0
15465
10500
9
The Paper of Record for Greenwich Village, East Village, Lower East Side, Soho, Union Square, Chinatown and Noho, Since 1933
June 12, 2014 • $1.00 Volume 84 • Number 2
Gov’s Pier 40 secret air-rights agreement is sunk: Attorney BY LINCOLN ANDERSON
A
M.O.U., continued on p. 16
Sandy, looming rent put stained-glass artist on the edge BY HEATHER DUBIN
P
atti Kelly’s earliest recollections of stained glass are not filled with beauty and streaming light. She is originally from Midwood, Brooklyn, where she attended Catholic school at St. Brendan’s Church. “I hated stained glass from being stuck in church — get-
PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY
ttorney Arthur Schwartz said he met with Madelyn Wils, the president of the Hudson River Park Trust, last Friday afternoon, and she informed him that the secret $100-million memorandum of understanding, or
M.O.U., for transfer of Pier 40’s air rights has officially been scrapped. The Villager reported last week that Schwartz was considering a lawsuit to block the air-rights transfer altogether on the grounds that a comprehensive, lengthy environ-
ting yelled at by the priest, we were all such sinners,” Kelly said with a laugh. “I wanted to be outside, and stared at the window.” Years later, Kelly put her childhood associations aside, and took a class in stained glass, at her younger sister’s suggestion. She was hooked, KELLY, continued on p. 10
Making the cut, with P.S. 41’ers, from left, Manhattan Parks Commissioner Bill Castro; park designer George Vellonakis; D.D.C. Commissioner Feniosky Pena-Mora; Borough President Gale Brewer; Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver; Councilmember Corey Johnson; C.B. 2 Chairperson David Gruber; and Councilmember Margaret Chin.
Finally! Officials and kids cut ribbon in renewed park BY LINCOLN ANDERSON
A
fter a six-year, threestage renovation costing $30.6 million, a ceremony was held Tuesday to celebrate the completion of the Washington Square Park work. A crowd gathered on the park’s west side under a tent near the bust of Alexander Lyman Holley, the renowned steel engineer. “I am proud to say this park looks better than it ever did before,” pronounced
Mitchell Silver, the Parks Department commissioner. Seated in the audience along with community board members, park activists and other V.I.P.’s were the students from teacher Lindsay Litinger’s firstgrade class at P.S. 41. “Do you all enjoy the park?” Silver asked the kids. “Yes!” they shouted back. “Parks are really what make our cities livable,” Silver said. The refurbished park, he added, will be a place where the students
will make their own memories, as generations have done before them. His father, as a young man, used to take photos in Washington Square Park, “60 or 70 years ago,” he said. “People proposed here,” he told the first graders. “Kids, you’re too young to understand that — but you will.” In physical terms, the park’s renovation was intended to “create a renewed sense of place,” Silver said. PARK, continued on p. 15
Local posse reins in Boots & Saddle................page 2 Former C.B. 3 chairperson backs change.....page 13 Rev. Jen on the (Lower) Lower East Side......page 17 Softball girls ‘T’ off...............page 26 | May 14, 2014
www.TheVillager.com
1