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WEEK OF APRIL WEAPONS OF MASS PERSUASION ◄ P. 14
20-26 2017
An empty newsstand at the 96th Street station on the Second Avenue subway. Photo: Michael Garofalo
City Council Member Ydonis Rodriguez (left) and DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg announce plans to close Broadway to vehicle traffic on Earth Day at a press conference in Times Square April 12. Photo: Michael Garofalo
CAR-FREE ON BROADWAY FOR EARTH DAY ENVIRONMENT DOT will also convert one block of Broadway near Flatiron to full-time “shared street” BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
Heading downtown on Saturday? Make sure your cabbie knows not to take Broadway. Or better yet, says the Department of Transportation, ditch the cab altogether and celebrate Earth Day with a stroll or a bike ride down America’s most famous street, which will be temporarily car-free. The DOT announced last week that
Broadway will be closed to vehicles between Union Square and Times Square on April 22, leaving the street open to pedestrians and cyclists from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. All cross streets will remain open except 33rd Street. Plazas along the mile-and-a-halflong stretch of Broadway will host various DOT-sponsored events and activities, including musical performances, dance classes and walking tours. Citi Bike will offer free bikesharing citywide throughout the day. “Overreliance on cars causes a lot of problems: danger to pedestrians, air pollution, congestion, street noise, wasted space to make room for parking, and more,” Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer said last week
at a press conference in Times Square announcing the event. The second annual Car Free NYC is an expansion of last year’s inaugural event, during which Broadway was closed to vehicle traffic from Union Square to Madison Square. The DOT will also close a half-mile span of St. Nicholas Avenue in Washington Heights for the day. City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, who chairs the council’s transportation committee, called for a further extension of the Earth Day initiative next year. “I think that we should aim together to close Broadway from the tip of the island all the way downtown,” he said.
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NO NEWS ON SECOND AVENUE SUBWAY SUBWAYS Four months after the subway line opened, newsstands at the new stations remain vacant BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
It was a New Year’s Eve party a century in the making. One hundred years after the Second Avenue subway was first proposed, Governor Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio and other dignitaries rang in 2017 at an invitation-only soiree in the new station beneath 72nd Street, enjoying hors d’oeuvres and drinks as the Q train took its inaugural trip on the new line. Memorably, a pristine newsstand on the station’s mezzanine was repurposed into a bar, with bottles of beer from New York breweries lining the shelves in place of candy and magazines. The newsstands in the Second Avenue stations haven’t been put to use since. Downtowner
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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
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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
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Nearly four months after the turnstiles started spinning in New York’s newest subway stations, the Metropolitan Transit Authority has yet to contract a vendor to operate four newsstands on the Second Avenue line. Black kiosks branded with the MTA’s Second Avenue subway logo sit shuttered and empty on station platforms as riders wait for trains to arrive. Anyone in need of a cold drink or some reading material is out of luck. (There’s no chewing gum available either, but that’s not unique to the Second Avenue stops—subway newsstands are forbidden to sell it by the MTA.) The MTA officially broke ground on the first phase of the Second Avenue subway in 2007, but did not issue a request for proposals for the newsstands at the stations until Dec. 19 of last year, less than two weeks before the $4.5 billion line opened to the public. The RFP said the MTA would continue accepting proposals until Jan. 12, well after the subway began service.
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