The local paper for Downtown wn FINE LINES AT THE GUGGENHEIM < P. 12
WEEK OF NOVEMBER
17-23 2016
Councilwoman Margaret Chin, at the microphone, flanked by Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, left, and Manhattan Borough President Gail Brewer, right, displayed photos of a line out the door of a recently opened Nike store on Broadway. Photo: Madeleine Thompson
RESIDENTS PROTEST SOHO NIKETOWN Elected officials join in to say Buildings Department failed in its review of developer’s application BY MADELEINE THOMPSON
On Thursday afternoon last week, a line of about 50 people snaked out the door of the new Nike retail store and onto Broadway near Spring Street. Further down Broadway, in front of the Department of Buildings at Chambers Street, about 30 elected officials and SoHo residents gathered that same afternoon to protest the store’s opening earlier this month. The officials, among them Councilwoman Margaret Chin, state Senator Daniel Squadron, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, Assemblywoman Deborah Glick and Community Board 2 Chairman Tobi Bergman, contend that only a legal loophole allowed the five-story, 55,000-square-foot store to be built — despite significant community opposition. The store, which features a mini soccer field and a half-size basketball court with a 23-foot ceiling, was built on the footprint of a demolished two-story building. But the so-called “party wall” standing be-
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Telly Leung Photo: Leon Le Photography
Pauline Frommer
THANKSGIVING THOUGHTS: WHAT WE’RE GRATEFUL FOR On the list: community, diversity, activists and a place to feel safe Gratitude has it own national holiday. Thanksgiving’s the traditional time to take stock of appreciated gifts, and so it’s exactly the right moment to ask a few New Yorkers deeply rooted in their communities — the kind of people we cover online and in our news pages each week — to reflect on what they’re thankful for. Chris Doeblin, owner, Book Culture Most of all, I’m thankful to be married to the person that I love and admire and desire, for my two wonderful and beautiful 11-yearold daughters, for our home on 110th Street that is so cluttered, and needs so much work, where we love each other and share our family meals. We are all well. I am thankful for our extended family — for all of their blessings and the profound love that we all share. I am also deeply thankful, especially now, to
be here in this community and to work in a bookshop that has been so challenging, but which is a bastion of civility, ideas and culture, especially now. Have a wonderful and loving thanksgiving, everyone. We are hoping for you. Pauline Frommer, editorial director, Frommer Guidebooks and Frommers.com I’m grateful to live in a city where one in every three is foreign-born. That means that travel—my passion as well as my career—is part of my daily life. In the morning, I have a long talk with the Senegalese mother of my daughter’s good friend about an upcoming sleepover…and the state of the world. Then I linger to chat with a Mexican porter in our building about his fears now that Trump is president-elect. At the grocery store, I trade pleasantries with the Jamaican-born cashier, and at work I huddle over layouts with an Italian-born photo editor. Each person brings the world to me and that means the world to me.
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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
n OurTownDowntow
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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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Catherine Hughes, former Community Board 1 chairwoman On Thanksgiving Day, we remember an amazing act of kindness and humanity. A tribe of Native Americans came together to rescue a starving band of illegal immigrants who fled religious persecution and washed up on these freezing shores. Those original Americans ignored enormous differences of race, faith and national origin, and ignored their own short-term interests, to recognize the common humanity of those starving, storm-tossed Puritans – refugees rejected by the country of their birth. That founding act of compassion inspires me not just on Thanksgiving Day but every day, and never more than in these fearful times. Telly Leung, actor, currently starring on Broadway in “In Transit.” There’s the family we are born into, and
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