Public Hearing on Proposed Soho BID
According to a release from the SoHo Alliance, councilmember Margaret Chin has called a public hearing on Wednesday, Oct. 31, at 10 a.m. at City Hall on the proposed Soho Business Improvement District (BID). The hearing will be conducted by the City Council’s Finance Committee Chair Dominic Recchia, and both proponents and opponents of the BID are expected to present their positions, a process expected to last for several hours.

DA Announces Sentencing for 1998 Crimes on LES
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., recently announced the sentencing of Lerio Guerrero, 33, to 15 years in state prison for a rape and burglary on the Lower East Side in 1998, according to a release from the DA’s office.

“Without the state’s DNA data bank, this defendant might never have been apprehended,” Vance said. “But because New Yorkers live in a state that recognizes the power of DNA to convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent, this crime victim is able to finally see justice be served nearly 14 years later. The fact that we were able to file an indictment in this case before the statute of limitations expired serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of the recently passed All Crimes DNA law and the continued expansion of the DNA data bank.”

According to the defendant’s guilty plea and documents filed in court, on Nov. 8, 1998, Guerrero followed the victim to her apartment building on the Lower East Side. She was 28 years old at the time. He pushed open the building door behind her, and threatened her with a piece of broken glass. While holding the glass to the victim’s throat, the defendant cut his own hand, bleeding on the victim’s coat. Guerrero then forced her to the rear of her apartment building, where he sexually assaulted her and stole her wallet. The defendant then forced his victim to follow him to an ATM to withdraw cash. When Guerrero tried to make the victim go to an ATM at a different location to withdraw more cash, she broke away and ran into a deli.

FiDi’s Transformation and Impact on Foreign Buyers
Real estate brokers and community leaders recently filled the rooftop of 75 Wall Street, a new luxury condominium atop the Andaz Wall Street hotel, for “Becoming FiDi,” a discussion of the Financial District’s residential transformation. The event brought together industry experts for a panel on foreign capital, which has been especially impactful in the Financial District.

“There is definitely an appetite for prime Manhattan real estate, particularly in Asia, and the Financial District has become one of the most sought-after areas in the entire city,” said panel participant Alistair Auty of JMA Property Services, a U.S.-based real estate corporation that works closely with foreign brokers and investors, in a release.
Hosted by The Hakimian Organization, developer of the 75 Wall Street Residences, the event began with a tour of the neighborhood led by historian Joyce Gold and continued in the building’s stunning rooftop lounge with a panel discussion moderated by Matthew Fenton, editor of The Broadsheet and seasoned FiDi reporter. The panel included Auty, Elizabeth Berger, president of the Downtown Alliance, and Amina O’Kane, director of Upper School admissions for Léman Manhattan Preparatory School.

City Council Members Will Recruit Volunteers to Escort Women to Abortion Clinics
Last Friday, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and other council members, along with representatives from Planned Parenthood, the New York Civil Liberties Union and other pro-choice organizations, gathered at City Hall to announce their upcoming “Clinic Protection Project.”

Under this program, council members will recruit and coordinate volunteers to accompany women to abortion clinics. Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health clinics already have volunteer escorts for their patients, but they say they need more. Thus Speaker Quinn and others are stepping in.

“Protesters have a right to speak their minds, but the exercise of the First Amendment should never intimidate anyone from accessing medical care,” Speaker Quinn said.
The need for a supplementary service has increased in the last few years, according to pro-choice officials, because there are more protesters outside clinics, many of whom reportedly harass women attempting to use the facilities.
“In the last three years … we’ve gone from two or three protesters on a given Saturday morning, to 50 or 60,” said Joan Malin, CEO and president of Planned Parenthood New York.
The President and CEO of Choices, Merle Hoffman, said in a phone interview that protesters outside her clinic wear vests printed with the words “Unborn Baby Protector” and also videotape the patients who enter, shaming them. Hoffman said one woman who came for an abortion arrived in a panic, because the picketers outside had said that the anesthesia would kill her.

Hoffman attributes the increase in protesters to the “rise of the radical right,” while Assemblywoman Deborah Glick said that having a pro-choice president in office has ignited the pro-life movement.

Although the details of the program are still being mapped out, Speaker Quinn said that her team will work on the recruitment and management side, and Planned Parenthood will actually train the escorts.

Father Fagan Park in Soho. Photo by James Kelleher.

By Alissa Fleck and Paul Bisceglio

Public outcry has prompted the Department of Transportation (DOT) and CitiBank to decide against installing one of their forthcoming 600 Citi Bike rental stations in Father Fagan Park, a small public square at the corner of Prince Street and Sixth Avenue in Soho.

Citizens banded together with the SoHo Alliance and Community Board 2 to oppose the installation on the grounds that the neighborhood’s green space is already limited and that a commercial presence would disrespect the park’s status as a memorial. The park is named for Father Richard Fagan, a former member of nearby St. Anthony’s Church who gave his life in a rectory fire while rescuing two people. Three pear trees in the park commemorate three firefighters who died while extinguishing the 1994 blaze.

The DOT was at first reluctant to relocate the station. According to SoHo Alliance Director Sean Sweeney, two separate DOT officers made it clear to the Alliance in emails a few weeks ago that they had no intention of changing their plans. Later, the DOT said it would consider relocating the station after the park’s proposed $1.5 million reconstruction in two years.

The Soho community continued to pressure the DOT, however, and attracted media attention to the issue when Father Joe Lorenzo, a pastor at St. Anthony’s, spoke out against the installation, arguing that the rental station would cheapen the park’s meaning to the neighborhood.

Sweeney told Our Town Downtown, “It’s not just a park issue. It’s a matter of respect, of memorializing the community’s heroes.”
DOT representatives met with CB2 last Friday and, after discussion, agreed to find a different location for the bikes.
The new spot has yet to be announced, but CB2 suggested using a section of the alternate side parking on MacDougal Street or the sidewalk on Houston Street between MacDougal Street and Sixth Avenue.

“Soho is pleased that DOT has listened to our requests to preserve our park and respect our community members,” said the SoHo Alliance in a release.

This is not the first time a proposed Citi Bike placement has been met with vigorous opposition. Plans to install docking stations in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza across from the United Nations building were opposed because it would disrupt the atmosphere of the plaza and create unnecessary congestion.

Victoria Weil, president of Friends of Bogardus Garden, was also not happy about the station planned for the pedestrian plaza at Chambers and Reade streets that her group oversees. She told the Tribeca Trib she saw accidents on the horizon in the small, already cluttered space.

While the DOT spent months listening to community concerns, Kate Fillin-Yeh, director of the bike share program, told CB1 they were trying to install a station every 1,000 feet, which does not leave a lot of space for dissent.

Photo Courtesy of SoHo Alliance

The Department of Transportation (DOT) and CitiBank have plans to install a CitiBike rental station in a SoHo memorial park, a park which commemorates four individuals who died in a fire, sacrificing their lives to save others’. This decision has been to the dismay—and outright anger—of many community members, and it’s not the first incident of outrage directed the DOT over proposed CitiBike placements.

(by Alissa Fleck)

Father Fagan Park (corner of Prince St. and Sixth Ave.), according to a SoHo Alliance press release, is named for Father Richard Fagan formerly of nearby St. Anthony’s Church, who gave his life in a rectory fire while rescuing two people. The park also contains three pear trees, which commemorate three firefighters who died in the line of duty, extinguishing a 1994 “SoHo blaze.”

Community Board 2, of which the park is a part, also ranks extremely low in terms of city green space, the Alliance reports. The board asked the DOT not to further burden the area’s limited green space with cumbersome bike rental stations.

The DOT has ignored all community and political pleas and remains steadfast in their decision, says the Alliance. Further, the Alliance calls the department’s actions “thick-headed, arrogant and disrespectful.”

St. Anthony Church Pastor Father Joseph Lorenzo said he hopes the DOT will opt not to cheapen the park with the rental station.

This is not the first time proposed CitiBike placement has been met with vigorous opposition. NY Press previously reported on plans to install docking stations in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza across from the United Nations building. Opponents said it would disrupt the atmosphere of the plaza and create unnecessary congestion.

Victoria Weil, president of Friends of Bogardus Garden, was also not happy about the station planned for the pedestrian plaza at Chambers and Reade Streets her group oversees. She told the Tribeca Trib she saw accidents on the horizon in the small, already cluttered space.

A member of Community Board 1, which encompasses Duane Park, said the proposed station for that park would “ruin the whole aesthetic.”

While the DOT spent months listening to community concerns, Kate Fillin-Yeh, director of the Bike Share program, told CB1 they were trying to install a station every 1,000 feet, which does not leave a lot of space for dissent.

The Tribeca Trib reports there is a great deal of controversy over whether the DOT and Bike Share program actually listened to community concerns and took the most contested docking stations off the to-build list.

NY Press reached out to CitiBike to find out how they had addressed community concerns, and whether they thought every proposed area would ultimately rally a certain amount of opposition. The Press did not immediately hear back on these questions.

What’s going on with the long-awaiting plan to put a Business Improvement District in SoHo? A hearing was supposed to be held on the proposed BID this spring, but it has never materialized. One source involved in pushing the BID says that Manhattan Councilwoman Margaret Chin, who is supportive of the proposal, is having some trouble getting a hearing scheduled with New York City Council Finance Chairman Domenic Recchia, noting that Chin is one of the Council’s more soft-spoken members and Recchia is consumed with budget season. A spokeswoman for Chin confirmed that no hearing has been scheduled, but did not comment on the reasons why. The BID has also faced a lot of opposition in SoHo, most notably from Sean Sweeney, director of the SoHo Alliance.

The New York Post reported that Hernandez told police he “lured the boy with candy, stabbed him, cut up his remains and put them in plastic bags.” Hernandez is said to have worked in the area at the time of Patz’s disappearance, and the Post writes he had admitted to killing a child to several family members and others. While police were looking for new leads in the basement of the Prince Street building, at the intersection of Spring Street, a relative of Hernandez reportedly called police.

This timing of this news is particularly interesting as Patz went missing on May 25, 1979, almost 33 years to the day of Hernandez’s arrest. Patz, who lived with his parents and two siblings on Prince Street had begged his parents to walk along to catch the school bus on nearby West Broadway. He was last seen walking to the stop that morning.

Patz soon became the poster child of missing children across the country, and thanks to the tenacity of his parents, he became the first child to have their face on a milk carton.

Sean Sweeney, Director of the SoHo Alliance and a longtime neighborhood resident, recalls when SoHo was filled with artist lofts and industrial retail stores at the time of Etan’s disappearance. The residents were a very close knit community, he said.

“When Etan Patz disappeared, his mother contacted all the other mothers. There wasn’t a lamp post south of 8th St. that didn’t have his missing child poster on it,” said Sweeney. “I think part of Etan being so well known was that his parents were tenacious. His father was a photographer and they had a good picture of him. At the time, missing children were barely reported in the news or not at all.”

Update:

During a public statement to the press yesterday evening, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly confirmed the arrest of arrest of Pedro Hernandez, 51, of Maple Shade, N.J., for murder of 6-year-old Etan Patz.

Hernandez who worked as a stock boy at a bodega and lived in an apartment on W. Broadway. According to his 3 hour confession to police, Hernandez lured Etan into the bodega, located on 488 W. Broadway,  with the promise of a soda before choking him to death. He then placed the body in a plastic bag and tossed it in with the garbage.

“Earlier this month the NYPD missing person’s squad received information from an individual which led them to identify Hernandez as a person of interest in Etan’s disappearance on May 25, 1979,” said Kelly. “In the years following Etan’s disappearance, Hernandez had told a family member and others that he had, quote, done a bad thing and killed a child in New York.”

However, residents will continue their fight to stop unbridled commercialization, particularly in opposing a proposal by mega real-estate developers to establish an unnecessary and unwelcome Business Improvement District (BID) on Broadway from Canal to Houston streets. The developers’ BID proposal met with dogged resistance in 2011 from Soho’s residents, businesses and property owners, as well as the community board, two local newspaper editorial boards and elected officials. The prediction is that it will die in 2012. R.I.P.

Soho’s traffic problems and failing transportation infrastructure will be addressed, like the crumbling crosswalks along the length of Greene and Mercer streets and the potholes that have never been repaired in well over a century on Wooster and Crosby streets.

Clueless tourists will continue to block the sidewalks in 2012.