Happy 55th! Don’t frack us! p. 4
Volume 82, Number 32 $1.00
West and East Village, Chelsea, Soho, Noho, Hudson Square, Little Italy, Chinatown and Lower East Side, Since 1933
January 10 - 16, 2013
Soho neighbors demand a do-over on God’s Love vote BY LINCOLN ANDERSON The recent approval by Community Board 2 of a “minor modification” to allow God’s Love We Deliver to transfer air rights to an adjacent residential project has left Soho neighbors furious and saying they were deceived. At least 50 of them have filed a petition demanding a rehearing and a new vote on the issue.
Everyone on all sides of the debate basically supports God’s Love We Deliver and its mission: to cook nutritious meals and deliver them to sick individuals living at home who in some cases are too ill even to cook for themselves. G.L.W.D. started 26 years ago at the height of
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O.K. corral? Not! Riled residents slam bike parking pens Photo by Clayton Patterson
Crying and praying, a man added a candle on Monday to a large memorial for slain Baruch Houses resident Raphael Ward, 16.
L.E.S. teen’s murder prompts call for more police patrolling BY SAM SPOKONY In the aftermath of the Jan. 4 shooting death of Raphael Ward, 16 — a resident of the Lower East Side’s Baruch Houses who officials believe was killed for his coat — some other Baruch residents said they want police to increase their patrols around the complex. “I’m not sure if this will change anything, but I’d definitely feel safer if there was a bigger police presence,” said Josh Cedeno, 29, who has lived in the development for two years. He added that, while he believes the
17-building public housing complex is still a relatively secure place in which to live, this incident — and what he feels is a lackluster police presence — has given him some second thoughts. “Now, if someone asked me if they should move here, I’d tell them to think about it,” Cedeno said. Shortly after 9 p.m. on Jan. 4, Ward was shot in the chest after a scuffle with a group of teens near the corner of Columbia and Rivington Sts., about a block away from the Baruch Houses apartment where he lived with his mother
and younger brother, according to police. He died later that night in Beth Israel Hospital. While the gunman remains at large, cops are now searching for four suspects who were spotted on security cameras in a nearby grocery store a few minutes before the shooting. Another Baruch resident, a man who declined to give his name but said he’s lived in the complex for around 30 years, also said following Ward’s death that he
BY SAM SPOKONY The Community Board 2 Transportation Committee has told the city’s Department of Transportation to go back to the drawing board following the department’s proposal to install two new “bicycle corrals” in Soho. Some neighborhood residents also say that this issue has added to their already-growing frustration with D.O.T., which they claim has ignored other recent community requests to imple-
ment street safety measures within Soho. D.O.T. representatives presented the plan at the committee’s Jan. 3 meeting, proposing to create bike corrals at the southwest corner of Spring and Lafayette Sts. and the southeast corner of Mott and Prince Sts. Bike corrals are clusters of bike racks that are installed in the curbside lane of the street
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EDITORIAL, LETTERS PAGE 10
MOURNING IN NEWTOWN PAGES 14-15
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