BY Terese Loeb Kreuzer
Volume 20, Number 46 | The Newspaper of Lower Manhattan | March30 – April 5, 2011
B.P.C. Committee seeks input on ice rink
If Battery Park City is to have an ice rink this year, the clock is ticking. The Battery Park City Authority would have to send out a Request for Proposals within the next two months, at the latest. On March 24, Community Board 1’s Battery Park City Ballfields Task Force met to discuss alternatives as to what that R.F.P. should contain and reached no conclusion.
All agreed that it would be nice to have an ice rink, but where? The ball fields just north of Murray Street between West Street and North End Avenue will have artificial turf by this winter and previous discussions had targeted them as the most likely place for an ice rink, but a skating season there would necessarily be limited to around eight weeks because the fields are used for soccer, whose season ends the weekend before Thanksgiving, and for baseball, where the season, aided by the artificial turf, will start in March. An operator would need around two weeks on either end of the skating season to build a rink and take it down.
Other sites in Battery Park City such as Rockefeller Park, the volleyball courts on the esplanade and the World Financial Center plaza present other difficulties. Battery Park City is built on landfill, cantilevered over the water, and not all sites were constructed to sustain the extra weight an ice skating rink would impose. The Battery Park City Authority is not willing to invest large sums of money in shoring up the sub-structure to support an ice rink and is also not willing to subsidize an ice rink. An operator would have to find corporate sponsors. The plaza in front of Pier A might be a possibility, the committee agreed, but not for this year.
All these factors prompted the committee to ask for community input. Everyone interested in expressing an opinion is invited to do so at the next Community Board 1 Battery Park City Committee meeting, which takes place on Tuesday, April 5 at 6 p.m., at 1 World Financial Center on the 24th floor. (Bring photo I.D. to enter the building.)
Ground rents deal approvals
The boards of nine of 11 Battery Park City buildings have approved the ground rents deal with the Battery Park City Authority brokered by New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. The buildings, between South Cove and Albany Street, are the oldest condominiums in Battery Park City and have leases going back nearly 30 years. The Battery Park City Authority owns the land under the buildings. Ground rents paid to the B.P.C.A. were slated to rise steeply in 2012 and even more steeply in 2027, when they were to equal 6 percent of the fair market value of the land on which the buildings were constructed. Under the deal, the steep increases would be rolled back substantially, saving the buildings around $280 million over the next 30 years.
The buildings that have affirmed the deal are Liberty View, Liberty Terrace, Hudson View West, Hudson View East, Hudson View Tower, Battery Pointe, Cove Club, the Soundings and the Regatta. The sponsors in Liberty View and Liberty Terrace abstained. The remaining votes were unanimously in favor of the agreement. Of the remaining buildings — Liberty House and Liberty Court — one building is scheduled to vote on Thursday, March 31. The other building has not yet scheduled a vote. Both of these buildings currently have among the lowest ground rents in Battery Park City and though they would save money under the brokered deal, they would still face substantial increases in ground rent.
New NextBus signs in B.P.C.
The Alliance for Downtown New York’s free Connection bus that runs daily between the South Street Seaport and Broadway near City Hall now has two more electronic streetside signs to tell passengers when the next buses will arrive, bringing the total along the route to 10. The signs were installed on the north and south sides of Vesey Street between North End Avenue and West Street. Goldman Sachs paid for the new signs and will pay to maintain them for the next five years.
NextBus signs use Global Positioning System tracking satellites to provide vehicle arrival and departure information. In addition to the Vesey Street signs, there are NextBus signs on Water, Warren, Washington, Greenwich and Pine streets, and at 4 New York Plaza.
The Downtown Alliance launched the Connection bus service in 2003. The buses run at 10-minute intervals from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, with more limited service on weekends. The buses were originally wheelchair accessible. Temporary buses are currently being used while new, permanent buses are on order. During this interim period, passengers needing wheelchair access should call (212) 232-0141 or (917) 939-1037 to arrange for a pickup and drop-off along the route.
The Pops pop in
Community Board 1’s full board meeting on March 22 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage had been going on for several hours with much controversy and discussion when a piercing whistle sounded from the back of the auditorium. Decked out in a red jacket, a black hat with a white ostrich plume and for extra effect, in dark glasses, Tom Goodkind led the TriBattery Pops down the aisle and onto the stage as the band played John Philip Sousa’s “Liberty Bell.”
Goodkind, a Community Board 1 member and Battery Park City resident, founded the TriBattery Pops in 2003. “After 9/11, it seemed to be called for,” he said, as a way to bring people in the community together. He views the Pops as a descendant of the “citizen bands” that were common in the United States between 1880 and 1920, when they would play for community events, usually from the stage of a wooden gazebo in a town green or park.
Fresh from an engagement with the Trisha Brown Dance Company, the TriBattery Pops is looking forward to playing for the opening of the Little League season on Saturday, April 9 (from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on the Battery Park City ball fields).
“We change our songs every year,” said Goodkind. The repertoire currently includes a Cohan medley, two original songs, four jazz standards, Aaron Copland’s Hoedown from “Rodeo” and more than 20 Sousa numbers.
When the band marched out of the Community Board 1 meeting, it was to the strains of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” — a song Goodkind said was banned by the Trisha Brown Dance Company because “it was too sexy.”
To comment on Battery Park City Beat or to suggest article ideas, email TereseLoeb@mac.com.
