Housing is in the mix
To The Editor:
Re “It’s mutiny on the waterfront as Durst pitches Pier 40 plan” (news article, Sept. 6):
The Durst Organization and the Hudson River Park Trust are both working to ensure that Pier 40 will remain open and generate necessary revenue not only for the pier itself, but for the entirety of the Hudson River Park. We are studying a range of possibilities for Pier 40 — including the viability of housing and other uses — and look forward to working with the community in the weeks and months ahead.
Douglas Durst and Madelyn Wils
Durst is chairman, The Durst Organization;
Wils is president and C.E.O., Hudson River Park Trust
Glick isn’t part of the solution
To The Editor:
Re “It’s mutiny on the waterfront as Durst pitches Pier 40 plan” (news article, Sept. 6):
Assemblymember Glick’s relevance continues to wane. She simply has lost the ability to think ahead, to think innovatively in any fashion. She’s spending her summer having some friend make a ridiculous drawing of Pier 40 to show what “shouldn’t be,” and focusing with insane intensity on fighting housing, rather than doing the job we elected her to do — which is to seek, present and promote fiscally prudent and actually possible alternatives.
“Great potential for natural light” on Pier 40, she says? What is this, her living room?
Why isn’t she out in Silicon Valley talking to venture capitalists about funding for what could be the world’s greatest renewable energy research and development facility, one where wind-, solar- and water-driven technologies could all be tested (and manufactured) in one place? The greatest research center in the world, with a park and fields…a triumph. Where is her ambition?
Or how about remembering when we brought it up years ago that production professionals seemed to think that the river presented impossible-to-overcome attenuation issues for recording?
Elected officials in other cities and states are out there, hungry, traveling, finding, lobbying for and creating renewable energy, biotech, Internet and medical research facilities, while Glick is beginning to favor, after all of this fighting, what essentially will amount to a mall. Hey, Deborah, you want presenters for the pier — go get them!
All the while she’s staying silent on Sheldon Silver’s use of taxpayer money to pay off victims of an old-school bully and sexual predator. We know now that she will not protect women: What would she have done if the victims were members of the L.G.B.T. community? Would she have stayed silent? This is an utter embarrassment.
Where are the Pier 40 ideas, and where is the money? That question goes out to the assemblymember, and to folks like Mr. Capsis, who continue to promote ideas with no backing or interest from principal parties — which we worked so hard to get with Major League Soccer.
There must be some local with political ambition — and ideas — willing to wage a bona fide write-in campaign for this seat. My Greenwich Village landlord, who is a Republican, is running for a state Senate seat in Westchester, and is fanning the flames of this Assembly sex-harassment debacle in his campaign, and he is right. Not a bad man, but a dyed-in-the-wool free-marketer who seeks to end rent-regulation and has large holdings in the Village. Is he even on our assemblymember’s radar, and what is she doing to help the Democratic candidate in Westchester overcome this threat?
Patrick Shields
Jessie article gave comfort
To The Editor:
Re “Neighbors mourn Soho’s Jessie Blue, cry street is unsafe” (news article, Sept. 6):
It gives me such comfort to see that my sister Jessica had such wonderful friends that loved her. I so wish I could have been there amongst all of you to share Jessica stories. She would have loved that you were all together celebrating her life. I know she loved you all as much as you loved her. Thank you, Tequila, for telling this story and sharing it with me.
I hope that because of this tragedy and your writing about it something gets done about that intersection so that no one else gets hurt or ever has to face the heartbreak that Jessica’s family and her wonderful friends have had to endure.
Melissa Dworkin
Go get ’em, Ed!
To The Editor:
Re “The Koch Factor” (Scoopy’s Notebook, Aug. 30):
Thanks to our Ed Koch. The key battleground states are about to experience the full political force of the Village’s own Ed Koch, the best campaigner for President Obama and the Democrats.
Thanks, Mayor Koch, for taking that tough assignment. You are direct and right to the point when you say, “The Republicans have raped the country and the middle class.”
Lorraine Colville
Cultural tour de force
To The Editor:
Congratulations to Robin Rothstein for a terrific CB 2 Cult Theatre Crawl. And rousing applause to the founders, artistic directors and staff of HERE, Cherry Lane, New Ohio and Rattlestick theaters, who warmly welcomed us and told us about their exciting and interesting performance schedules for the 2012-’13 season. We Villagers are so very lucky to have this wonderful cultural scene right in our neighborhood. Put Off Off Broadway theater on your calendar this year; you’ll be glad you did.
Noreen Shipman
When teachers were purged
To The Editor:
Re “Michael Nash, record-keeper of the left, dead at 66” (obituary, Aug. 23):
Over all, Gary Shapiro’s obituary on Mike Nash was a good tribute.
But things back in the 1950s were far too complicated to just say that Julius Nash was “fired” in 1962 for a falsified teacher application. As Cold War fears intensified, hundreds of teachers answered “no” to “are you now or have you ever been…?” — a question that should never be asked in a democracy. Julius Nash was fired for standing up for his rights.
Hundreds of teachers were called in and subjected to intrusive “interviews,” many, including Julius Nash, more than once. He was suspended without pay in 1955, and the seven years that followed before he was “fired,” as the article phrases it, were grueling ones for him and his family. Along with other teachers in the same position, he was subjected to the hyped-up media coverage of the time.
It’s well worth noting that the Board of Education eventually apologized for those investigations.
Lisa Harbatkin
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