Local ‘star’
What does Community 1 Chairperson Julie Menin have in common with Julianne Moore, Kathleen Turner, John Kerry and Howard Stern? They all made gossip columnist Cindy Adams’s pre-Thanksgiving column headlined “What the Stars do with Their Turkeys?”
The column was a mix of plans or what the “stars” were thankful for. Adams wrote that our local celeb’s “gratitude goes to having convinced the city and state to build the first ‘green’ school in NYC. It’ll be near Ground Zero.”
We sure hope now that she’s made Cindy Adams, UnderCover will still get calls back.
WTC-TV
Larry Silverstein’s 7 World Trade Center has been a hit with critics and office tenants alike and been filmed in several movies, but now the rebuilt tower is taking a star turn on national TV. The building and its public plaza appear regularly on the new ABC hit “Dirty Sexy Money.”
On the show, 7 W.T.C. houses the offices of real estate tycoon Tripp Darling, patriarch of the fictitious and wildly dysfunctional Darling family. With co-stars like Donald Sutherland, William Baldwin and Peter Krause (of “Six Feet Under” fame) 7 World Trade is in good TV company every Wednesday night.
However, Silverstein’s tower is not the only Downtown building to be featured in ABC’s fall line-up. The Woolworth Building plays fictitious home to Mode magazine on “Ugly Betty” and the World Financial Center appears frequently on “Big Shots.”
Soho to grow?
A move is afoot to expand the Soho Cast-Iron Historic District to include important parts left out of the original designation in 1973, namely the west side of West Broadway and parts of Howard and Crosby Sts. in southeast Soho. Expected to attend the Soho Alliance’s meeting this week was Margot Gayle, 99, the single person most responsible for Soho’s original landmarking.
Community Board 1 has an unusual problem when it comes to receiving funding from the Department of Youth and Community Development.
Neighborhoods receive money for after-school programs based on the number of child residents, and get bonuses for poverty, non-native English speakers and juvenile delinquents — which brings us to C.B. 1’s dilemma.
“We’ve always had a problem in C.B. 1 of not having enough juvenile delinquents,” Youth Committee Chairperson Paul Hovitz said at his committee meeting this week.
He and other board members criticized the funding distribution after a presentation by Andrew Miller, director of city government affairs for the Youth Dept.
Miller kicked off his talk by distributing pens, mugs and even a department T-shirt, but the gifts didn’t quite soften his audience.
“The pens are lovely, but…” Hovitz said, directing a get-down-to-business look at Miller.
Miller promised to return to the next committee meeting with answers to the many questions board members posed.
Later in the meeting, though, there was a sign of “hope” in the form of juvenile delinquency: Sgt. George Codd attested to the growing violence among high schoolers outside the Fulton St. Burger King. Maybe C.B. 1 will get some extra dough, after all.
How 50 West was won
City Councilmember Alan Gerson was not entirely pleased with Downtown Express editorials earlier this year regarding 50 West St., because one called on him to “stiffen his resolve” to get affordable housing money out of developer Francis Greenburger. But Gerson told us last week that he cited our editorial “on more than one occasion” as he battled the developer to get $5 million in housing money.
Borough President Scott Stringer took a tougher line at the beginning, rejecting the condo and hotel project outright because there was no affordable housing money in the $600 million project.
So who knows, maybe it turned out to be a little “good cop, bad cop.” Greenburger isn’t talking.
