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WEEK OF MAY GOOD AS GOLD ◄ P.12
10-16 2018
UWS SUBWAYS CLOSED FOR REPAIRS, BUT NO ELEVATORS IN SIGHT TRANSIT Renovation work at 72nd, 86th and 110th Street stations should have included accessibility improvements, advocates say BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
St. Vincent de Paul Church on West 23rd Street, once a significant marker for the city’s African-American community, before it was shuttered in 2013 by the Archdiocese of New York. The church, among the vestiges of significant cultural institutions in the neighborhood, has since been purchased by a hotel developer. Photo: via Wikimedia Commons
SAVING CHELSEA HISTORY A coalition of residents works to preserve the neighborhood’s history and its diversity BY MICHAEL DESANTIS
Wooden boards cover the three large windows of a forsaken limestone building with a triangular roof on West 23rd Street, a few doors west of Sixth Avenue. Brown discoloration marks the stone, which is chipped in parts. Its bulky green hardwood doors are powdered with a fine dust. St. Vincent de Paul Church, where an abolitionist, the Rev. Annet Lafont, taught religion to African-American children in the 1850s, has been shuttered since 2013. The church, once a hub of the
neighborhood’s African-American community, has been abandoned, in some ways symbolic of a vanishing piece of Chelsea, which has seen a sweeping tide of gentrification. Vestiges of the neighborhood’s rich cultural history and ethnically diverse businesses are disappearing, replaced by trendy boutique hotels, chain stores and luxury apartment buildings. Longtime neighborhood residents lament how Chelsea has changed, but a grassroots organization, Save Chelsea, is actively fighting to preserve the area and its history. In the late 19th century and early 20th, a strong African-American community brought sweeping changes to Manhattan’s music, theater and art cultures. Chelsea was
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As MTA employees worked to shutter the subway station at West 72nd Street and Central Park West for six months of renovations on the morning of May 7, transit riders and advocates gathered nearby to protest the transit authority’s failure to install elevators as part of the station improvement project, which also includes extensive work on three other Manhattan stops. “We encourage investment in our subways, but when you make repairs and renovations you must do elevators as well,” said Linda Rosenthal, who represents the Upper West Side in the New York State Assembly and organized the rally. Dozens of attendees, a number of whom used wheelchairs or pushed strollers, huddled in front of the boarded-up station entrance and called on the MTA to expand elevator service in the city’s subway stations, roughly 75 percent of which are inaccessible to riders who cannot climb stairs. Hilda Caba, a Bronx resident who uses a wheelchair due to a spinal cord injury, said she traveled to the rally by taxi because no subway stations near her home have elevators. Caba, like many disabled riders, relies primarily on bus service, which she said is often slow or unreliable. “It’s not the same as the train,” she said. “It’s frustrating,” Caba said of MTA station renovations that don’t include
Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal and transit advocates rallied at the B and C train stop at West 72nd Street to call on the MTA to install elevators during future station closures. Photo: Michael Garofalo
There is no better time to construct elevators than when stations are already closed for renovations” Colin Wright, TransitCenter
new elevators. “Why are they not including us? I think that’s not fair, because we are also citizens. We have the same rights as everybody else, and I think they should have more funds for these issues.” The work at 72nd Street is part of the MTA’s Enhanced Station Initiative, a repair and renovation project champiDowntowner
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WEEK OF APRIL
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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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for dollars in fees ated millions of and left some resithe city agency, that the application dents convinced
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oned by Governor Andrew Cuomo. The initiative, originally slated to include improvements to 32 stations citywide, was later reduced in scope after the transit authority ran through most of the $936 million budget with only 19 stations completed or in progress.
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