Looking good for Cude: With the news that Bo Riccobono has dropped out of the race for Community Board 2 chairperson, Terri Cude will be running unopposed in this Thursday’s election at the C.B. 2 full-board meeting. Only the board’s 50 members will be allowed to participate in the Nov. 17 vote. Cude is currently the Greenwich Village / Soho / Lower West Side board’s first vice chairperson. Tobi Bergman, who has led C.B. 2 for the last two years, will be stepping down, per the board’s voluntary two-year term limit for chairperson. Riccobono competed against Bergman and Richard Stewart in a three-way race two years ago. At last month’s full board meeting, Cude told her fellow board members she was running on her experience leading and co-leading important committees and on her track record of working well with neighboring community boards, which she would continue to do, if elected. Riccobono, reiterating a position he stated when he campaigned for the board’s highest post two years ago, said he would delegate some of the chairperson’s responsibilities to the vice chairpersons, and said the board should be more “proactive.” Reached for comment on Monday, Cude declined to say whether Riccobono had scrapped his campaign, and referred questions to Bergman, as the board’s chief spokesperson. (Perhaps, in the current political climate, she didn’t want to risk having anyone charge the election was “rigged” or that the media was trying to spin things.) But Bergman confirmed, “Yes, it is true. On Nov. 6, Bo sent an e-mail to board members saying he could not serve due to personal time constraints.” Riccobono did not respond by press time for a request for comment. Last month, after Riccobono announced he planned to challenge Cude, board member Robin Rothstein told The Villager she was glad to see a contested election since it’s always a healthy thing for the board. “Look, they’re both good candidates,” she shrugged. “It’s not like a Trump-Clinton thing.”
R.I.P., Carmen: Carmen Pabon, the revered Loisaida poet and gardener, has died at age 95. Valerio Orselli, executive director of the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association, confirmed the news on Monday afternoon, saying it came from the longtime director of CHARAS. “I’ve just been informed by Chino Garcia that Dona Carmen Pabon, longtime activist / gardener and community institution, has passed away,” Orselli said in an e-mail. “May she rest in peace or be reborn in a heavenly garden. I am told she died peacefully surrounded by her family in a hospice,” Orselli said. There was a wake for Pabon at the Ortiz Funeral Home, at 21 First Ave., near E. Second St., on Wed., Nov. 16. Just three weeks ago, Pabon had helped cut the ribbon with City Councilmember Rosie Mendez on the newly refurbished Carmen Pabon Del Amanecer community garden, at 119 Avenue C, between Seventh and Eighth Sts. Pabon created the garden in the late 1970s from a vacant rubble-strewn lot. She held poetry readings and fed the homeless there for many years, before the space was closed in 2000 due to the construction of the Eastville Gardens apartment complex next door by Donald Capoccia of BFC Partners. For 17 years, what remained of the open space — the garden was larger before — languished behind locked gates. But now it has been redesigned and will be used as a public open space once again.
Well, that was fast: After all the waiting and sturm und drang over Mrs. Green’s and its fight over unionization of its employees, the chain has suddenly closed its new West Village store after a bit more than a year. The local location, at Hudson and Bank Sts., opened just last August. In a press release earlier this week, Mrs. Green’s announced it is placing a “strategic focus” on its five “core” Westchester stores, while closing five “underperforming” ones, including the Village store. In addition, Pat Brown is stepping down as the chain’s C.E.O. as a new leadership team will take over the chain’s reins until they find a replacement for him. Mrs. Green’s prides itself on providing “locally sourced produce and healthy-living products.” Michele Herman, The Villager’s “Shop Talk” correspondent, said the Hudson St. store always seemed pretty busy to her. But, apparently, it was just not profitable — or, let’s say, probably not profitable enough. The company is also closing its two Connecticut locations in Stamford and Fairfield, as well as newer locations in Rye and Tarrytown, N.Y. According to the press release, “The company will provide severance packages and transition services to impacted managers and associates.” Oh well, it’s good timing that the Brooklyn Fare market just opened up in the Archive building.
Like a rolling stone (monument): Well, Bob Dylan finally recently acknowledged winning the Nobel Prize for literature, and even said he wants to attend next month’s awards ceremony in Stockholm. “Absolutely — if it’s at all possible,” he assured, sort of. Locally, the city’s Parks Department is looking forward to engraving his name on its own Nobel Monument next year. Michele Herman’s husband, Jonathan Kuhn, director of Parks’ Art and Antiquities division, noted that the monument, which was dedicated in 2003 in Theodore Roosevelt Park — which rings the American Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side — is the only one in Parks’ collection honoring living persons. T.R., by the way, was the first American Nobel laureate.
Vive le Florent facade: The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation is claiming victory on the old Florent facade flap that saw the famed former nightspot’s steel exterior totally removed — in violation of permits — for the space’s renovation into a boutique. G.V.S.H.P., along with state Senator Brad Hoylman, had asked why renovations to the iconic 69 Gansevoort St. — which is known as a “contributing” building within the Gansevoort Historic District — were approved at the staff level instead of by the full Landmarks Preservation Commission, which would have included a public hearing. Landmarks now agrees the staff permits were issued incorrectly, has rescinded them and “is taking follow-up action,” the society reports. Assemblymember Deborah Glick and Councilmember Corey Johnson also reached out to L.P.C. on the issue.
