By Nora Bosworth

Greenwich Village and Soho are brimming with individuals who lead wildly different lifestyles, and who oppose New York University’s gargantuan development project for reasons as distinct as their own personalities. Yet whether these people are managers of local liquor stores, self-pronounced “old hippie” gardeners, or brazen Soho residents who want to see more Armani suits and fewer “I love New York” t-shirts, they all feel an imminent threat to their quality of life in light of NYU’s expansion plan.

The construction, should it come to pass—which looks increasingly likely since its approval in the City Council in July 2012—will mark one of the greatest landscape shifts that the Village or Soho has seen in decades.

Neighborhood organizations, politicians, incensed neighbors, and 39 faculty departments of NYU have united to resist the development. In September 2012, the eleven groups filed a lawsuit against New York City, accusing the City Council and the City Planning Commission, among other governmental agencies, of violating a number of City and State laws. The petitioners are being represented by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

The groups’ case falls under Article 78 of the New York Civil Practice Law and Rules, which states that anyone may appeal a public agency’s written decision if he or she believes the agency has acted illegally. One of the petitioners’ primary claims centers on the assertion that the City agencies illegally alienated dedicated parkland without the approval of the State legislature.

Last Tuesday, February 26, petitioners against the city’s approval of the expansion plan had their first court hearing, marking a pivotal moment in a development battle that has been boiling over since the university unveiled its proposal in 2010. The petitioners include Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Historic Districts Council, LaGuardia Corner Gardens, and the Soho Alliance.

At the heart of the parkland alienation debate is whether or not four areas which the City gave NYU permission to build on – Mercer Playground, LaGuardia Park, LaGuardia Corner Gardens, and the Mercer-Houston Dog Run – constitute “parkland.”

If the Judge determines these spaces to be parkland, as the petitioners assert, then under New York’s Public Trust Doctrine, the City violated State law by handing over the lands to NYU without first obtaining the State’s approval.

In its defense, the City maintains that because the strips of land were never mapped as parks -  meaning they were under the Department of Transportation’s jurisdiction as opposed to the Park Department’s – they did not count as parkland.

But a scathing affidavit from former Parks Commissioner Henry Stern throws the City’s defense into serious question, calling their argument “shocking.”

Stern writes that as Parks Commissioner he “repeatedly requested the transfer of these sites to Parks and to officially list them as such on the City Map.”

He also asserts that, “There is one reason, and one reason only, why these parcels were not formally mapped: NYU obstructed the process through the efforts of its lobbyists and emissaries.”

Moreover, Stern entirely rejects the City’s assumption that a park must be “mapped” as parkland in order to be protected as such. He cites Central Park as a prime example of obvious parkland that was not mapped for many years.

“There is no need to specifically map such sites as parkland in order to demonstrate the intent to dedicate them as such,” he writes.

Instead, he argues, a park’s designation “flows from the publicly-accepted, continuous use over a period of time.” Under this logic, the four spaces in question would clearly fit the requirements of parkland, as the neighborhood has used them as such for many years. He also cites the Parks Department’s signage at the sites, its regular maintenance of the property, and its identification of the land on its website as parkland, as additional proof of its being parkland.

“These are parks, plain and simple,” he says.

But NYU administration disagrees. “Just saying a site is parkland does not make it so,” said Philip Lentz, the Director of Public Affairs at NYU in an email.

The two opposing sides of the lawsuit perceived the outcome of Tuesday’s hearing quite differently. The plaintiffs requested both that a separate hearing be held focusing solely on the parkland alienation issue, and that the defendants procure documents, (“discovery,” in legalese), that could prove Stern’s assertions. Or rather, disprove the City’s.

“[We] need expedited discovery to belie the Respondents’ false claims that the City never intended or even attempted to treat these four sites as parks,” the petitioners explained in their complaint.

In court, on February 26, the Judge decided that the City must ‘”show cause” why the petitioners’ request for a hearing and expedited discovery on their “parkland alienation” claim should be dismissed, according to a press release issued by Gibson Dunn’s public relations team.

While NYU issued a subsequent statement saying, “Nothing changes as a result of Tuesday’s hearing,” the petitioners hailed it as their “first legal victory.”

Bo Riccobono, who is at once a member of NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan, Vice President of the Soho Alliance, and the Vice Chair of Community Board 2, explained the “victory” in its legal context.

“Most of the time discovery is not allowed, under article 78,” he said in a phone interview.

Daniel Chirlin, J.D., one of the attorneys representing the petitioners, confirmed Riccobono’s assertion in an email, explaining that such legal actions are “special expedited proceedings under New York law.” Chirlin also celebrated the Judge’s order, adding, “Our firm has had excellent success in obtaining discovery in these sorts of lawsuits. We are confident that the Court will grant discovery in this matter when it reviews all the arguments,” at the next hearing.

The Village Backyard

 One effect of the plan, if executed, is certain: the LaGuardia Corner Gardens, the longest running community garden in the City, will be no more. The building that would go up on Bleecker Street would cast the garden into shadow, killing off most, if not all, of its plants.

“While the remaining sunlight could support shade-tolerant species, the proposed Bleecker Building adjacent to the garden would cast between four and five-and-a-half hours of new shadow on the garden during morning hours throughout the growing season, jeopardizing the viability of shade-intolerant species,” states the Environmental Impact Statement that the Department of City Planning composed.

It goes on to explain, however, that such a loss would not damage the neighborhood’s character as the garden is not, “a defining feature … with respect to uniqueness or overall characterization of the area.”

Sara Jones, Chairwoman of LaGuardia Corner Gardens, begs to differ. A florist by trade, she has spent nearly twenty years tending to her community garden and is now steeling herself for the death of most of her plants, including her one hundred rose bushes–she counted them recently– her vegetables and herbs, and the apple tree that is older than the garden itself. It has dozens of members and is open to the public seven days a week.

In his affidavit, Stern speaks fondly of the gardens, adding that as Parks Commissioner he told Community Board 2 that he “would embrace a formal transfer of LaGuardia Corner Gardens to Parks.” He says it never happened because NYU, who he calls the “800-pound-gorilla in the room,” pushed against it.

“We’ve made it a park for older people who are afraid to go into Washington Square Park,” Sara tells me, pants smudged from a morning of tending to her plot.

“Where else can you go on a school trip to a garden farm? Not in this neighborhood,” Sara says. In warmer weather she does school tours.

“It’s like the Village backyard,” another member, Susan Taylorson, chimes in.

But whether the “Village backyard” is also a park is still up in the air. The decision may very well determine the future for both Greenwich Village and Soho.

The next hearing will be held on March 15th, at the Manhattan State Supreme Court

I was a teenager when Koch was elected to his first term, and I thought his chutzpah, moxie and general bluster was admirable and probably just what the city needed when the collective morale of New Yorkers bordered on outright despair. Edward I. Koch was bold, he was optimistic, he knew New York was better than its financial crisis and crime statistics.

He lifted our city out of its financial woes, embarked on an ambitious public housing program, made some innovative criminal justice reforms and gave New York its swagger back. When I went off to college in upstate New York in 1980, I felt that I was leaving a city on an upswing, with a mayor who was steering us to a better place.

Then in 1982, Koch overreached, and the Greenwich Village pol set his sights on the Statehouse, a job that required living in upstate New York. He stumbled, making an ill-conceived joke about the sterility of the suburbs, and my college newspaper in Ithaca wisecracked in the headline of its endorsement for governor: “Koch for Mayor.”

The people of upstate and my colleagues on the college newspaper editorial board sent the fish-out-of-New York-harbor-water a message: Stay in the five boroughs, where you belong. Koch went on to re-election in 1985, the same year I returned to the city and became the editor of a weekly newspaper, The West Side Spirit, which not only covered the mayor, but had a weekly political columnist, Dick Oliver, who was one of Koch’s chief antagonists.

Koch, in his third term (there were no term limits then) started collecting lots of enemies and critics. His administration was beset by scandal, from the Parking Violations Bureau mess that led to the suicide of Queens Borough President Donald Manes to the imbroglio over Koch’s close friend, Consumer Affairs Commissioner Bess Myerson, whose romantic life with an alleged mobster led to one of the more bizarre scandals in NYC history.

Like a marriage that goes sour after a decade, Koch’s relationship with the city and its various constituencies curdled in his third term. The African-American community attacked him for his racial insensitivity, and Wilbert Tatum, the publisher of the city’s largest black newspaper, the Amsterdam News, put “Koch Must Resign” on his front page every week. For two years.
I was an eager young journalist, in my mid-20s, who was still awestruck to be covering larger-than-life figures like Koch and his ilk. I decided in 1987, two years before his ill-fated third stab at re-election, to write a long cover story: “Can Koch Make a Comeback?”

Unintentionally, Koch taught me one of my most valuable journalism lessons when he refused to grant me an interview because my newspaper— particularly columnist Dick Oliver—had continuously bashed him.

Undeterred, I did a “write around,” interviewing more than 25 people in the administration and in the New York punditocracy, and it became one of my proudest pieces of journalism: a balanced and thoroughly reported picture of a once-mighty mayor on the ropes and hanging on for dear life.
In 1989, David Dinkins dethroned Koch in the primary and unceremoniously sent him back to private life.

In the following years, when well-wishers on the street told Koch they missed him, he would reply: “The people have spoken. And now they must be punished.”

One year after he left office, I decided to write another profile of Koch. My last question in that interview was a throwaway line: “So now that you have all this free time, how do you spend it?”

Koch replied: “I go to the movies two or three times a week.”

The next morning, I phoned Koch.

“Hey, Ed,” I said, “how would you like to be the West Side Spirit’s movie reviewer?”

“What would you pay?” Koch replied.

“How about $50 a week?” I said sheepishly, knowing that I was already committing a high percentage of my weekly freelance budget.

“Fifty dollars a week?! I wouldn’t cross the street for $50 a week!”

“But we’re a small paper,” I said plaintively.

“Well, call me when you get bigger,” he said and then dropped the receiver.

The Spirit had recently become part of a chain of five weeklies in Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx and the Hamptons. I phoned each publisher about my idea, asked them to contribute $50 per week for a syndicated movie column—and presto, a critic was born.

“How about $250?” I offered the next day.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll start today. But I have some ground rules: I don’t do openings. I don’t do cinematography. I just tell the reader whether the movie is worth the price of admission.”

For the next 23 years, Edward I. Koch reviewed a movie or two each week, with his trademark + or –, symbolizing his thumbs-up or thumbs-down for the everyman’s film experience.

One night a few months after he started, a friend called to tell me he saw Koch on the Johnny Carson show saying he had seven jobs in his post-mayoralty career but his favorite one was writing reviews for a chain of weekly newspapers.

Now that we all mourn the loss of a colorful New Yorker and a man who relished being called Hizzoner, I take some comfort that a young editor’s gimmicky idea to grab attention in a tough media town gave Koch some joy.

If they serve popcorn in heaven, I hope Koch has found his seat and is taking mental notes on the show unfolding before him.

This time, perhaps he’ll notice the cinematography.

Tom Allon, a 2013 candidate for New York City mayor, is the former editor and publisher of this newspaper.

The theme of the annual Village Halloween parade this year was to have been a 2012 Mayan countdown. With the streets of downtown Manhattan already dark and apocalyptic in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy, the parade was cancelled for the first time in its venerated 39-year history.

But on Wednesday night, more than a hundred determined revelers whooped and danced through the Village anyway, brightening the darkened streets with costumes fashioned out of blinking lights and glowsticks. More people joined as the parade wound a zigzagging route up from Prince Street, past 14^th and toward the brightly lit buildings uptown.

Photo by Emily Johnson

“Well apparently [the parade] is rescheduled, but the only time to come out for Halloween is Halloween night,” said Christopher Hardwick, whose white coattails and top hat were decked out with blue lights.

“You can’t come out the Saturday before or the night before, its always Halloween where it’s rocking,” Hardwick said. “And there were a lot of people in the neighborhood without power with cabin fever. I walked here from the East Village, which has absolutely no power, down fourteen flights of stairs.”

Hardwick, who belongs to a group of costume enthusiasts known as Kostume Kult, was one of the organizers of the informal event. He regularly emcees the group’s float in the annual parade.

Police accompanied the parade through the streets, and for much of the way, the flashing lights on the NYPD vehicles were the main source of visibility. On Christopher Street, the crowd spilled into the middle of the road and officers had to hem them in with megaphones. Some of the marchers pitched in to restore order.

“Onto the sidewalk, darlings, everybody onto the sidewalk,” trilled an imposing figure dressed as Eleanor Roosevelt.

Some people on the event’s Facebook page had expressed worry that even a small, unofficial parade would be an unnecessary distraction for the beleaguered city. Jim Glazer, another organizer dressed as a red dragon, acknowledged these concerns.

“We had a mixed reaction,” said Glazer, more commonly known as Costume Jim. “Some people didn’t like the idea because they thought it would take away resources. But the people who really get art, I think, understand that helping people’s morale is a very important aspect of aid for downtown.”

It seemed to be working. Smiling faces appeared at windows lit by candlelight, peering down at the street and beckoning more people to come and look. Motorists stopped their cars on the street to take pictures. “Halloween is not dead!” one man yelled from a passing cab, eliciting cheers from the marchers. And occasionally the parade came upon unsuspecting, delighted costume-wearing people who joined in, swelling the size of the crowd as it marched on.

A small band featuring a large tuba-like instrument, akin to something out of a Dr. Suess story, provided the soundtrack for the parade. Cyclists rode alongside, speakers blasting Lady Gaga songs and the theme from “Ghostbusters.”

For fashion designer Megan Bielli, 24, the mob of light and noise was a welcome relief after days of quiet darkness in her East Village apartment, where she and her boyfriend had been steadily working their way through all of their perishable food.

“It’s been really dark and dreary going outside, walking around my neighborhood,” she said, a pair of glowstick ears perched on top of her head. “It was nice to go to work today where there’s electricity and charge my phone, check the internet. That’s where I found out about this. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known about it.”

She said she intended to join the others in walking up to where the power was back on.

“The whole point is not to be a nuisance,” she said. “It’s Just to shine a little light on a dark time.”

Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons

The controversy over canceling the New York City marathon this weekend does not merely extend to the dangers posed for runners by downed power lines and flooding throughout the city — it also has to do with displaced residents of downtown Manhattan who just want to go home in peace.

For those who can’t go home, out-of-town marathon participants taking up valuable hotel space and resources has understandably raised tensions.

Other downtown New Yorkers want the rest of the city to understand — between the damage, deficits and crowding — Hurricane Sandy is not yet over for them.

Some have taken to blogging about their experience, hoping uptowners can begin to grasp their struggle, one to which many, they claim, seem blissfully unaware. Some can’t deny they’ve even had a little fun — the grownup equivalent of a snow day, perhaps.

Matthew Russell, a real estate agent with a love for post-apocalyptic movies, is one of them. Russell decided to stick out the storm in his 6th floor East Village apartment. In his blog post about “Living in the Dead Zone,” Russell was careful to note he, a healthy, 29-year-old with enough cash to get by, had an advantage over many. He added some of the elderly tenants who stayed in his building would have simply been unable to descend the “pitch black staircase” to evacuate.

The superintendent in Russell’s building has looked after the elderly tenants everyday, he explains, replenishing the water in their toilets and bringing them warm meals from Queens. Russell uses a hot cup of water, heated with the building’s gas, to “shower” in the morning.

Russell explains the system pedestrians have developed to signal their presence in the darkened streets: “At every intersection pedestrians flash their lights wildly in order to cross in safety, and judging by the driving pace, that is remarkably wise.”

Another blogger, Bianca Posterli, wrote of her experience after witnessing a transformer explode: “I…walked out of my apartment on 9th Street to a scene straight out of the apocalypse.

“While New Yorkers rarely ever talk to each other, here were complete strangers sharing stories, ruminating on what the next few days would hold,” she wrote. “I made my way to the corner, where a line had formed outside of the deli at least 15 people deep. With my cell phone out of order, I did something I thought I’d never have to do – used a pay phone.”

She also noted, insightfully, the one “upside” of Sandy: “For once we’re completely unencumbered by constant access to Twitter, Instagram, and emails. We’re forced to make conversation, get to know our friends, and LISTEN to each other.”

Stan Williams, “Maxim” magazine’s style editor, and his partner also decided to stay in their 7th floor apartment in the Village during the storm, a zone he coined “Zombieville.”  Only about 10 percent of the residents in Williams’s 200-apartment building stuck out the storm.

Williams said daytime was fine, pleasant even, when he’d briskly walk two miles to his midtown office, where he’d camp out for most of the day.  Returning home, however, “was pretty frightening once you got past Flatiron,” especially considering a notable drop in police presence, though in the dark it was difficult to tell if anyone was around at all.

Williams echoed the sentiment of Russell and Posterli, saying: “I feel fortunate. It was inconvenient, but an adventure.” He also noted how the blackout actually helped him focus and boost his productivity. All three were intent on finding a silver lining.

As Russell pointed out, all three seemed aware they were the “best case scenario” as far as storm survivors. “That is NOT the case for most people,” said Russell, who added he was “seriously having a blast.”

The Village Halloween Parade, a 39-year tradition, is just another check on the list of Hurricane Sandy’s victims, which includes the destruction of much of Atlantic City, Long Island, Downtown Manhattan and the New York City mass transit system.

“For the first time in our 39 year history, the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management and the NYPD have CANCELLED the Parade,” read the official website of the Village Halloween Parade, which was scheduled for Halloween night.

Serra Hirsch started piecing together her costume Sunday evening, moving the tree and the bear around to see where she wanted them. Photo by Sophia Rosenbaum

Instead of intricate costumes and mobs of people taking over 6th Avenue in the Village, clean-up crews will be working to remove fallen trees and bring power back to the millions in the dark since Monday’s super storm.

Destruction around the metropolitan area evoked images of doomsday. A spooky coincidence, perhaps, but this year’s Halloween parade featured an end-of-the-world theme: “Tick! Tock!,” a poke at the Mayan calendar’s prediction of the end of the world in 2012.

Jeanne Fleming, the producing director of the parade, sent an email Tuesday evening to participants and media alerting them to the cancelation of the parade after Mayor Michael Bloomberg made it official on Tuesday afternoon.

Fleming is working diligently to reschedule the parade, but said it is only possible if the organization’s small budget allows for it.

“It seems at the moment as if we cannot afford to do it a week later,” she said.

Meanwhile, Serra Hirsch, a puppeteer who has been active in the parade since 1994, remained hopeful Tuesday evening that the parade will be rescheduled sometime next week.

Hirsch said the cancellation was a “huge bummer” for her, but said mass transit is crucial to the return of pre-Hurricane Sandy New York City.

“We can’t return to normal until the subway returns,” she said. “The city is crippled with no subway, and the police, sanitation, and other services aren’t really available to make the parade run smoothly and safely.”

Hirsch said she understands the decision to cancel the parade, as safety is an issue to begin with because people’s costumes cause obstructed views, and drunk audience members sometimes become aggressive.

“I don’t think they had a choice,” she said. “The light’s are out still throughout the parade route. It’s just not safe.”

Jennifer Weidenbaum, 34, has gone to the parade with Hirsch for five years and started working on her ski-costume in August. She attempted to get into the city Tuesday from her home in Jersey City, but said too many roads were closed. On her drive home, she was able to breathe a sigh of relief.

“I was actually happy when I was listening to the radio in the car when they said the parade was cancelled,” Weidenbaum said. “I don’t want any of the city’s resources to be directed towards a parade when there’s so many other important things going on.”

Sunday afternoon, Hirsch was busy at work on her elaborate campfire costume scene of two girl scouts at a campfire roasting marshmallows with a bear lurking behind them. Hirsch’s plan was to act as the head of one of the girls and said she planned on pretending she had no idea there was a bear behind her.

While Hirsch is working on her costume at a much more relaxed pace now, she is still set to appear on Kelly and Michael’s live Halloween show, which was moved to November 5 due to the storm. If she wins the costume contest, she could win a $10,000 gift card to Home Goods.

Weidenbaum is still planning on celebrating Halloween this evening in her Jersey City neighborhood. Her costume of an Olympic skier racing down a mountain to the finish line is almost complete, and she plans to use it for next year’s Halloweenparade in the West Village.

“I’ll have a leg up next year,” she said. “I’ll put it in storage.”

Representatives from the Department of Education (DOE), the Community Education Council District 2 (CEC) and community members convened on Oct. 9 to discuss a proposed school district rezoning for Greenwich Village/Chelsea and Midtown East.

The proposed Greenwich Village/Chelsea rezoning map, available on the CEC’s website, impacts current PS zones 3, 11, 41 and 130. The Midtown East rezoning splits current PS 116 zone vertically to allow for the new school building being built in the area, and rearranges current zones 267, 59 and 40.

A member of the PTA from PS 116’s zone said of the redistricting: “We need to get it done right, not just get it done.” The PTA member said the proposal, which cuts her zone in half, would ultimately hurt school funding.

“The superior status of our school needs to be maintained,” she said.

John Keller, representing PS 59, said his school’s zone was also disproportionately reduced by the plan and “families look for zoning lines that are consistent and reliable.”
This sentiment was echoed by community members and parents who spoke of buying homes based on careful consideration of school districts.

One father, who lives in current zone 59, said people, like his own family, spend a great deal of money moving to places based on the school in their zone or district. “We put a lot of money on the line,” he said, becoming emotional. “We thought this would be our zone forever.”

“The DOE said the most important thing is sustainability,” he said. “Redrawing the lines every year is not sustainability.”

A spokesperson from the CEC explained that endless rezoning battles, such as this one, are merely a fact of life as student populations grow rapidly in the city.
“It’s impossible to plan anything far enough in advance,” he said. “The population of kids is going up faster than we can build to keep up.”

He also emphasized the importance of schools having set zones when they are built, saying that in the process of alleviating overcrowding, trade-offs will inevitably take place. These trade-offs include families being shifted to new school districts.

The CEC spokesperson conceded that in a perfect world the desired balance and aesthetic of school zones would be attainable, but the new school being constructed needs a defined zone for the 2014-2015 school year.

In response to the complaint that this proposal was presented too abruptly, the spokesperson said it would indeed have been ideal to start the process further in advance to give families more time to acclimate to the changes.

A representative from Community Board 5 expressed concern East Side schools will all be at or over capacity in the next five years.

“Why are schools not built to fully address capacity problems?” she asked DOE members.

Ella, the mother of a 4-year-old, told community members she believes there is an agenda by the DOE and CEC and “[they] need to get an independent consulting firm onboard,” a suggestion met with applause and agreement by community members.

Other parents and community members also expressed concern about how new school district areas would reflect the racial and socioeconomic diversity of schools. Community members who spoke called, overwhelmingly, for the process to be put on hold while numbers and issues of diversity were more accurately addressed and factored into the equation.

To this, DOE and CEC representatives reiterated the crucial importance of giving students a school zone to call their own from day one, despite perceived issues linked to school diversity.

“Every school deserves an identified community,” said the CEC spokesperson.

The next meeting to discuss the Greenwich Village/Chelsea and East Side proposals will take place Oct. 24 at PS 3.

Photo by edenpictures. Via Flickr Commons.

By Paul Bisceglio

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*Update*: An NYPD spokesperson announced on Wednesday that Greg Smith was charged with failure to yield to a pedestrian and failure to exercise due care.

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South Village resident Jessica Dworkin, 58, was killed on Monday morning when the rear of a tractor trailer hit her and dragged her two blocks under its back wheels. According to witnesses, she attempted to cross Sixth Avenue on a foot scooter at the same time the 18-wheeler was making a right turn onto the avenue from West Houston Street. The truck swept her into its wheels.

Witnesses attempted to alert the unaware driver, Greg Smith, who finally stopped at Carmine Street.

“There were a dozen people running up the street screaming and telling him to stop,” witness Christian Cruz told the Daily News. “He didn’t notice. I saw all the blood and couldn’t look anymore.”

Another witness told the Daily News that once Smith realized what was going on, he rushed out of the truck. “He put his hands on his head like, ‘What did I do?’ He started screaming and crying.”

According to police, Smith is not expected to be charged. Dworkin was pronounced dead at the scene.

Soho Alliance director Sean Sweeney said that “everyone knew” Dworkin around Soho and Greenwich Village. Craig Walker, a longtime resident and friend of hers, told DNAinfo that she moved into her Thompson Street apartment back in the 1970′s.

Dworkin was an eccentric and sociable artistic type who spent a lot of time traveling the street on her scooter, according to Sweeney. Her taste for thrift store clothing made her easily stand out.

“She had a shabby finery to her clothing,” Sweeney told New York Press. “She was a bit of a hoarder — very fashion conscioius, in her own unique way.”

She was even known to change her outfits as many as four times a day, according to Michael Robinson, a Soho store manager who saw her almost daily for 23 years. She was a “fixture in the neighborhood,” he told DNAinfo.

One Soho resident who wished to remain anonymous mentioned rumors that Dworkin had recently been fighting eviction because of hoarding, but that neighbors came to her support and helped her to stay.

“She was well liked,” affirmed Sweeney. “She was a real neighborhood character who gave flavor to the neighborhood.”

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.

Residents, politicians, activists envision impact of NYU’s long-term expansion plan

New York University scored a key victory last week as the City Council approved a slightly scaled back version of the school’s controversial 2031 expansion plan. While the project was pared down, it will still add close to 6 million square feet of academic space throughout the city. Nearly half of the expansion, equal to about the size of the Empire State Building, would be concentrated on two Washington Square-area superblocks located near the school’s main campus in Greenwich Village.

The NYU plan calls for four new buildings on the two large blocks bordered by LaGuardia Place and Mercer, West Houston and West 3rd streets. The buildings will be used for both academic and residential purposes.
The plan has generated an enormous amount of discussion and controversy both for and against since it was unveiled by NYU officials in 2010. Moreover, the Council’s approval comes at a time when residents uptown are waging a battle of their own against Columbia University’s mammoth, long-range plan in West Harlem that includes a 17-acre, $6.3 billion campus expansion.

Opponents of the NYU plan, including village residents, activists, NYU faculty members and others, have already vowed to continue the fight, including an expected legal challenge, to get the plan sent back to the drawing board and significantly revised. The plan has the support of the mayor and is unlikely to be vetoed.
But what if the current incarnation of the plan is upheld and remains largely unchanged? What will Greenwich Village look like in 2031? Will it be congested, overcrowded and largely unlivable, as many naysayers suggest, or will the plan usher in a new chapter of peaceful coexistence between NYU and its Village neighbors?

“When I ask myself what the Village will look like in 20 years, the first thing I see is large, concrete, functional-looking buildings casting long shadows over the neighborhood; absorbing all the light. The only outdoor space for people to congregate will be Washington Square Park, and you know how crowded that gets now!” said Janet Hayes, who lives in a high-rise co-op at 505 LaGuardia Place near Houston.

A longtime resident of the Village and a local Republican leader, Hayes predicted that NYU’s plan, if allowed to come to fruition, would greatly affect life in the Village and not in a good way.

“Take grocery shopping, using the dry cleaner or going out to dinner, for example—full-service restaurants will be replaced with beer halls, pizza places and other fast-food sources,” Hayes predicted.

She added that more stores would cater to NYU and transit would be a “nightmare”; subways and buses would be overcrowded all day long, and “forget catching a cab.”

In support of NYU’s plan, Borough President Scott Stringer, who most recently helped to broker concessions from the school, cited substantial economic benefits for New York City, which include the creation of 9,500 permanent jobs and as many as 18,200 construction jobs over the next 20 years.

Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, has been one of the plan’s most outspoken critics and has worked to help mobilize village residents, activists and like-minded politicians in opposition to a project he has called a “grandiose scheme of a private university’s super-rich board and its president.”

Immediately following last week’s Council vote, Berman said in a press release, “The NYU expansion plan will turn a residential neighborhood into a company town and subject it to 20 straight years of construction.”
Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit planning organization that serves the tri-state area, however, said NYU’s expansion is important to the city for many reasons.

“NYU’s continued success is vital to the economy of New York. The university is among the city’s largest private employers,” Yaro noted. “NYU can continue to attract top students and scholars only if it is able to modernize and expand…By emphasizing density, the NYU plan will avoid harming any of the Village’s historic fabric.”

Asked about possible loss of open space and congestion resulting from NYU’s plan, Council Member Margaret Chin seemed confident the issue has been addressed. “Under this plan, the open space on the superblocks will be improved and it will be fully accessible by the public for the first time,” Chin said in an emailed statement.
“The padlocks and fences around the Sasaki Garden will finally come down, and this park—which few New Yorkers know about—will finally be open to the public. We will also gain a pedestrian walkway, or ‘greenstreet,’ behind the new Zipper Building, which will connect the Village with Soho,” she said.

The Council member added that the walkway would be lined with cafés and restaurants and would have an indoor atrium open to the public year-round.

A spokesperson for Chin also noted that the university would be “bound” by a 500-page restrictive declaration document that specifies what the school can and can’t do with regard to construction, building and other logistics related to the plan.

For example, the school has committed to limit construction to the hours between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. and to limit weekend construction. In addition, the school has promised to assist with construction mitigation issues related to air quality and noise by equipping affected apartments with soundproofing materials.

“This plan is a way to start over. It is a pathway forward,” Chin said. “This plan integrates the Greenwich Village community and NYU in ways that have never been done before.”

Terri Cude, co-chair of Community Action Alliance against NYU 2031 and a member of Community Board 2 (CB2), isn’t so sure of the plan’s integration into the neighborhood.

“If NYU builds everything that is in the current plan, we will have a very dark neighborhood,” Cude said.
Asked about the various committees that were formed by NYU to address community concerns and incorporate residents’ needs into the plan, Cude said, “They attended all the meetings and listened to everything we had to say. The only thing they didn’t do is modify the plan at all based on the input.”

But the concessions brokered by Stringer in early April did in fact include a significant overall density reduction, preservation of public space as parkland, elimination of a temporary gymnasium on the site of two community playgrounds, elimination of proposed dormitories on the Bleecker Building and an affirmation of NYU’s commitment to provide space for a K-8 school.

Brad Hoylman, former chair of CB2 and candidate for state Senate in District 27, testified before the City Planning Commission back in the spring that the NYU plan would “forever alter the character of the neighborhood, bring in thousands of new people into the area [estimates suggest up to 12,000 people daily] and cause decades of construction disruption for local residents.”

Village residents and community garden members Marcia Lawther and Bob Hirschfeld moved to the neighborhood in the mid-1970s. “It’s invasive. It’s crowded enough as it is,” said Lawther when asked about the expansion.

“In the ’70s, things were much quieter, there was not much going on,” recalled Hirschfeld. “NYU was a separate world. It wasn’t elbowing its way into the community.”

However, signs of hope for the future of the project were evident on Tuesday as legislators lauded a new agreement between NYU and the residents of 505 LaGuardia Place in an effort to maintain long-term affordability at the Mitchell-Lama development.

“I am pleased a deal has been reached and much-needed affordable housing has been preserved in Greenwich Village,” said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn in a prepared statement.

“This agreement guarantees that 505 LaGuardia can maintain affordability and that the working-class families that currently reside there will be able to continue to live in a neighborhood they have long called home.”

Photo by wallyg, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

“Chin and Quinn did us in!” jeered over 50 opponents to New York University’s expansion plan from a balcony overlooking City Council’s chamber. “Shame on you!”

Greenwich Village residents, community activists and N.Y.U. professors filled the chamber to capacity yesterday to witness the full City Council’s final vote to approve hotly debated zoning and map changes that will allow the university to construct four new high-rise buildings over the course of 17 years, 2014 to 2031.

The opponents became increasingly vocal as the time to vote neared, and broke into chants just before it. Speaker Christie Quinn asked for silence and warned the opponents that they would be kicked out, but the chants continued, and security escorted the entire balcony out of the building.

The proposal passed by a 44-to-1 vote.

Prior to the meeting, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) commissioned a 32-page report that outlined the negative impacts of the expansion plan, and opponents wrote a letter to City Council that expressed the community’s dissatisfaction with the proposal.

“The NYU expansion plan will turn a residential neighborhood into a company town and subject it to twenty straight years of construction,” said GVSHP Executive Director Andrew Berman in a statement.  “The Council ignored the grave environmental impacts of this plan and the much better options that had been put forward for NYU to locate new facilities in the Financial District; this is a sad day for democracy in New York City.”

John Sexton, N.Y.U.’s president, however, said that the approval marked “a great day for N.Y.U. and for New York City,” and said that the expansion will provide the city with much-needed construction jobs and university positions.

His statement argued that the plan “strikes an important balance: permitting N.Y.U. to maintain academic excellence by meeting our educational- and research-space needs on our existing footprint over the next two decades, while at the same time addressing the concerns of our neighbors on such issues as improving access to open space.”

The opponents are now considering legal action. “We will be working closely with our partners in the NYU faculty and with our lawyers at Gibson Dunn to pursue every avenue available to us to remedy this tragic wrong which has been imposed upon the people of the City of New York,” said Berman.