The local paper for Downtown wn
WEEK OF FEBRUARY CHICAGO IN NEW YORK ◄P.12
15-21 2018
HORRIFIED BY HOMELESS HOTEL NIMBY VS. YIMBY Outraged midtown residents and indignant business owners and workers decry plans for the longterm shelter the city is plunking down around the corner from Central Park BY ASHAD HAJELA AND DOUGLAS FEIDEN
An emotional crowd of roughly 300 people — many of them shocked and scandalized, some with voices raised in anger — packed a West Side auditorium on Thursday, February 8 to denounce a sudden move by the city to place 150 homeless men in the heart of their neighborhood. The flashpoint was the unexpected, but already underway, conversion of the Park Savoy Hotel, a discount lodging at 158 West 58th Street, into a long-term shelter, one block from “Billionaire’s Row,” in the latest attempt by Mayor Bill de Blasio to grapple with soaring homelessness. Neighbors, workers and local business owners said they felt blindsided by the secrecy of the planning and site-selection process — and appalled that the community had virtually no notice that a homeless shelter was being placed so close to Central Park, where children and tourists frolic. Carnegie Hall, the uber-luxe condo One 57 and the swath of West 57th Street that’s filling up with slender towers for foreign billionaires is just around the corner to the south, while the Essex House, the New York Athletic Club and the horse-drawn carriages are just around the corner to the north. Billed as a “Community Conversation on Transitional Housing,”
CONTINUED ON PAGE 6
Frederick Zollo, producer of an upcoming feature film based on documentary, left: Keith Beauchamp, producer-director of The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, center: and Sheen Center programming associate and moderator Kelley Girod following a recent showing of the documentary at the Sheen Center in Greenwich Village. Photo: The Sheen Center
FACILITATING THOUGHT AND TALK BLACK HISTORY The Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Center, a project of the Archdiocese of New York, features diverse and nonsectarian programming BY LEIDA SNOW
The city is converting the old Park Savoy Hotel, a discount hostelry at 158 West 58th Street, into a long-term homeless center around the corner from “Billionaire’s Row.” Photo: Ashad Hajela
Some people think movies are addons, entertainments and infotainments we can take or leave; but some films have a real-world impact. The Fulton J. Sheen Center for Thought and Culture, on Bleecker Street, opened its Black History Downtowner
OurTownDowntown
O OTDOWNTOWN.COM @OTDowntown
Crime Watch Voices NYC Now City Arts
3 8 10 12
Restaurant Ratings Business Real Estate 15 Minutes
14 16 17 21
WEEK OF APRIL
SPRING ARTS PREVIEW < CITYARTS, P.12
FOR HIM, SETTLING SMALL CLAIMS IS A BIG DEAL presided over Arbitration Man has three decades. for informal hearings about it He’s now blogging BY RICHARD KHAVKINE
is the common Arbitration Man their jurist. least folks’ hero. Or at Man has For 30 years, Arbitration court office of the civil few sat in a satellite Centre St. every building at 111 New Yorkers’ weeks and absorbed dry cleaning, burned lost accountings of fender benders, lousy paint jobs, and the like. And security deposits then he’s decided. Arbitration Man, About a year ago, so to not afwho requested anonymity started docuhe fect future proceedings, two dozen of what menting about compelling cases considers his most blog. in an eponymous about it because “I decided to write the stories but in a I was interested about it not from wanted to write from view but rather lawyer’s point of said Arbitration view,” of a lay point lawyer since 1961. Man, a practicing what’s at issue He first writes about post, renders and then, in a separatehow he arrived his decision, detailing blog the to Visitors at his conclusion. their opinions. often weigh in with get a rap going. I to “I really want whether they unreally want to know and why I did it,” I did derstood what don’t know how to he said. “Most people ... I’d like my cases the judge thinks. and also my trereflect my personalitythe law.” for mendous respect 80, went into indiMan, Arbitration suc in 1985, settling vidual practice
9-16
MANHATTAN'S APARTMENT BOOM, > PROPERTY, P.20
2015
In Brief MORE HELP FOR SMALL BUSINESS
The effort to help small seems to businesses in the city be gathering steam. Two city councilmembers, Robert Margaret Chin and Cornegy, have introduced create legislation that wouldSmall a new “Office of the within Business Advocate” of Small the city’s Department Business Services. Chin The new post, which have up told us she’d like to would and running this year, for serve as an ombudsman city small businesses within them clear government, helping to get through the bureaucracy things done. Perhaps even more also importantly, the ombudsman and number will tally the type small business of complaints by taken in owners, the actions policy response, and somefor ways to recommendations If done well, begin to fix things. report would the ombudsman’s give us the first quantitative with taste of what’s wrong the city, an small businesses in towards important first step fixing the problem. of for deTo really make a difference, is a mere formality will have to the work process looking to complete their advocate are the chances course, velopers precinct, but rising rents, -- thanks to a find a way to tackle business’ is being done legally of after-hours projects quickly. their own hours,” which remain many While Chin “They pick out boom in the number throughout who lives on most vexing problem. said Mildred Angelo,of the Ruppert construction permits gauge what Buildings one said it’s too early tocould have the 19th floor in The Department of the city. number three years, the Houses on 92nd Street between role the advocate She Over the past on the is handing out a record work perThird avenues. permits, there, more information of Second and an ongoing all-hours number of after-hours bad thing. of after-hours work the city’s Dept. problem can’t be a said there’s with the mits granted by nearby where according to new data jumped 30 percent, This step, combinedBorough construction project noise Buildings has data provided in workers constantly make efforts by Manhattan to mediate BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS according to DOB of Informacement from trucks. President Gale Brewer offer response to a Freedom classifies transferring they want. They knows the the rent renewal process, request. The city They 6 “They do whatever signs Every New Yorker clang, tion Act go as they please. work between some early, tangible small any construction on the weekend, can come and sound: the metal-on-metal or the piercing of progress. For many have no respect.” p.m. and 7 a.m., can’t come of these that the hollow boom, issuance reverse. owners, in business moving The increased beeps of a truck has generto a correspond and you as after-hours. soon enough. variances has led at the alarm clock The surge in permits
SLEEPS, THANKS TO THE CITY THAT NEVER UCTION A BOOM IN LATE-NIGHT CONSTR NEWS
A glance it: it’s the middle can hardly believe yet construction of the night, and carries on full-tilt. your local police or You can call 311
n OurTownDowntow
COM
Newscheck Crime Watch Voices
for dollars in fees ated millions of and left some resithe city agency, that the application dents convinced
2 City Arts 3 Top 5 8 Real Estate 10 15 Minutes
12 13 14 18
CONTINUED ON PAGE
25
Month programming with Keith Beauchamp’s 2005 documentary, “The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till.” The film is about the 14-year-old black boy who, it was alleged at the time, whistled at a white woman store owner in Mississippi in 1955. Till was kidnapped a few days after the supposed incident and his mutilated body was found in the Tallahatchie River. The incident galvanized the nascent civil rights movement when Till’s mother insisted that her son’s coffin remain open at his Chicago funeral, and a gruesome photo was published nationwide.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 18
We deliver! Get Our Town Downtowner sent directly to your mailbox for $49 per year. Go to OTDowntown.com or call 212-868-0190