Squadron Quizzes Mayor About City’s Unwillingness to Sue Former Rivington House Owner

“The mayor has personally blamed the real estate developers at the center of the scandal — accusing them of hoodwinking the city administration into dropping deed restrictions on the former nursing home. Based on the mayor’s public statements, Squadron said the former owner, the Allure Group, should be sued under the False Claims Act.”

Squadron said, “Frankly it leads to questions when (officials) at the highest levels of the administration (are) accusing (the developers) of misleading (the city). “To just be told, ‘we agree but we can’t,’ is not sufficient for a community that is still smarting from the loss of a healthcare facility.”

Appreciations to the Lo-Down for their original, breaking, and full coverage of Rivington House.

“Appreciations to Senator Squadron who had the guts to call out the mayor on the lack of forceful push back on Rivington House by this Administration. He did it respectfully and with (correct) appreciations for what the Mayor has done to benefit our communities. Squadron is looking for a way to make a statement loud and clear that we don’t just turn tail and say we failed when someone has deliberately hurt and misled the public for private gain. Especially when that public may literally have no voice to fight on their own behalf. We must fight with and for them. We push back. We make common cause for the right reasons and we call our own ‘side’ to account. Sometimes you just have to say no, no further. Or we get what we are seeing now with policies that would undermine our foundational purpose in creating this (imperfect) attempt at real democracy. Again, our thanks to the Senator.” Neighbors to Save Rivington House

From the New York Times:

“Senior centers across New York City receive varying levels of funding from the city, and the disparities are glaring: A center in Lower Manhattan gets just $3.54 to provide a meal to an elderly client, while a center in Brooklyn gets $18.36.”

“The level of inequality in the funding of senior centers is very troubling,” said David Nocenti, executive director of Union Settlement, a private agency founded in 1895 that also runs after-school, mental health and education programs. “Every senior deserves to be treated fairly and equitably, and the quality of their senior center shouldn’t depend on where they happen to live.”

We must fight to save food sources that remain closer to affordability!

FYI: Rally to Save Met Foods – Thursday 12/29 2PM @ Met Foods 251 Mulberry at Prince

PLEASE SHARE!!

THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK

OFFICE OF MARGARET S. CHIN 

250 Broadway, Suite 1882

New York, NY 10007

**MEDIA ADVISORY**                                                                                 

Contact: Paul Leonard [CM Chin] (212) 788-7259, pleonard@council.nyc.gov 

COMMUNITY RALLIES AGAINST CLOSURE OF LOW-COST FOOD MARKET IN LITTLE ITALY

WHAT: Tomorrow at 2 p.m., residents of Little Italy, SoHo, NoHo, and surrounding areas will rally against the closure of a Met Supermarket that has offered low-cost, fresh food to the neighborhood for more than two decades.

After months of rumors — which were denied by a market representative in early November – the store announced the food market would permanently close its doors on Saturday, Dec. 31 at 9 p.m. 

This week, Council Member Chin joined other local elected officials to call on the foodmarket owner and landlord to resume lease negotiations. Despite having a current tenant paying $90,000 a month, a representative for the landlord, Abington Properties, said it wants to transform the Met Foodmarket into “a more upscale operation.” 

With the closure of Met Foodmarket, shoppers on fixed and low-incomes will have to travel even farther for affordable, fresh produce. The loss of Met Foodmarket is the latest in a string of low-cost food market closures in the past few years – including the Associated Supermarket on W. 14^th Street and a Pathmark demolished to make way for an as-of-right real estate development in Two Bridges. 

WHEN: TOMORROW, THURSDAY, Dec. 29 at 2 p.m. 

WHERE: Outside Met Foodmarket, 251 Mulberry St. (at Prince St.)

WHO: 

·         Council Member Margaret S. Chin

·         Little Italy Merchants Association

·         Residents of Little Italy, SoHo, NoHo, and surrounding areas

###

Pete Davies

Broadway Residents Coalition

548 Broadway #5A

New York, NY 10012

H: 212.925.1225

C: 917.623.4104

pdavies1@nyc.rr.com

Thanks Jane, Rob, Kate, Carol, Debra, Bob, Jason and others for M’Finda Kalunga, Elizabeth Hubbard and New Forsyth Conservancy in SDR Park who spent time thinking through what was needed here. Thanks to Aziz and Charles for their tireless efforts.

DNAinfo:By Allegra Hobbs

“The first phase of an expansive $2 million project bringing protections against flooding to more than 40 Lower East Side and East Village community gardens has concluded, paving the way for construction on new infrastructure to begin by summer 2017.

The New York City Community Garden Coalition has wrapped its roughly year-long study of 47 neighborhood gardens, identifying the best ways for each garden to absorb more storm water and prevent sewers from overflowing in the event of a future storm….

The entire feasibility study results, broken down by community garden, can be viewed on the coalition’s website.”

From The Next City: “Mapping Tool Aims to Keep Public Spaces Public” by Oscar Perry Abello

Such as the Stanton Building in Sara Roosevelt Park!

“Paula Segal, founder of 596 Acres…“The truth is, we’re in a city, most of our infrastructure and our assets are shared — the subways, the roads, the sidewalks, the water, something like 30, 40 percent of all housing in the city is some form of cooperatively owned. … privately owned property can start to seem like the real outlier.”

“Residents…have long been organizing around many of these assets. …Common Cause and the other NYCommons partners started to see a pattern in the organizing [of] … public assets.

Susan Lerner: “We started thinking about the fact that all of these separate challenges had similar underlying policy issues that have to do with how does government think about commonly owned, shared assets.”

“…NYCommons went to 10 neighborhoods…where they knew people were organizing. Lerner:..“[we found] a tremendous amount of energy in all five boroughs” for sharing best practices and connecting with others doing similar work…

NYCommons picked three neighborhoods for pilots, and provided them documentation, workshop facilitation and other resources to begin developing a tool kit. …The Sara D. Roosevelt Park Community Coalition was one of the pilot sites.

“The coalition’s current focus is a former recreation center, currently used as a systemwide parks storage facility, smack dab in the middle of a well-used area of the park. “We’ve been having a conversation about this building since 1994,” says Webster.”

1) The Jewish Ghetto in Postcards: Eastern Europe to LESFrom the Lo-Down: “A fascinating exhibition opens tomorrow evening at the Museum at Eldridge Street. Through a collaboration with the Blavatnik Archive, the museum will be showcasing a collection of postcards depicting life on the Lower East Side during the early part of the 20th Century -through March 8.”

2) Within a New York City Housing Authority complex, a historic building remains inaccessible to the public and the surrounding community. The Baruch Baths, located at 326 Delancey Street is a large, neoclassical building, a 115-year-old landmark along the easternmost section of Rivington Street on the LES.

photo: Jamie Jenson for Untapped Cities

3) From BoweryBoogie: Trump’s Grandfather Lived at this Lower East Side Tenement in 1885 

“The first Trump Palace was a fairly ordinary tenement on the Lower East Side. One that now overlooks Sara D. Roosevelt Park.

Donald Trump’s grandfather Friedrich arrived in the United States on October 19, 1885. It was on a steamer called the S.S. Eider. At 16, a barber’s apprentice, he left Germany…”

4) From The Villager: “KAWS courts cool, yet cause for concern” on our lovely new basketball courts (sans the volleyball nets often used by girls!).

5) Mapping Shadows: NYTimes on Shadows in our city. “The Struggle for Light and Air in America’s Largest City” Almost all of the shadow profiles drawn from 3-D building models are drawn from 3-D Building Model3-D Building Model

Nice write up in BoweryBoogie on the fight to return the Stanton Storehouse to the Community’s Use.

“…efforts to force its return are finally gaining some much-needed exposure. The Coalition held a series of scoping sessions over the summer to brainstorm possible uses. (There were several ideas floated related to it becoming an “innovative resiliency center.) …Coalition … provided testimony earlier this month during City Council Parks & Recreation Committee on Parks Department’s “Inaccessible Parks Buildings,”…

Hoping to have the neighborhood, local not-for-profits, Parks Department, Council Member, Community Board 3, Manhattan Borough Commissioner, State Senator Squadron, AssemblyMember Cancel, ALL weighing in on what use would best serve the area!

Poetic Voices of the Muslim World: Opening Reception

THURSDAY, DEC. 15th

6-9pm

City Lore Gallery

56 East 1st Street (btw 1st and 2nd Avenue)

Lower East Side, NYC

http://citylore.org/event/poetic-voices-of-the-muslim-world-opening-reception/

The exhibit runs until April 9th. Schools, community orgs, poets, non-poets, neighbors, people new to the content or fearful of it, families, friends, all WELCOME.

Developed by City Lore, in collaboration with the national poetry library and literary center Poets House, Poetic Voices of the Muslim World is an exhibit that has travelled to 11 cities and finally opens here in our New York City Home.

The potential of poetry to create indelible images, extend the reach of language, and express complex ideas and feelings through metaphor makes it a powerful force for illuminating cultural experiences. In Muslim cultures poetry plays a central role in all aspects of life-intellectual, spiritual, social, and political. The exhibit includes artwork inspired by Muslim poetry and art.

Thursday, December 15

6:00pm-9:00pm

Free & open to the public. You can share the event on Facebook here. 

(The exhibition will run from December 15, 2016 – April 9, 2017. Subsequent gallery hours are Friday 2:00 – 6:00pm; Saturday & Sunday noon – 6:00pm)