Change on the river
The Downtown Alliance’s River to River Festival just hired a new executive director for this summer’s season.
Robin Schatell, who most recently directed Riverside Park programming for the city Parks Dept., is taking over for Jody Kuh. Schatell has also produced the Museum Mile Festival on Fifth Ave. and has done arts programming at the 92nd St. Y.
The Alliance lost another River to River alum last fall when Valerie Lewis, one of the festival’s founders and an Alliance veep, left to become executive director of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus Academy.
Tire swing admirer
The tire swing that gave Tire Swing Park its name now sits propped against a post in the mud pit of the demolished park, apparently unwanted.
But the State Dept. of Transportation, which ripped down the tire swing and all the other play equipment last fall to reconstruct the area, also known as W. Thames Park, now says the tire swing has found an admirer.
“We have a person who wants it,” said Tom Mellett, the construction manager, told Community Board 1’s Battery Park City Committee on Tuesday.
A few C.B. 1 members immediately thought of Matthew Fenton, who led last fall’s crusade to save the park, but Fenton told UnderCover that he hadn’t thought of commandeering the tire swing — after all, who can fit a tire swing in their New York City apartment?
A D.O.T. spokesperson later said the agency did not have information about the mysterious tire swing admirer. The swing belongs to the project contractor now, so anyone who wants it has to go through the contractor.
On board
Traffic guru Sam Schwartz, who writes our Transit Sam column and runs his eponymous consulting firm Downtown, has just hired Howard Roberts, the former head of New York City Transit to be a senior vice president of transit. In addition to running the world’s largest subway system from 2007 to 2009, Roberts previously led the country’s fourth largest rail system, the SEPTA in suburban Philadelphia.
Pier A possibilities
The memory of the bruising Downtown school rezoning is not likely to fade anytime soon — and many people are glad to put the issue behind them.
When some Community Board 1 members started pushing for new school seats in the historic Pier A building this week, C.B. 1 member Jeff Galloway had one important caveat: “Only if they come with the zoning already decided,” he said, as members of the Battery Park City Committee laughed in agreement.
The B.P.C. Authority is still looking for proposals for the pier — spokesperson Leticia Remauro said the authority hasn’t received any formal submissions yet but expects to get some before the Feb. 16 deadline.
Tribeca tarot
With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, many people are looking for answers on love. Some of them will go to Liat Silberman, a Tribeca mom and former president of the P.S. 234 P.T.A., who also reads tarot cards for a living.
“In old Tribeca, it was kind of more normal,” Silberman said of the readings she now conducts in quiet corners of the Whole Foods cafe.
Silberman, a Community Board 1 member, limits her readings to personal events in people’s lives, not large world events. Unless she was doing a reading for President Obama, her predictions skew more toward luck in love than international politics.
“Though I did know that going into Afghanistan was a bad idea,” she said, “and not because I’m clairvoyant.”
