City Councilmember Alan Gerson, visited P.S. 130 in Chinatown last week to celebrate the installation of 43 computers and accompanying equipment that were purchased with $100,000 in city capital funds. State Sen. Tom Duane also attended the event.
Money for Millennium
The City Council’s Manhattan delegation approved $3 million last Friday for Millennium High School, the public school that opened this fall in an office building at 75 Broad St.
The amount, secured with the help of City Councilmember Alan Gerson, completes the school’s capital costs, said principal Robert Rhodes. It will enable the school to finish retrofitting its remaining two floors. Millennium currently occupies the 13th floor of 75 Broad, the first floor finished this summer by construction manager F.J. Sciame Construction Co., Inc.
Work on floors 11 and 12 will begin next month and finish in April, Rhodes said. This accelerated timetable is not quite as daunting as the nine-week push that Sciame led to finish the first part of the school in time for a September opening, Rhodes said.
“I’m very excited, because for us it means when we hold our welcoming tea for entering ninth graders, they’ll be able to see the whole building,” Rhodes said. The school currently has students in grades nine and ten.
Millennium, which also received funding from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, gives preference in admission to students living south of Houston St. The school has already received a couple thousand applications for the 2004-2005 school year, many more than it can accommodate, Rhodes said.
Trust Doyle to return
Noreen Doyle, a former staff member with the Hudson River Park Trust, is coming back soon as the Trust’s second-in-command.
She will become executive vice president of the trust under Connie Fishman, current executive vice president, who takes over as president of the Trust in February from Robert Balachandran, who is leaving to work for Bear Stearns.
Doyle has spent the past three years as a vice president of AKRF, Inc., an environmental, planning, remediation, engineering and design company. At AKRF, she directed the environmental review for the Second Avenue subway project and the waterfront permitting process for the Queens West and the Brooklyn Bridge Park projects on the East River waterfront.
“I’m looking forward to working with Connie again,” Doyle said. “That was one of the main inducements to come back to the Trust.”
Doyle was assistant district manager of Community Board 4 from March 1992 until Oct. 1994, when she joined the Hudson River Park Conservancy, the Trust’s predecessor agency.
She continued on the staff after the Trust was created in 1998 and was involved in drafting the state legislation that created the park. She managed the park’s comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement and helped secure permits to reconstruct the bulkheads and piers in the park. Doyle also oversaw public programming activities and served as spokesperson for H.R.P.T. until she left in the beginning of 2001.
“I worked with Connie at the Trust and before that when she was working for [Deputy Mayors] Fran Reiter and Randy Levine. I admire her ability and her common sense,” Doyle said.
Doyle met her husband, Mike Bradley, when both were on the Trust staff, he as vice president for operations. Bradley is now executive vice president of the Riverside Park South Corp., the not-for-profit organization building the 13-block Riverside Park South along the Hudson between 59th and 72nd Sts. in the former rail yards which Donald Trump is developing. Doyle and Bradley live in Yonkers.
Open Christmas
Not everything Downtown will be closed for Christmas.
The free Wall Street Walking Tour will be on as usual this Thursday on Dec. 25 at noon. The free 90-minute guided walking tour of Lower Manhattan and the Financial District is given every Thursday and Saturday at noon. It weaves together the history, events, architecture, and people of Downtown Manhattan, the birthplace of New York and the financial capital of the world. The tour meets at One Bowling Green, on the steps of the U.S. Custom House,. Stops on the tour include Trinity Church, Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange and other architectural and cultural sites. (212) 606-4064.
The Museum of Jewish Heritage is having an afternoon of Neil Simon Films on Christmas starting at 1:30 p.m. It will be held at the museum at 36 Battery Place and is open to anyone who wants to enjoy the film adaptations of some of Neil Simon’s best-loved plays “Brighton Beach Memoirs” and “Biloxi Blues.” Admission is $10 for adults, $7 for museum members and seniors, and $5 for students. For more information call (646) 437-4200 or visit https://www.mjhnyc.com.
City sues Waterway
New York City filed a federal lawsuit against NY Waterway last week to recover $1.4 million in landing fees which the city says the ferry operator owes for use of Pier 11 at Wall St. since the World Trade Center attacks when ferry service expanded.
In June, City Comptroller William Thompson issued a report criticizing the Bloomberg administration for failing to collect the landing fees. Last spring, the city billed NY Waterway nearly $1 million for landing fees but the company contested the charges.
A spokesperson for NY Waterway declined to comment on the Federal Court suit filed on Wednesday, Dec. 17. Sources, however, said the company and the city have been trying to settle the issue since the spring and the issue now is likely to be mediated by a federal magistrate.
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