Strength against bullying, p. 25
Volume 3, Number 14 FREE
East and West Village, Lower East Side, Soho, Noho, Little Italy and Chinatown
April 25 - May 8, 2013
People going postal over 14th St. P.O. closure plan BY JEFFERSON SIEGEL More than 100 people packed a town hall meeting Monday night to voice concern over the proposed relocation of the Peter Stuyvesant Post Office. The current E. 14th St. facility is scheduled to close in February 2014. Joseph Mulvey, facilities implementation specialist for the U.S. Postal Service, did little to quell the anger of locals demanding specifics. His
Renderings of the dorm plan for the old P.S. 64, showing students using the renovated front-entrance terrace on E. Ninth St.
Scaled-down dorm pitched for embattled CHARAS site BY SARAH FERGUSON Ten years ago, developer Gregg Singer stirred up a fury of opposition when he proposed razing the old P.S. 64 school building on E. Ninth St. to put up a 19-story dormitory tower. Now Singer is pitching a downscaled dorm plan to house up to 529 students in the existing turn-of-the century school building, which was landmarked in 2006, after community members mobilized to block him from tearing it down. Last time, the city refused to approve Singer’s dormitory tower because he did not have any actual leases with schools or universities to show proof of an “institutional nexus” for the property, which is
zoned for community facility use. The courts upheld the city’s decision, saying Singer could not build an “onspec” dorm without any schools on board. This time, however, Singer says he’s confident his project “is going forward”— in large part because The Cooper Union has signed a 15-year lease to house up to 196 of its students on two of the building’s five floors. “Cooper Union is our anchor tenant,” Singer said proudly of his revamped “stateof-the-art” dorm, dubbed “University House,” which he’s aiming to open in fall 2014. In an hour-long interview on Tuesday at the offices of The Villager, Singer pre-
sented digital images of the new dorm scheme, showing students lounging in tree-shaded courtyards on the Ninth and 10th St. sides of the H-shaped school building, which for two decades housed the CHARAS/El Bohio community center. “Once completed, the dormitory will feature amenities unavailable in modern apartment buildings,” a press release boasts. The new plans call for 95 suites housing four to seven students, at a cost of $1,550 per bed. Each suite would have its own kitchen, bathroom and dining room area with “large” flat-screen TV,
opening statement, “We are proposing the relocation of the Peter Stuyvesant Post Office,” prompted calls of “Where?” from several in the audience. Mulvey continued to hedge, at one point admitting there was available space within a tenth of a mile in either direction of the current location. It would take more audience demands of “Where?” before he finally
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Lots of new ideas pitched for Astor/ Cooper renovation BY LINCOLN ANDERSON Should a redesigned Astor Place and Cooper Square have more skateboarding, new digital “wayfinding” kiosks and ping-pong tables, plus movies with the audience all listening in via wireless headphones? Or, should most of the above uses be avoided so the revamped area doesn’t become a place where people come to hang out — only inevitably to “freak out”? And what will happen to
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5 15 C A N A L STREET • N YC 10 013 • C OPYRIG HT © 2013 N YC COMMU NITY M ED IA , LLC
the iconic Mudtruck? Will it morph into a mere “shell” of its former self? And could that actually be the best possible outcome? These questions and ideas and more were considered by about 70 people who turned out last Thursday for a “placemaking” workshop for the city’s fast-approaching renovation of Astor Place and Cooper Square. Many were parents of
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EDITORIAL, LETTERS PAGE 10
SPIRIT IN THE WHEELS PAGE 11