Districts to ensure equal representation for the city’s skyrocketing Asian population. They pushed for combining Chinatown and the Lower East Side into one district, which they believe would accommodate Asian American population shifts and encompass more common interests than Chinatown’s current pairing with the Financial District.

“There are communities of interest in Lower Manhattan that do not get proper representation,” argued an Asian American BAR Association lawyer.

Other Manhattan residents advocated border adjustments in Harlem and the Upper East Side, emphasized that Asians and Latinos cannot simply be lumped together as minority voting communities, suggested better ways for the Commission to encourage residents’ online participation in the revision process and pleaded with the Commission to avoid gerrymandering.

“Good districting ensures that people’s voices will be heard regardless of political position,” declared one District leader.

Another Manhattan resident drew some laughs from the crowd when he told the Commission that he had it all figured out. “Look, this is easy,” he said. “Just go by the bus corridors.”

After a preliminary draft and a second round of public hearings, the Commission will release a tentative District layout to City Council in November, and will submit its final draft in March 2013.

In August 2007, a fire in the Financial District’s vacant Deutsche Bank building claimed the lives of two New York firefighters. The tragedy prompted State Senator Daniel Squadron and Assemblyman Richard Gottfried to create a joint New York City-New York State Task Force on Building and Fire Safety. The Task Force just released its full report this week, and the results have Squadron calling for immediate action.

The report warns that firefighters may be at risk when fighting fires in the city’s hundreds of state-owned buildings. Discrepancies in fire codes between state- and privately-owned buildings exempt the former from fire safety standards, such as  proper building equipment (such as standpipes and hosethread connections) and hazardous material reporting.

Brooklyn College, City College, Hunter College, the Jacob Javits Convention Center and Downstate Medical Center are among the many schools, state office buildings and state building-leasing restaurants and salons included in this loophole.

Squadron urged state and city agencies to close these safety code holes immediately by creating consistent standards.

“Simply put, these major gaps in fire code put our first responders and the public at greater risk,” he said in a statement. ” The task force’s recommendations will go a long way toward closing these holes and improving safety — but they must be implemented now.”

One Chase Manhattan Plaza. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Following downtown residents’ and the Community Board 1 (CB1) Urban Planning Committee’s demands for an explanation, three representatives of JP Morgan Chase met with the CB1 Quality of Life Committee yesterday evening to discuss the closure of One Chase Manhattan Plaza, home of the bank’s Financial District skyscraper and a privately owned major pedestrian thruway that has been fenced off since September.

Officially, the plaza was closed for a yet-to-be-seen construction project, but its timing prompted many citizens to suspect that the fencing was erected to ward off Occupy Wall Street protestors. Suspicion increased when various community remembers reported that they were explicitly told by the bank’s floor workers and security guards that the barrier was to prevent protests.

Committee member Ro Sheffe asked the representatives if any factors at all other than construction were behind the plaza’s closure. Chase’s Community Reinvestment Manager Karen McGuinness responded, “Absolutely not.”

The representatives explained that serious leaks in the plaza were identified that compromise the building’s infrastructure and safety. They said that the bank has spent recent months surveying the lot and using vector mapping to determine weak points. Results showed that the plaza’s membrane would be good for another 8-10 years, but multiple sections need repair, along with cleaning and resetting.

Asked how long repairs would take, one representative said about six months, weather permitting. Asked when repairs would begin, he responded, “soon — as soon as tomorrow, even,” but promised no specific date or deadline.

Asked if the plaza would reopen to the public after construction, another representative assured that it would. “We intend to operate the plaza as it has been traditionally operated,” he said.

After the representatives left the meeting, the Committee agreed to suspend a resolution to pressure the bank to reopen the plaza that the Urban Planning Committee had drafted when it met on July 5. For now, they decided, they would keep an eye on the plaza and wait to see if Chase follows through.

Many committee members remained skeptical about the bank’s story — a few had been told themselves by the bank’s staff that the fencing was in place to block protestors — but most were satisfied that the bank had made its intentions clear.

Sheffe, however, said that he was still unhappy. “I don’t want to argue with Chase because it’s their property,” he told New York Press. “But there’s a social imperative. [The plaza] is a valuable community resource. I want it open as soon as possible.”

One Chase Manhattan Plaza. Photo by James Kelleher.

Community says open space closed because of OWS fears

By Paul Bisceglio

The Financial District’s population is exploding. According to a 2000-2010 survey by Community Board 1, 28,000 residents now live in the Financial District alone, excluding Battery Park City, the Seaport/Civic Center and Tribeca. That’s 288 percent more residents than at the turn of the century, including enough new and expecting moms to win the area the nickname “The Diaper District.”

The closure of One Chase Manhattan Plaza last September has not made pedestrian traffic any lighter. Barricaded by a wire fence and orange plastic barriers for a yet-to-be-seen construction project, the 15,898-square-foot plaza that houses J.P. Morgan Chase’s 60-floor skyscraper now keeps pedestrians off the walkway that stretches from the corner of Nassau and Liberty streets to Pine and Williams streets. This open space, with benches, a small cluster of trees, an iconic sculpture and a sunken garden, has been a major public meeting place and thruway for decades.

Members of the Financial District community have objected to the plaza’s closure since it started, arguing that the alleged construction project is a guise to ward off Occupy Wall Street protestors. Now, CB1’s newly formed Urban Planning Committee is adding its voice to demand that the bank reopen the plaza to the public.

On July 5, the Committee devoted most of their inaugural meeting to a discussion of what should be done about the plaza. They agreed that the closure is a significant obstruction in the daily lives of Financial District residents.

“It’s a catastrophe,” said committee member Ro Sheffe.

“It seems to be to be extraordinarily unneighborly,” said Jeff Galloway, the Committee chair.

The problem the Committee faces is that unlike most publicly accessible parks in the Financial District, One Chase Manhattan Plaza is not legally considered a Privately Owned Public Space (POPS)—it’s just private. CB1 Director of Land Use and Planning Michael Levine explained at the meeting that Chase’s building was constructed before POPS zoning laws were implemented in the 1970s, so the bank has no legal obligation to keep the square open to the public.

Levine noted that the legality of the fencing could come into question if Chase were proven not to be engaging in construction there. Evidence to confirm this, however, would be hard to find: one citizen recently sued the New York Department of Buildings for refusing to disclose Chase’s construction plans, but One Chase Manhattan Plaza’s place on a Police Department list of buildings potentially vulnerable to a terrorist attack has allowed the bank to guard the details of the project from public scrutiny for security reasons.

The Committee decided that if no legal imperative compels Chase to reopen the plaza, a social one still should. Chase President David Rockefeller declared the plaza’s openness to the public a triumph when it was built, and the Committee reasoned the bank could add new rules to the plaza to deter protestors without fully blocking pedestrians. The Committee voted to tell Chase that the plaza should be opened as quickly as possible, that security concerns should be accommodated in a way that has minimal impact on the public and that the bank should provide a timetable for the construction project’s completion.

At the time of the Urban Planning Committee meeting, Chase had not responded to CB1 staff’s attempts to contact them about the plaza’s closure. Recently, however, the bank agreed to send a representative to this evening’s CB1 Quality of Life Committee meeting to discuss the issue.

Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons

It’s just another day in the life of a Zuccotti Park security guard. The park, which remains under watch by security 24/7 since the dissolution of the Occupy encampment, is still witnessing acts of rebellion.

A Brookfield Properties security guard was playing computer games in the park last night, until he realized he was being filmed by an Occupy livestreamer, reports Gothamist. The security guard, accompanied by another, approached the Occupier and told him not to stand on the park chairs. When the accompanying guard implied the livestreaming may not be legal, the game-playing guard smashed the camera out of the man’s hand.

NYPD and livestream viewers appeared on scene to see what the melee concerned. Officers told the Occupy camera operators they were not allowed to stand on tables and chairs.

Video streaming by Ustream

—Alissa Fleck

Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons

A fire that broke out at the South Street Seaport on Saturday was caused by faulty electrical wiring, reports the Huffington Post. 

The fire started under Pier 17 and grew to engulf about 100 square feet, but was tamed in under two hours. Pictures of the blaze show onlookers photographing and gawking at immense clouds of black smoke over Lower Manhattan.

The fire could have been building under the dock for some time, according to the New York Times.

Fire Department spokesman Jim Long called the fire an averted disaster in the tourist-heavy area—no one was hurt and no shops were damaged. The pier was opened back up to activity Saturday evening, including a planned Seaport music festival.

Fire marshals looked into any possible structural damage on Sunday, reports the Huffington Post. Parts of the pier will remain closed for some time as stability in the area is assessed.

—Alissa Fleck

1 Chase Plaza. Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons.

By Paul Bisceglio

The wire fence that blocks access to One Chase Manhattan Plaza has been a source of controversy since it was erected around the 60-floor Financial District skyscraper’s outdoor square last September for a yet-to-be-seen construction project. Now, the city’s newly formed Urban Planning Committee is adding its voice to demands that the bank reopen the plaza to the public.

The committee met for the first time last Thursday in the Community Board 1 (CB1) office on Chambers Street. Following a presentation by Michael Levine, CB1′s Director of Land Use and Planning, and his Pace University students on Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS), the committee addressed  the Chase plaza’s closure, which they considered a significant obstruction in the daily lives of the Financial Districts 28,000 residents.

“It’s a catastrophe,” said committee member Ro Sheffe, arguing that the plaza – “the major open space in the center of the financial district” – was essential for reducing pedestrian traffic in the area during what he called “the largest urban renewal project ever.”

Jeff Galloway, the committee’s chair, agreed. “It seems to be to be extraordinarily unneighborly,” he said.

The problem the committee faces is that One Chase Manhattan Plaza is not a Privately Owned Public Space – it’s just private. The building was constructed before POPS zoning laws were made in the 1970′s, so the bank has no legal obligation to keep the square open to the public.

The committee echoed general public speculation that the plaza’s alleged construction project is a guise to ward off Occupy Wall Street protestors. One man has even sued the New York Department of Buildings for refusing to disclose Chase’s construction plans, but One Chase Manhattan Plaza’s place on a Police Department list of  buildings potentially vulnerable to a terrorist attack has allowed the bank to guard the details of the project from public scrutiny for security reasons. Levine mentioned that the legality of the fencing could come into question if Chase were proven actually not to be engaging in construction.

The committee agreed that if no legal imperative exists to make Chase open the plaza, a social one still does. A preliminary vote unanimously passed a resolution to tell Chase that the plaza should be opened as quickly as possible, that security concerns should be accommodated in a way that has minimal impact on the public and that the bank should provide a timetable for the construction project’s completion.

Chase had not responded to the CB1 staff’s attempts to contact them about the fencing at the time of the meeting, but the bank has since agreed to send a a representative to the CB1 Quality of Life Committee meeting on Thursday, July 12 to discuss the issue. Chase has not responded to New York Press’s requests for details about the construction project.