The local paper for the Upper er East Side
BUILDING SERVICE WORKERS
AWARDS
WEEK OF NOVEMBER
5-11 2015
SALUTING OUR BUILDING WORKERS SPECIAL SECTION INSIDE
STAYING IN THE CITY HE LOVES FOURTH OF SIX PARTS BY HEATHER CLAYTON COLANGELO EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS DIRECTED BY DORIAN BLOCK
NEWS Locals opposed to the project shift gears to mitigate its impact on the neighborhood
Hank Blum’s children have been charmed by the space and pace of suburbia, dispersing to Long Island, Westchester, Connecticut and Florida. But as he sits in the living room of his apartment, in the middle of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, he says he has never been tempted. “I would never want to leave the city. Period,” he says. Hank has called New York City home for the majority of his life. He was born in Newark, N.J., and he spent his teenage years in Borough Park, Brooklyn. He only left the city after that to attend Sampson College upstate. For 62 years he was an optometrist, mostly working on Southern Boulevard in the Bronx. Hank says the best thing about the city is the diversity (“it opens up your perspective”), the abundance of things available to do, and the ease of
BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS
The Chapin School was granted conditional approval on several variances it was seeking in an expansion project that began last year, a setback for those in the community opposed to the project due to concerns over increased traffic congestion in the area and years of disruptive construction noise. Chapin wants to add three floors, including a glass-encased gym on the top level, to its existing eight-story building at 100 East End Avenue. The other two floors will contain locker rooms and performance art space. The school is also expanding its basement-level cafeteria space, work that occurred in earnest over the summer with night-time construction hours that locals said resulted in no small amount of disruptive noise as well as cable and phone outages. Chapin officials claim the expansion is necessary to meet the school’s evolving needs but will not result in
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GRAYING NEW YORK A series looking at growing older in the city
CHAPIN EXPANSION MOVES AHEAD
CONTINUED ON PAGE 43 Jewish women and girls light up the world by lighting the Shabbat candles every Friday evening 18 minutes before sunset. Friday November 6 – 4:29 pm. For more information visit www.chabaduppereastside.com.
Photos by Heather Clayton Colangelo
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