There is now a Facebook page for the BirdLink Project

Please “Like” the Page to help the artist continue to raise awareness and funds for the project!

For more information see our past posting here.

From The Lo-Down:

“…CB3 member Lisa Kaplan said, “We got word day before yesterday that a project that had been promised to us on Pike Street, that the affordable units were now part of (the Norfolk Street project). It looks to me like you were already planning to do senior housing and the project that we were promised on Pike Street just went up in smoke. Tell me that I’m wrong, and why I’m wrong.”

Kelly, Gotham’s executive vice president for development, responded, “I can’t speak to that (Pike Street) development because it’s out of Gotham’s purview, but what I can say is that CPC and Gotham have always talked about the idea of (possibly) including senior affordable housing in our development.”

But Alan Gerson, CPC’s attorney, told board members that Rivington House was never brought up by anyone in the administration. “From the very beginning,” said Gerson, “before we selected Gotham, CPC expressed in the Request for Proposals a clear interest and preference in maximizing affordability, including affordability for senior housing.” He added, “We didn’t learn about the change of the Pike Street project until just about when you learned about it. Our negotiation with the city was for maximum support, period. the end.”

1) Below are articles on the NY State Att. General’s Settlement with The Allure Group, The AG Press Release and a link to the Settlement itself.

2) Also below: articles on the Norfolk site which apparently is the City Hall proposed replacement for the Pike Street which was promised to the nearby community to compensate for Rivington House’s loss. Pike Street is now deemed unusable to build on.

Current Nursing Home tally for the LES:

LES lost 219 at RH proposed to get 60 at Gouverneur. (Good news is having beds more immediately available)
LOST
95 beds in Bialystoker
240 beds in Cabrini Center
35 beds in St. Rose’s Home
219 beds in Rivington House
Lost ? Home of the Sages?
CURRENT:
255 beds within New Gouverneur
58 beds in New East Side Nursing Home on Willett Street
NEW:
60 beds (within Gouverneur)
(with appreciation to Allegra Hobbs “Lower Manhattan Hit Hardest by Nursing Home Decline“)

From Neighbors to Save Rivington House (N2SaveRH):

“We’ll be asking for more detail, listening to feedback from you and others, asking for guidance from electeds and the AG’s office, and other legal organizations. The AG’s office assured us that Allure will NOT be deciding who gets any proceeds from the settlement.

The AG office worked hard and did their due diligence. We deeply appreciate the hours put in fighting to bring justice to three majority low-income communities of color.

And the outcome is still not what any of us wanted.

This problem is systemic and endemic. We need to learn why it is not possible for a non-profit to run a decent, reliable and viable nursing home in NYC and beyond.

The NY State Department of Health has jurisdiction over who is considered to have “character and competence” to run a facility in NY State. Apparently, they’ve decided The Allure Group had both character and competence to run a facility for vulnerable people.

Our understanding is that there is a Nursing Home ‘oversight panel’, appointed by Governor Cuomo called the Public Health and Health Planning Council. Apparently it is peopled by Nursing Home Operators. This seems very like the fox guarding the chicken coop. Governor Cuomo hast the power to change this. We assume he will look into the ongoing systemic abuses in the current system that have repeatedly been reported. 

We thank the media for staying with this story – even after it has lost its ‘sheen’. Especially the Lo-Down.

N2SaveRH statement:

“We are grateful for the rigorous work that the AG’s Office undertook. Countless hours and much know-how was put to this effort to get long-range justice for some of  New York State’s most vulnerable people. We are also grateful for the level of compensation that all of these affected low-income and/or of color communities will garner. And that the Allure Group will be under scrutiny due to past practices. 

 And, importantly, it is problematic to invite Allure to run another facility – anywhere. But this is a systemic New York State-wide issue that allows a business like Allure to be endorsed as an organization with “character and competence” by the Public Health and Health Planning Council. That is the larger fight to end the preying upon vulnerable NYers for profit. 

We will continue to advocate for the meeting with the buyers Adam America, Slate Property Group, and China Vanke promised by the Mayor to our local Council Member. Because Allure was just one group of men who profited off of people who had little ability to fight back. Why? A longtime neighbor and community activist, who lives around the corner from Rivington House will likely be forced to move far from his network of friends this month. He’ll end his days with few visits. It keeps the reality of the damage caused here fresh.

Oh, and we’re not ‘done’ with this fight.”

The Lo-Down: http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2018/01/state-attorney-general-makes-a-deal-with-allure-group-over-rivington-house-closure.html

WNYC: https://www.wnyc.org/story/scandal-plagued-nursing-home-operator-agrees-open-new-facilities/

The Post: https://nypost.com/2018/01/06/ag-reaches-settlement-with-shady-real-estate-group-over-nursing-home-sales/

The Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ag-schneiderman-allure-group-hit-2m-deal-nursing-home-probes-article-1.3740599

The Real Deal: https://therealdeal.com/2018/01/05/ag-settles-with-allure-over-nursing-home-investigations/

BoweryBoogie: http://www.boweryboogie.com/2018/01/allure-group-settles-ag-rivington-house-scandal-forced-pay-1-25m-les-nonprofits/

Politico: subscription required: “NO GOOD DEED — Allure Group settles with Schneiderman, promises new health care facilities, by POLITICO’s Dan Goldberg: Allure Group, the infamous company behind the sale of Rivington House, has agreed to pay $2 million in penalties and spend up to $10 million more to create new health care facilities in Brooklyn and Manhattan, according to the state attorney general’s office, which had been investigating the company since last April.”

Curbed NY https://ny.curbed.com/2018/1/8/16862756/rivington-house-allure-group-settlement-attorney-general

From: Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s Office (The judge will finalize it on January 30, 2018.

The Settlement

News from Attorney General Eric T.

Schneiderman

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 5, 2018 Attorney General’s Press Office / 212-416-?8060 nyag.pressoffice@ag.ny.gov Twitter: @AGSchneiderman

A.G. SCHNEIDERMAN ANNOUNCES SETTLEMENT WITH ALLURE GROUP TO REVITALIZE HARLEM NURSING HOME, FILL HEALTHCARE GAPS IN BROOKLYN AND LOWER EAST

SIDE

Settlement Requires Allure to Make Major Improvements to Greater Harlem Nursing Home, Open New Healthcare Facilities in Brooklyn and Lower East Side, Pay Additional $1.25 Million for Lower East Side Non-Profits?Also Puts in Place Measures to Ensure Processes that Led to Closure of Rivington House and CABS Will Not Happen Again?Allure Will Also Pay $750,000 in Penalties and Costs to the State; Rivington House Board Members Barred from New Charities Boards for Five Years?NEW YORK – Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced a comprehensive settlement with the Allure Group to revitalize the Greater Harlem Nursing Home and replace healthcare gaps in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. The agreement results from the Attorney General’s investigations into the closings of two nursing homes, Rivington House – The Nicholas A. Rango Health Care Facility on the Lower East Side, and the CABS Nursing Home in Brooklyn. As part of the settlement, the Attorney

General required new measures to fully reform the processes that led to the closure of Rivington House and CABS Nursing Home. Allure will also pay $750,000 in penalties and costs to the State, in addition to $1.25 million to Lower East Side healthcare non-profits.?“The processes that led to the closure of Rivington House and CABS never should have happened – this settlement ensures they won’t happen again, while addressing critical healthcare gaps in the impacted communities,” said Attorney General Schneiderman. “We’re requiring Allure to open new healthcare facilities in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side, and make major improvements to its Harlem facility, while also providing $1.25 million to non- profits serving vulnerable New Yorkers.”?The settlement resolves an investigation by the Attorney General’s office into the closure of two facilities that had been sold by non-profit nursing home operators to the Allure Group and its principals, who own and manage a group of nursing homes in New York City. In each case, the facilities were closed shortly thereafter with minimal notice to the affected communities. While such closures were taking place, the Allure Group was managing the Greater Harlem Nursing Home as a Receiver; the non-profit owner of the Greater Harlem Nursing Home is now petitioning the Court to sell its facility to Allure-related companies.?The settlement ensures that the Greater Harlem Nursing Home, a 200-bed critical facility on West 130th Street in Manhattan, will receive substantial improvements through investments by its Receiver, the Allure Group, and imposes a restriction on the future sale or closure of the facility as a skilled nursing facility for at least nine years.?The Allure Group will also create a Lower East Side healthcare facility at a new location to fill healthcare gaps caused by the closure of Rivington House. Allure is required to fully fund a new skilled nursing facility or other healthcare

facility primarily providing long-term care to the elderly or disabled; there will be a restriction on the future sale or closure of that facility for at least eight years from commencement of services. Pursuant to the agreement, Allure will also pay $1.25 million to Lower East Side non- profit organizations that provide healthcare services to vulnerable members of the community.?Today’s settlement also requires Allure to open a new Central Brooklyn healthcare facility to offset lost healthcare services resulting from the closing of the CABS Nursing Home. The Central Brooklyn facility will also be subject to a restriction on the future sale or closure for at least eight years from commencement of services.?In a related settlement, three directors of the Rivington House charitable board – which the Attorney General found to have not met its duties under State law – will be barred from new charities boards for at least five years and Allure will pay $400,000 in penalties under the Not-for-Profit Corporation Law. Allure will also pay $350,000 to cover investigative costs.?The Attorney General required additional mechanisms to ensure that the processes that led to the closure of Rivington House and CABS will not happen again. A new independent compliance consultant will report to the New York State Department of Health, and Allure will be required to inform the Department of Health about circumstances that might lead to the closure of any Allure Group facility.?Click here to read the settlement documents.?The Attorney General thanks the New York State Department of Health and the New York City Department of Investigation for their assistance in the investigation. The settlements were handled by Assistant Deputy Attorney General Paul J. Mahoney and Assistant Attorney General Sean Courtney. Assistant Attorneys General Linda Heinberg and Emily Stern represented the State in New York charities

law proceedings. Assistant Attorneys General Thomas

O’Hanlon, Konrad Payne, Steven Shiffman, and Brian Weinberg directed an investigation by Senior Investigator Thomas Dowd, Supervising Investigator Dominick DiGennaro, Principal Auditor-Investigator Milan Shah, Senior Auditor-Investigator Shoma Howard, and Deputy Regional Chief Auditor Jonathan Romano of the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) and Charities Bureau Chief Accountant Judith Welsh-Liebross. James G. Sheehan is

Chief of the Charities Bureau in the Division of Social Justice, led by Chief Deputy Attorney General Alvin Bragg. Amy Held

is Director of MFCU in the Division of Criminal Justice, led by Executive Deputy Attorney General Margaret Garnett. ###

Lo-Down

30-Story Residential Tower Planned Alongside Ruins of Beth Hamedrash Hagadol

“As we reported yesterday, the mayor’s office is trying to argue that the affordable units in the new Norfolk Street project compensate the Lower East Side community for the loss of more than 200 nursing home beds at Rivington House. This project was in the works long before the city administration seized on it as a potential “Rivington House replacement.”

BoweryBoogie

Developers of Senior Housing at Synagogue Site Admit Surprise by Mayor’s Rivington House Renege

“The timing of the city’s announcement and this meeting didn’t sit right with members of Community Board 3 last night, who convened the Land-Use subcommittee to scrutinize the plan for the aforementioned project. The developers – Gotham Organization and the Chinese-American Planning Council – vehemently denied any prior knowledge of the Mayor’s change of heart.

The team did admit that the city approached them back in the fall to increase the number of apartments for senior housing in the development. However, any mention of Rivington House or potential quid-pro-quo was never discussed.”

As more and more luxury condos are slated for alongside the park (bringing shadowing for the public, expensive housing for the private owners) this city needs to move forward on returning this building to the public for all of the public’s use.

NOT wait for it to be used as yet another amenity for those who are financially well-resourced.

From BoweryBoogie: 14-Story Luxury Tower Planned for Chrystie Street Corridor

Anina Gerchick will present her proposal for a public artwork, BIRDLINK, at:

Parks, Recreation, Cultural Affairs, & Waterfront Committee

Thursday, December 14 at 6:30pm — BRC Senior Services Center – 30 Delancey Street (inside Sara Roosevelt Park btwn Chrystie & Forsyth Streets)

Upcoming public artwork BIRDLINK, freestanding native plant garden sculpture designed to support urban birds and engage community.

Please join Community Board 3’s Park’s Committee to weigh in on this proposal. The artist is eager to hear from the neighborhood.

SDR Park March-Dec 2018

Anina’s proposal:

From the Brooklyn Paper:

“City officials fibbed to advance their controversial redesign for a section of Fort Greene Park when they claimed that dozens of meadow trees destined for the hatchet are sick and near-death, because most of the green things are actually young and in prime health, according to… a report from city-hired arborists.

The agency, as part of its “Parks Without Borders Program,” plans to make Fort Greene Park’s entry…into a grand corner entrance… which requires leveling some hilly mounds, …and chopping down trees.

Parks department honchos told locals…that the green things chosen for removal wouldn’t survive for much longer. But the agency’s forestry report — a survey of all 129 trees currently growing where the redesign would occur that Friends of Fort Greene Park received via a Freedom of Information Act request and shared with this newspaper — shows that many of the trees deemed old and ill were anything but, according to Gruen.

Residents’ outcry over the trees getting the axe led some top city officials to question the plan…

“I believe that the city has not done its due process, and that the redesign dulls the environmentally resilient features that the park currently provides, such as mitigating storm water runoff,” Public Advocate Letitia James penned in a Nov. 27 letter to the commission. “The city has not done the proper environmental review.”

From The Tribeca Trib:

“The 191-foot-long sliver of sand, known as Brooklyn Bridge Beach, lies beneath the bridge, along the East River Esplanade. A padlocked gate on the esplanade fence keeps it off limits, though it sometimes serves as a stopover for kayakers.

Now a group is launching a new effort to reverse the city’s policy.”

“The push to open the beach comes as the city readies a request for proposals from designers for the Brooklyn Bridge Esplanade Project that would make improvements to the waterfront experience from Peck Slip, at the southern end, up to Catherine Slip, several blocks north of the Brooklyn Bridge.”

Read on.

NYTimes:

Soil Power! The Dirty Way to a Green Planet

By Jacques Leslie Dec. 2, 2017

“People reap more benefit from nature when they give up trying to vanquish it [instead see it] as a demanding but indispensable ally… [we’ve been conditioned to think of ] carbon’s climate change connection……when it’s as vital to life as water. The way to make amends is to put it back in the soil, where it belongs.”

Excerpt:

“The last great hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change may lie in a substance so commonplace that we typically ignore it or else walk all over it: the soil beneath our feet.

The earth possesses five major pools of carbon. Of those pools, the atmosphere is already overloaded with the stuff; the oceans are turning acidic as they become saturated with it; the forests are diminishing; and underground fossil fuel reserves are being emptied. That leaves soil as the most likely repository for immense quantities of carbon.

Now scientists are documenting how sequestering carbon in soil can produce a double dividend: It reduces climate change by extracting carbon from the atmosphere, and it restores the health of degraded soil and increases agricultural yields. Many scientists and farmers believe the emerging understanding of soil’s role in climate stability and agricultural productivity will prompt a paradigm shift in agriculture, triggering the abandonment of conventional practices like tillage, crop residue removal, mono-cropping, excessive grazing and blanket use of chemical fertilizer and pesticide. Even cattle, usually considered climate change culprits because they belch at least 25 gallons of methane a day, are being studied as a potential part of the climate change solution because of their role in naturally fertilizing soil and cycling nutrients.

On the other hand, carbon sequestration in soil and vegetation is an effective way to pull carbon from the atmosphere that in some ways is the opposite of geoengineering. Instead of overcoming nature, it reinforces it, promoting the propagation of plant life to return carbon to the soil that was there in the first place — until destructive agricultural practices prompted its release into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. That process started with the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago and accelerated over the last century as industrial farming and ranching rapidly expanded…

…Mr. Durham’s farmers are learning a lesson that resonates throughout human interactions with the natural world: People reap more benefit from nature when they give up trying to vanquish it and instead see it clearly, as a demanding but indispensable ally. Because of carbon’s climate change connection, we’ve been conditioned to think of it as the enemy, when in fact it’s as vital to life as water. The way to make amends is to put it back in the soil, where it belongs.”