VOLUME 30, NUMBER 01
JANUARY 12 – january 25, 2017
pirate sails! Image via Dept. of Design and Construction
This shot of the city’s reconstruction of Chambers St. that finished up in 2014 gives a hint of what residents of Warren St. will have to look forward to over the next two years — at least — starting in February.
Warren St warning! City plans 2-year rip-up
BY COLIN MIXSON The city will start ripping up Warren St. in February to make way for the replacement of the aging infrastructure below in a project that will leave locals enduring noise, dust, traffic jams, sidewalk closures and other hassles for at least the next two years. “It will be extremely difficult for the residents there,” said Bruce Ehrmann, a member of Community Board 1’s Tribeca Committee. The Department of Design and Construction posted notices along the roadway between West St. and Broadway advertising the upcoming inconvenience on Dec. 27. The work will include the installation of new water mains, and the renovation of combined sewage lines below the street. New York’s first neighborhood, Downtown has some of the most ancient and break-prone water mains in the city, sonme of which are more than a century old. Warren St. itself — including the roadway’s curbs and sidewalks — will also be reconstructed, with some of its streetlights and traffic signals being replaced as well, according to the city. The Warren St. project comes amid an even larger rip up on Worth St. that’s expected to last at least until 2021, and on the heels of city work that saw Chambers St. torn up and repaved in a four-year
Fortenbaugh accuses IGY of industrial espionage in its bid to take over North Cove’s sailing school
BY COLIN MIXSON North Cove Marina manager Island Global Yachting tricked former Battery Park City sailing school operator Michael Fortenbaugh into giving IGY an all-access tour of his New Jersey sail club to help prepare its own winning bid to run new sailing programs at the marina, the salty seaman alleges. Fortenbaugh said he welcomed IGY Regional Director Simon Bryan for a visit to his Manhattan Yacht Club in New Jersey after Bryan dangled the prospect that he might be invited to take up his old post at North Cove, where he ran popular community sailing programs for two decades before IGY took over the marina in 2015
as a subcontractor for Brookfield Properties, which now holds the operating lease. But shortly after the commodore showed Bryan around, briefed him on how he runs his programs, and even allowed Bryan to take photos of his gear, IGY announced on Jan. 5 that it had cut a deal with Brookfield to operate its own sailing school at the BPC marina. “If they had said they were going to do their own sailing school, we wouldn’t have been so open,” said Fortenbaugh. After Florida-based Offshore Sailing School announced in November that it was scuttling the sailing program it had run at North Cove for the past two
Snow day!
years, Fortenbaugh — and many BPC sailing buffs — hoped this would be a chance for the beloved commodore to return to his home port to run the sailing school, an amenity which is required by the marina’s operating lease. Indeed, when Byran reached out to Fortenbaugh last October — before Offshore’s exit was even made public — the IGY exec requested the grand tour of the commodore’s New Jersey sailing school with the suggested intent of courting Fortenbaugh for a return to North Cove. “When [Bryan] came to me, he was giving us the impression he pirate sails Continued on page 10
Photo by Milo Hess
Saturday saw Lower Manhattan’s first big snow of the year, but the frigid flurry didn’t keep Downtowners indoors — or even away from the green market! For more neighborhood pics, see page 11.
warren st. Continued on page 16 1 M e t r o t e c h • N YC 112 0 1 • C o p y r i g h t © 2 0 17 N YC C o mm u n i t y M e d i a , L L C