“I feel like I have a new life. I feel safe,” she said.
Raid on vendors The Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit led a raid on Sat., Dec. 15, targeting vendors on Canal St. and on Church and Fulton Sts. near the World Trade Center site. They netted 59 arrests, including 57 for trademark counterfeiting and two for unlicensed general vending. The police confiscated more than 1,000 pirated DVDs and many handbags. The sweep team included the first and fifth precincts, city buildings and health departments, and trademark experts.
“It was one of the most successful sweeps we’ve ever had,” said Nazli Parzizi, commissioner of the Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit, in a telephone interview.
Still, Parzizi and Lolita Jackson, Manhattan Director at the C.A.U., both emphasized the need for stricter vending legislation.
“We can get these vendors over and over,” Parzizi said, but all they get is “a slap on the hand.” Because the laws don’t create a permanent record of violations, “once they pay a fine, [the violation] gets erased,” she said. Trademark counterfeiting is the only offense that can “stick” to the vendor, providing a way to track repeat offenders.
There are restrictions on vendors on the sidewalks surrounding the W.T.C., but Parzizi and Jackson did not know if any of the arrested vendors were in that restricted zone or just outside of it. Most of the arrested vendors “had licenses to be where they were supposed to be,” Jackson said in a phone interview.
The C.A.U. organized the crackdown after community members, mainly from Soho, asked for enforcement of vending laws.
Finalists announced Community Board 1’s Roger Byrom announced the three finalists Dec. 18 for a below-market-value office space at 90 Broad St. The nonprofits still in the running, down from 11 submissions, are New York Council for the Humanities, the New York International Children’s Film Festival and the Women’s Media Center.
Developer SwigEquities will offer one of those organizations a five-year lease on a 3,400-square-foot office space for $12 a square foot rather than the building’s $36. C.B. 1 picked the three finalists and now SwigEquities will pick the winner.
“They are very good candidates,” said Andrew Flamm, vice president of SwigEquities. He will decide on one of the organizations in a matter of “days and weeks, not months,” so the nonprofit can move in this spring.
“That’s great!” Eric Beckman, director and cofounder of the International Children’s Film Festival said when he heard the news last week. “We’re very excited about the space.”
The festival’s offices were at 176 Broadway on 9/11, and since then the festival has bounced to seven different locations. A week ago, they moved into 225 Broadway. The festival would use the space for administrative offices, multimedia production and possibly for classes and film screenings.
Flamm does not see the space being used for events outside of regular business hours. “It’s not an auditorium, it’s not a performance space, it’s not a ground-floor space,” he said. “It’s going to be primarily for administrative purposes.”
Sara Ogger, of the New York Council for the Humanities, was thrilled to hear that her organization was a finalist. The council’s offices are currently at 150 Broadway, and a move to the Broad St. space would mean the council could expand, Ogger said.
To make a final decision, Flamm will look at each organization’s mission, its financial history and its planned uses for the space.
More lead contamination The Environmental Protection Agency released updated results for its Lower Manhattan Test and Clean Program, which sampled residential buildings within 1,500 feet of ground zero.
Eighty-eight dust samples contained unsafe levels of lead, up from 71 samples reported several weeks ago. The lead contamination is still confined to nine Downtown buildings. The E.P.A. has refused to release any information about where the contaminated buildings are located, although it is planning to remove the lead.
The E.P.A. did not find more asbestos beyond the initial three samples reported and still has not found any man-made vitreous fibers or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
Quieter backup alarms To give residents a better night’s sleep, the city is requiring quieter backup alarms for trucks on construction sites, C.B. 1 member Bill Love told the World Trade Center Committee earlier this month. However, the new requirement does not apply to the Port Authority, the State Department of Transportation or the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which means that neighbors of the World Trade Center construction will get little relief.
Glenn Guzi, a Port Authority program manager, replied that the Port has approached its contractors about using the new alarms.
“We have to look at procurement,” he told the committee. When C.B. 1 members responded enthusiastically, he warned them not to expect results until after the New Year.
The next week, C.B. 1 District Manager Noah Pfefferblit said he has made progress with State D.O.T. on the quieter alarms.
Park bathrooms The C.B. 1 Tribeca Committee is taking another month to decide whether to support the construction of bathrooms in Washington Market Park after several gardeners complained that the construction would destroy their plots.
When both sides spoke at this month’s Tribeca Committee meeting, “It became apparent that this was a little deeper than the gardeners even presented themselves,” said committee chairperson Carole DeSaram. “I thought to myself, ‘Egads — this is like cutting the baby in half. Fifty percent will be happy and 50 percent will not be happy.’”
DeSaram decided to wait a month before writing a resolution, giving board members time to look at the park, the gardens and the proposed bathroom site. Parks still says the bathroom location is final.
For garden advocate Don Jenner, the committee’s decision — or lack of a decision — was a victory.
“It should have been a slam dunk in that committee, [but] it got tabled again,” Jenner said of the earlier resolution supporting the bathrooms. “I thought I hadn’t a chance of a snowball in hell of seeing this thing stopped, but it didn’t move.”
— Julie Shapiro
