The local paper for Downtown wn A DOCTOR WITH HEART < Q&A, P.21
WEEK OF APRIL
23-29 2015
CITIBIKE PEDALING PAST EARLY GLITCHES Bike service rolling out new apps as it expands uptown BY MEGHAN BARR
New Yorkers may soon be able to count calories burned and miles traveled while pedaling Citi Bikes, the bicycle-sharing program with a troubled history that is undergoing a major overhaul as it expands on the Upper West Side and Upper East Side. The new CEO of the company that owns Citi Bike says a revamped smartphone app will soon offer such detailed fitness stats and allow people to make real-time reports of such issues as flat tires or broken seats. Jay Walder, a mass transit veteran who used to run the city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, envisions the bikes becoming a seamless part of the city’s transportation network, with plans in the works to incorporate docking stations into architectural design plans for massive new development projects such as Hudson Yards, which is being touted as the new Rockefeller Center along the Hudson River. “We are still defining how bike share should fit into the urban fabric of the city,” said Walder, who became chief executive officer of Motivate, the company that owns Citi Bike, several months ago. “Maybe it could be inside of businesses. Maybe it could be inside of buildings. Maybe it could be built into the environment.” A plan to incorporate Citi Bike into Hudson Yards is in the works, said
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WELCOMING THE WHITNEY’S RETURN The museum’s new neighbors anticipate crowds, but mostly for the better BY GABRIELLE ALFIERO
After almost 50 years uptown, one of Greenwich Village’s famed museums is coming home. The Whitney Museum of American Art, which got its start a century ago when Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney founded her Whitney Studio Club in the neighborhood, will once again open downtown. “People have been very positive about it,” said Tobi Bergman, chairman of Community Board 2. “It started in the Village and it’ll be great to have it back. It will be great to have an art museum here.” The Whitney’s newest incarnation — a $422 million, Renzo Piano-designed building at Gansevoort and Washington streets — opens its doors May 1 and hosts a block party the following day. Its neighbors mostly seem ready to embrace the museum as their district’s cultural beacon. While the Whitney calls the bustling, predominantly commercial Meatpacking District home, the quiet, tree-lined Village blocks just south of Gansevoort Street retain a cozy atmosphere, where children ride scooters past charming brownstones and baby carriages line the sidewalk outside a nursery school on Horatio Street.
The Whitney Museum, seen from Gansevoort Street. Photograph by Karin Jobst, 2014. On a recent afternoon, neighborhood residents said they were generally looking forward to what the museum’s visitors would bring to what was one of the Village’s — and the city’s — quieter enclaves just a few years ago. Merav Harris, who lives a block south of the museum on Horatio
Street, said the Whitney would change the neighborhood’s texture for the better, even though she worried her rent would increase. “I think we need the arts,” said Harris, 29, about the commercial district. “It’s all about shopping.”
Our Take THE DANGERS OF SPRING After an interminable winter, there’s something glorious about the first warm day of spring. But the sunshine brings danger, too. Last weekend, as New Yorkers scrambled outside to enjoy the warmest day of the year, 20 people were shot in the city, one fatally, in more than a dozen incidents. In part, the surge in violence sticks to a familiar seasonal rhythm: as the weather warms up, and people head outside, crime rates rise, too. Criminals are no dummies; they don’t like the cold any more than the rest of us. But this year’s warm season brings with it some unusual omens. While the city protested the death of Eric Garner in Staten Island and police shootings around the country, a lot of risidual anger remains. Warmer weather, combined with the spark that could come from yet another shooting at any moment, could prove particularly dangerous. That, and myriad other reasons, makes it that much more important for Mayor Bill de Blasio to approve the 1,000 additional police officers that NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton has requested. The mayor -inexplicably, really, for the leader of America’s biggest city -- has held out, deeming the extra cops as unncessary. As he’s waffled, the homicide rate in the city has inched up, and weekends like our last one have rattled New Yorkers. de Blasio is a smart student of our civic history. He knows that no New York mayor -- ever -- has been effective without the support of the NYPD. He could get that by adding the 1,000 new officers now, for what could be a long, hot summer.
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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 a lay point of view,” lawyer since 1961. practicing a Man, what’s at issue He first writes about post, renders and then, in a separatehow he arrived his decision, detailing Visitors to the blog 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 cases my ... I’d like the judge thinks. and also my trereflect my personalitythe law.” for mendous respect 80, went into indiArbitration Man, suc in 1985, settling practice vidual
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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, things. x fi begin to would the ombudsman’s report 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 formality for deTo really make a difference, process is a mere complete their will have to to are the work course, the advocaterising rents, precinct, but chances-- thanks to a velopers looking tackle to way a legally quickly. nd fi done projects is being business’ their own hours,” of after-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 the hollow boom, issuance of these business owners, that moving in reverse. as after-hours. The increased beeps of a truck has generto a correspond and you led enough. clock has permits in soon alarm variances at the The surge
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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