The W. 10th St. Enigma: Sort of Revealed!

I spent much of the last couple weeks talking with a variety of officials in city government, trying to get an answer to the following, deceptively simple question:

"Hey, so what's the deal with the fancy new streetlights over on W. 10th St.?"

It wasn't my problem, really, why there were new streetlamps in the West Village, but I was just curious, is all. They were real nice.

My search for answers brought me first to the Dept. of Transportation, being as that was the city agency that handled all your streetlight-related issues. There I was informed, eventually, that, while yes, the new lights were being put up by the DOT, the people I really needed to talk to was the DDC?the Dept. of Design and Construction, who are the folks responsible for all the city-sponsored building, construction and renovation work you see going on around town. The DOT also told me that what I was asking about?just to make things easier?was officially known as "The West 10th Street Project."

Unfortunately, no one at the DDC had ever heard of The West 10th Street Project. Maybe it was known by a different name, they told me. Maybe it was being overseen by someone else. Like maybe the Economic Development Corp., but they weren't real sure. They'd get back to me on that one.

What I had stumbled into was a major renovation project nobody seemed to know anything about. Nobody who should have known, anyway. Who knows? The mysterious "West 10th Street Project" might well be a project that was going up under nobody's official jurisdiction. A renegade sort of neighborhood revitalization program, or something.

Theories abounded among nongovernmental types who heard about it. Perhaps they were trying to make the neighborhood look nice to attract fancy businesses farther downtown, forcing all the head shops out of the area in the process. Or maybe all the governmental types knew full well what was going on and who was responsible, but didn't want to admit that the city was spending this sort of money all willy-nilly on what was ostensibly a frivolous prettification project when we're supposedly in the middle of a major fiscal crunch. The Mayor, after all, had just made a billion dollars' worth of budget cuts.

All I knew was this?when you're trying to find an answer to a question that, in the end, really doesn't matter at all, and you find yourself ensnared in a web of bureaucracy this enormous and this befuddled, well, it can really be a thing of beauty.

Meanwhile, as I pondered these things, I was still waiting to hear back from the fellow at the DDC who'd promised me some answers.

He called late Monday to tell me that I didn't need the DDC?I needed the EDC?the Economic Development Corp., as he sort of guessed. Instead of leaving me a phone number, however, he left me the general location of their offices.

That's odd, I thought, before looking up the number and giving them a call.

The EDC's Janel Patterson at first admitted that the lamppost business didn't ring a bell.

A-ha! I thought, for some reason.

Then she said, "I know we're involved in the 8th Street Project, and it could spill over to 10th. I'd have to check." She told me she'd do just that, and promised to get back to me. It seemed like I was at least getting closer to an answer.

In the meantime, a reader from Texas wrote a letter to New York Press with some ideas of his own concerning what was going on over there on W. 10th.

"If NYC is like some other places out here," he wrote, "there is some kind of reinvestment zone, or improvement authority, that is taking a cut of property and possibly sales taxes generated in the zone and applying those funds to flashy, trashy infrastructure improvements favored by its board of directors.

"Problem is, those funds should have gone to general city revenue accounts for use citywide rather than in an enclave district. This adds to the burdens of taxpayers outside the district who must of course make up for the now missing dollars."

It sounded plausible to me, even if I wasn't exactly sure what he was talking about. I'd have to ask Ms. Patterson what she thought.

On Friday morning, Ms. Patterson?who was a real trouper in all of this, I'll say?called and told me that yes, the EDC has been doing some work down there, but only on 8th St., from 6th Ave. to Broadway. She wasn't sure what to make of the work on 9th and 10th.

"We're narrowing the existing street bed, to accommodate the widening of the sidewalks by 2.6 feet on both the north and south sides, installing street fixtures, installing tinted concrete and granite curbs and planting approximately 55 street trees. We're almost finished with this phase."

There's also a phase two planned, which will extend from University Pl. over to Broadway. The entire project has an estimated budget of $1.5 million.

"If you can find out who's doing these other things," Ms. Patterson said, "I'd like to know."

"Yeah," I told her, "me too." I forgot all about the streetlamps for a second. What was the deal with this tinted concrete?

Before I could ask, however, Ms. Patterson informed me that I might want to call the Village Alliance. "That's who's sponsoring our work," she said.

A-ha! I thought again. Every corner I turned, the mystery only deepened. If the Village Alliance was involved, it sounds like this wise fellow from Texas might just be right. But what could they tell me about what's happening on 9th and 10th? And again, what was the deal with this tinted concrete? Who knows how high up this thing could go?

Coming Next Week: The Village Alliance Backed into a Corner!