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OUR NEIGHBORHOOD IN CRISIS SPECIAL REPORT The plight of small businesses in our neighborhoods has reached a crisis point. Every month, an estimated 1,000 small businesses close their doors in New York, most of them because of rent increases that have simply made it impossible to stay afloat. Neighborhoods are being stripped of their character. Important ties to our civic history are disappearing. Colorful local mom-and-pop characters are fading away.
NO EASY FIX IN THE PARK TRAFFIC SAFETY Pedestrians, cyclists and walkers co-exist on Central Park’s roads, creating a standoff that can be lethal BY HANNAH GRIFFIN
For most of the past year, we have been chronicling this decline in these pages, through a series of stories under the banner “Saving Small Business.” This week, we are expanding that effort, with an extended editorial about the critical need for policymakers to take action now, as well as a report from a forum we organized last month at Baruch College. In that discussion, policymakers like Consumer Affairs Commissioner Julie Menin and Manhattan Borough President Gale President were joined by industry leaders and small business people to talk about what can be done to address the crisis now. The heart of this week’s section, though, is a multi-page tally of closed businesses, all of them in this neighborhood, called “What We’ve Lost.” Think of these as commercial obituaries, tributes mainly to business people finally forced to give in to a city that has changed so dramatically around them.
It is 10 a.m. on a sunny, cool Friday morning in late September, and the road leading to the intersection at West Side Drive near 63rd St. in Central Park is packed. Trees with leaves just on the cusp of turning cast long shadows over the intersection as cyclists, runners, walkers, cars, map wielding tourists, pedi-cabs and dog-walkers rush past. A woman on a bright pink cruiser trails behind a man on a black bike dressed in a suit. In front of them are two lean, Lycra-clad road cyclists with clip in pedals. Connecticut resident Jill Tarlov, 58, was walking here on Thursday September 18th when she was hit by a cyclist and suffered head injuries, according to the New York Times. Tarlov was taken to New-York Presbyterian Hospital/ Weill Cornell Medical Center. She died of her injuries the following Sunday. Tarlov’s death has renewed conversations about the safety of New York’s roads, but the conversation is not new. Four
thousand New Yorkers are seriously hurt in traffic accidents annually, and 250 die. The city’s Vision Zero Action Plan is a commitment to make roads throughout the five boroughs safer for everyone through strengthened enforcement of dangerous driving, safer street planning, and outreach programs. A recent accomplishment of Vision Zero is the reduction of the speed limit by 5 mph in designed Slow Zones throughout the city. The roads sna k in g through Central Park’s 843 acres are set up for many different users. A marked cycling lane runs through the middle of the street and is sandwiched by a slimmer one for those walking and running on one side, and one for cars, pedi-cabs and carriages on the other. Rollerbladers and skateboarders are often seen using both the bike and running lanes. Designer and nearby resident Anne Bowen, walking her two small dogs on Friday morning, feels that a combination of pedestrian awareness and safer practices by cyclists is crucial. Bowen thinks that there need to be measures to encourage cyclists to slow down in higher traffic areas of the
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WEEK OF OCTOBER
2 2014
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In Brief AFTER SUBWAY PLOT REPORT, CITY INCREASES POLICING Police tightened protections after Iraq’s prime minister said captured Islamic State militants disclosed a plot to attack U.S. and Paris subways, but the mayor and governor said there was no specific, credible threat currently to the nation’s biggest subway system. Bag inspections were being set up at some subway stations, more bomb-sniffing dogs and surveillance teams were deployed, and officers were working overtime and doing extra checks of subway stations, Police Commissioner William Bratton said. But Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo both took trains themselves Thursday to send a message of watchful safety, and after years of reports of potential terror threats, many riders took the news in stride. “If you have fear in New York, it’s not a great place to live,” said Sean Grissom, who has played cello in the subway system for years. “I am cautious. ... But you have to go about your life.” While security throughout the city and its transit system already was heightened for the United Nations General Assembly meeting, more officers are being deployed while law enforcement assesses what Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi told journalists Thursday. French and American officials said they had no such information. “New York is more prepared than it has ever been,” Cuomo said Thursday after hopping off a subway under Penn Station. About 5.5 million daily passengers take city subways, and New Yorkers have experienced many warnings of possible terror plots since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Jewish women and girls light up the world by lighting the Shabbat and the Holiday candles. Yom Kippur eve. Friday, October 3 6:17 pm. Sukkot eve. Wednesday, October 8 - 6:09 pm. For more information visit www.chabaduppereastside.com.