Closing post office The Peck Slip Post Office looks likely to close by the end of the year, which could mean developers are circling to buy the site or its air rights.
UnderCover heard from Paul Hovtiz, a Seaport resident who frequents the post office, that postal workers were told last month that their Peck Slip building was up for sale and they would be transferred to another office. Then this week, some of the post office’s biggest clients received letters saying they’d have to find somewhere else to do business as of Jan. 1, 2009, because the post office was closing, Hovitz said.
“To have it close would really be a tremendous inconvenience,” Hovitz told UnderCover, “not to mention what could go in its place.”
The U.S. Postal Service stayed coy about plans for 1 Peck Slip, a building they’ve owned since 1990.
“There are no plans in the immediate future to close it,” spokesperson Monica Hand said. “We are looking at different options, but there’s been no decision on that yet.”
Hand did not know how much the building was worth and how many unused air rights it had.
Clock watch With Mayor Mike Bloomberg moving toward suspending two voter referendums that limited mayors to two terms, no word from City Hall on what will become of the countdown clocks the mayor got back when he was planning to follow the will of the people.
The New York Times reported in August that Bloomberg secured at least 14 large, custom-made clocks to keep administration officials aware of just how many days they had left in the last — er, second term. Jason Post, a Bloomberg spokesperson, did not respond to our inquiry as to how much the clocks cost, who paid for them, and what will happen to them now.
Seaport critique State Assemblymember Deborah Glick didn’t mention General Growth Properties by name when she recently spoke to Community Board 1, but her criticisms of waterfront development almost certainly applied to their massive plans for South St. Seaport.
“It’s important to preserve our environment for future generations and be careful about what we’re willing to accept as tradeoffs,” said Glick, who has fought hard against big development on Pier 40. “We have to be mindful of destroying what is…a unique [and] finite resource.”
Glick noted that the Seaport did not lie within her district and said she was counting on community activists to make sure the preservation message was heard.
Auditor general Tom Goodkind, TriBattery Pops founder and Community Board 1 member, thinks he’s found his next big dream gig: auditor general of the World Trade Center site.
City Councilmember Alan Gerson suggested appointing an auditor general as part of his nine-page, 17-step plan to get the W.T.C. rebuilding back on track. The auditor general would have access to every agency’s documents and would report directly to the governor and mayor.
“I’m ready for auditor general,” Goodkind told UnderCover. “I’m definitely equipped.”
The C.P.A. listed his experience auditing city agencies as a top qualification. He also recently turned his eye to the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.’s finances, and he caught chairperson Avi Schick in a slip-up that appeared to short the W.T.C. Performing Arts Center $5 million. (The L.M.D.C. later explained that the $5 million had been spent on designing the PAC and was never missing.)
If Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Gov. David Paterson take Gerson up on his suggestion and create the auditor position, Goodkind knows his chances of being appointed are slim to none since he is an outspoken member of the community board. But nevertheless, the position has provided Goodkind with some inspiration: The Pops’ next big single may be entitled “Beware the Auditor General.”
Port turnaround Julie Menin, Community Board 1’s chairperson, told UnderCover last week that the Port Authority was sticking to its original design for the W.T.C. PATH hub, which meant the memorial wouldn’t open on the 10th anniversary. But things change fast over at the Port Authority, and two days later, thanks to pressure from the mayor and governor, the Port reversed itself and said there was a way to change the PATH design and get the memorial open on time after all.
L.M.D.C. insider Community Board 1’s newest member may have the inside scoop on what was once Lower Manhattan’s most secretive agency.
Antonina Simeti, 29, joined the community board in September, just over three years after she interned for the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. Simeti was getting her masters in urban planning from M.I.T., and she spent a summer at the L.M.D.C. researching ways the agency could ease construction’s impact on residents. (She didn’t have any L.M.D.C. secrets to share with UnderCover.)
Simeti will be what is now a rarity on Community Board 1: She works Downtown (for DEGW, a strategic planning firm), but lives in Brooklyn Heights. Simeti joined C.B. 1 rather than her Brooklyn community board because Lower Manhattan is “more interesting than the neighborhood I live in,” she said. “It’s the original New York, the oldest neighborhood in the city.”
Simeti is eager to represent young New Yorkers on the Planning and Financial District committees. She was appointed after Julie Nadel, former chairperson of the Waterfront Committee, resigned from the board this summer.
Bovis honored Tuesday’s Children, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting those affected by 9/11, picked an unlikely trio of companies to honor at a benefit luncheon Sept. 24: Bovis Lend Lease, Tishman Construction Corp. and Turner Construction Co.
UnderCover hasn’t heard anything bad about Turner, but Bovis is in charge at the Deutsche Bank, where a fire killed two firefighters last year, and Tishman is in charge of the Goldman Sachs construction, where falling steel paralyzed an architect last winter.
Bovis hired a firm with reported mob ties and little experience at Deutsche.
Carmine Calzonetti, president of Tuesday’s Children, said he was aware of the Deutsche Bank fire, but that didn’t affect his decision to honor the firms for their work in rebuilding the World Trade Center.
“I don’t really see it as a conflict,” Calzonetti told us. “The work being done there by these three companies is important for everybody.”
