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WEEK OF MAY NATIVE INNOVATION ◄ P.12
24-30 2018
AN EAST SIDER HEADS FOR THE HUDSON PARKS Former City Council Member Dan Garodnick to helm Riverside Park Conservancy BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
Five new arrival countdown clocks will be installed at West Side bus stops after residents voted to fund the project through the city’s Participatory Budgeting program. Photo: Michael Garofalo
CHELSEA VOTES TO FUND TECH, TREE GUARDS SPENDING Participatory budgeting results announced for West Side Council district BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
New bus countdown clocks, tree guards and technology improvements in local schools and libraries will be coming to Chelsea this year after nearly 3,500 West Siders cast votes for their preferred capital projects through the City Council’s Participatory Budgeting program. The program, which just recently completed its seventh annual voting cycle, lets residents vote on how to allocate $1 million in discretionary
funding in their council district. Council Speaker Corey Johnson announced the results for his third council district, which encompasses Greenwich Village, Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen, during his annual state of the district speech May 20 on the High Line. “Participatory budgeting allows New Yorkers to decide how to spend their tax dollars to improve the community,” Johnson said. “It brings everyday New Yorkers into civic activity and it helps address problems by seeking ideas from those affected by them.” Four projects will receive funding this year, out of 11 included on the ballot. The top vote-winner, with 2,289 votes, was a $350,000 district-
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Dan Garodnick finally has a clear answer to the question he’s been asked at every turn over the last year: “What’s next?” For twelve years, Garodnick was a civic fixture on Manhattan’s East Side, representing a City Council district stretching from the Upper East Side through Midtown to his native Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village. By the time he prepared to leave office at the end of last year, due to term limits, his imprint on the district was so thorough — with signature achievements including a rezoning of East Midtown aimed at funding transit improvements through new development and a deal to preserve affordable housing in Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village during Blackstone Group’s acquisition of the complex — that observers of the campaign to succeed him often referred to his office as “the Garodnick seat.” Garodnick’s reputation as a skilled dealmaker and fundraiser, along with a sizable campaign war chest and political ambitions to match (he vied, unsuccessfully, to become Council Speaker and comptroller during his time in office, and has been mentioned as a potential candidate for mayor in 2021) prompted inevitable speculation about another run for public of-
I really felt that we needed somebody who’s a New Yorker, who understands how things work in New York.” Lori Lennon Bassman, board chair, Riverside Park Conservancy fice as his final term drew to a close. All along, Garodnick kept mum about his plans. Since departing office, he told Straus News, “I’ve been enjoying some well-needed time off.” Five months after leaving the Council, Dan Garodnick’s time off is coming to a close. His return to the public sphere won’t take him to the campaign trail, but to one of the city’s most iconic parks. Garodnick will head across town for his next act, where he will serve as president and chief executive officer of the Riverside Park Conservancy. Joining the conservancy, Garodnick said, “was a natural fit.” “I have spent years acting as a champion for public space, with a focus on public and private partnerships,” he said. “To be able to take that experience and bring it to one of New York’s most important public spaces was a great opportunity.” Riverside Park Conservancy, a nonprofit that manages Riverside Park’s 400 acres on the Hudson River waterfront in partnership with the city’s Parks Department, will look to Garodnick to help grow the organization’s Downtowner
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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
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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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After spending the last 12 years representing much of Manhattan’s East Side in the City Council, Dan Garodnick will join the Riverside Park Conservancy as the nonprofit’s president and chief executive officer. Photo: Riverside Park Conservancy roughly $6 million budget, expand the conservancy’s work within the park and serve as an advocate for the park in talks with the city. Lori Lennon Bassman, who serves as chair of the conservancy’s board of trustees, said that the board voted unanimously to appoint Garodnick following an extensive selection process that featured over 100 applicants. “I really felt that we needed somebody who’s a New Yorker, who understands how things work in New York,” she said. “Dan knows many, many people in the Parks Department, in New York City government, in philanthropy
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