The local paper for Downtown wn MAKING A SPLASH IN TIMES SQUARE ◄P.21
WEEK OF NOVEMBER
16-22 2017
A SKIRMISH OVER TRIBECA’S HISTORIC FOOTPRINT COMMUNITY District boundaries at issue in preservation group’s lawsuit BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
GirlCoders from left to right: Sofia Basilio, Chaya Trapedo, Kayla Massick, Georgia Green, Camille Lurie, Emerson Davis. Photo: Lorraine Duffy Merkl
UP TO CODE LEARNING The GirlCode program helps female students who love STEM succeed BY LORRAINE DUFFY MERKL
Talk to the elementary and middleschool members of GirlCode for five minutes and it’s easy to feel like Penny on “The Big Bang Theory.” These young women are not only proficient in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), but intelligent, poised, articulate, and personable. At the Celebrating Young Girls in STEM event on November 8 at the Arlo Nomad Hotel in midtown, they were also excited to present their sociallyconscious projects, each with a game component, because it’s not enough for them to play for recreation. They
want to create the games. Kayla Massick, 12, has attended The Coding Space — home of The GirlCode Program — since she was nine. Inspired by her grandfather, an environmentalist, she designed the Clean Water Project, where players remove debris floating down a river. “I like coding because it lets me make something from nothing.” Because the crafting of any tech project has its bugs, Kayla, like any true coder, has the wherewithal to sit at her computer, “until I figure it out.” 10-year-old Georgia Green, who has been with GirlCode for a year, chose to raise awareness about poverty, inequality and hunger by developing the Q&A game Code For Change. For her, the fun was “making it more than the finished product.” Robots fashioned by MIT ignited a passion for tech in Sofia Basilio, 10, who’s been with GirlCode for two years and presented Clean Water For All, “to teach kids about stopping ocean pollution.”
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At a glance, and even upon inspection by an educated eye, 10 Hubert Street and 92 Chambers Street appear substantially similar. The two five-story buildings, located about a half-mile apart at opposite ends of Tribeca, are rough mirror images in their brickwork, arched windows and ornamental flourishes. According to architect and preservation expert David Rau, the buildings “exhibit nearly identical characteristic in terms of nearly all their architectural features. They appear to be products of the same historical period, with similar scale, massing materials, coloration, fenestration and stylistic details.” The key difference between the two buildings, at issue in a soon-to-bedecided lawsuit filed against the city: 10 Hubert sits in a designated historic district and 92 Chambers does not. Though New Yorkers generally think of Tribeca as a singular neighborhood, in preservation terms the Triangle Below Canal is divided into five separate historic districts that encompass much, but not all of the area. Viewed together, the five Tribeca Historic Districts resemble a gerrymandered political district, winding across the neighborhood in fragmented fashion — some blocks in, some blocks out, with districts sometimes stopping mid-block to leave neighboring buildings with differing historical desig-
Though 92 Chambers Street (left) and 10 Hubert Street are similar in appearance and both located in Tribeca, the former falls outside of the Tribeca Historic Districts — the boundaries of which are the subject of a pending lawsuit. Photos: Michael Garofalo nations in spite of their architectural similarities. Tribeca Trust, a local nonprofit focused on preservation issues, cites 10 Hubert and 92 Chambers among over two dozen other pairs of architecturally similar buildings situated inside and outside of the Tribeca Historic Districts in a lawsuit filed against the city. The differing designations of the pairs of buildings, which in several cases were designed contemporane-
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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 on the Over the past 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.” can’t come p.m. and 7 a.m., 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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ously by the same architect, show, according to Tribeca Trust, that the current district boundaries “lack any justification in architectural or historic terms.” In 2013, Tribeca Trust filed a request for the evaluation of the expansion of the historic districts with the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the city agency responsible for historic
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