downtown
chinese action history, pg. 27
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Volume 24, Number 18
express
The Newspaper of Lower Manhattan September 14 - 20, 2011
9/11 Memorial has smooth, somber opening
Downtown Express photo by Terese Loeb Kreuzer
BY Terese Loeb Kreuzer Reservations can be made online. A visitor pass can be printed at home specifying a date and a time. “Please do not arrive more than 30 minutes prior to your reservation,” the pass says. But the cynical visitor to the National September 11 Memorial at the World Trade Center site, which opened to the public at 10 a.m. on Sept. 12, might still wonder what awaits at the Albany and Greenwich Street entrance gate. Long lines, perhaps? Chaos? Surly there would be secu-
On Monday, the National 9/11 Memorial opened to the public. Visitors created rubbings of victims’ names and left behind mementoes such as flowers, photos, notes and flags.
rity guards? Actually none of the above is true. At 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 12, two people stood in line, waiting to be admitted. The guards smiled. They asked several times during the route from the street entrance to the actual entrance to the memorial to see the visitor’s pass but though valid photo ID was also required, no one checked it. The airport-style screening of body and possessions (no bags are allowed that are more than 8” x 17” x 19”) went quickly and the woman behind the scanning machine was pleasant.
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Latest batch of L.M.D.C. grants Holding and lending hands to remember receives mixed reviews BY Aline Reynolds Some Downtown organizations have been on pins and needles since last September, waiting to find out whether they would receive a chunk of the $17 million in cultural and community enhancement grants from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. The suspense is over now that the L.M.D.C. has announced the list of recipients. Last week, the agency announced the 38 groups that were approved for funding. The approvals were made by a six-member advisory committee that was assigned the task of sifting through 266 applications that amounted to a total of $191 million in funding requests. Members of the advisory committee were not available for interviews. The goal of the grant program was to spur long-term revitalization in Lower Manhattan, build audiences, encour-
age collaborations, enhance existing infrastructure or create new infrastructure and sustain jobs, according to the L.M.D.C.’s Request for Proposals. “I think we’re very happy with the wide range of institutions that were funded,” said L.M.D.C. Chairman Avi Schick, who approved the allocations at the agency’s Sept. 7 board of directors meeting. As for the final decisions, Schick said, “The [panel] wanted to make sure they dealt with every segment, and that the organizations were financially and fiscally viable — so that if we grant them money, they can use it properly and provide new services that the community so desperately wants and needs.” When asked when exactly the funds would be released, Schick said it is “a process” the L.M.D.C. hopes to start “soon.” He did not disclose a specific timeline. “We want to make sure we get this
money out the door and work with the institutions to get the money programmed and spent,” said Schick. Groups that received funding were excited to hear the news. Grand Street Settlement received $1 million in funds to replace a narrow elevator in a New York City Housing Authority apartment building they jointly operate at 80 Pitt Street on the Lower East Side. The organization previously received $1.5 million from the L.M.D.C. to replace the building’s heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system. “We think it’ll help us serve our constituents more effectively,” said Grand Street Settlement Executive Director Margarita Rosa. “We know that, to bring this building up to the level where we could serve constituents in the best way possible, we needed to
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BY Aline Reynolds The nation mourned, in a variety of ways, last Sunday as it commemorated the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Lower Manhattan was jampacked with thousands of tourists and victims’ family members from all over the country, many of them anxious to visit a memorial that was a decade in the waiting. For Downtown residents, the hoards of out-of-towners, media and police that crowd the streets around Ground Zero every year on the anniversary can be taxing. So rather than join the masses, many of them decided
to observe the anniversary in a more serene, intimate fashion on Saturday, starting by holding hands. It was a gesture to indicate that, 10 years later, they were still there, living or working Downtown, and as united as ever. Approximately 5,000 people partook in the “Hand in Hand, Remembering 9/11” event, hosted by Community Board 1, on Saturday morning and formed a human chain along the Hudson River that stretched from south of Battery Park’s Castle Clinton all the way up to Chambers Street. Among the participants
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