Do we vote?
Bill Thompson’s election as chairperson of the Battery Park City Authority was such a foregone conclusion that board members skipped over a few steps in the formal voting process Monday morning.
After Thompson had been nominated, Lynn Rollins, a board member, asked, “Should we do this unanimously?”
Carl Jaffee, the authority’s corporate secretary, jumped in to stop the vote: “Real quick, just a formality, any other nominations?” he asked.
As expected, no one else stepped in — Gov. Paterson had already made it clear that Thompson was his pick, and the B.P.C.A. board complied by electing Thompson unanimously.
The board members weren’t the only ones who saw Thompson’s new title as a done deal — on March 22, a full week before Thompson was elected, a press release from B.P.C. groups on green-themed events quoted Thompson as chairman of the authority.
Irish ally
Watch out, Britain — the American Revolutionaries are joining forces with the Irish.
In this case, though, the partnership is just in the kitchen: The Sons of the Revolution of the State of New York announced this week that Dublin-based restaurant company The Porterhouse Group is moving into the historic Fraunces Tavern building.
The former Fraunces Tavern Restaurant, below the museum at 54 Pearl St., closed in February. The new owners will keep the restaurant’s name and historical feeling but may be changing the menu. The restaurant is scheduled to reopen June 1.
This will be Porterhouse’s first American location — founded in 1989, they operate restaurants, bars, clubs and a microbrewery in Dublin.
Budget questions again?
This week we may have gotten a little insight into how State Sen. Dan Squadron summons the patience to deal with Albany’s dysfunction. Squadron said he remained the youngest person in his family for many years, which meant it was up to him to read the four Seder questions for 14 consecutive years — an unusually long stint for a Jewish child.
New chair
The Hudson River Park Advisory Council has a new chairperson: Bob Townley, executive director of Manhattan Youth and chairperson of Community Board 1’s Waterfront Committee.
The leader of council rotates annually among the community boards that contain pieces of the park, and this year was C.B. 1’s turn. Julie Menin, C.B. 1 chairperson, said she appointed Townley because he knows all the players on the Hudson River Park Trust from when he ran youth programs on the old Pier 25.
One of the biggest issues facing the Trust is what to do with Pier 40, which is crumbling into the Hudson and needs millions of dollars of work. At a recent community board meeting, Townley suggested using Pier 40 for the hundreds of commuter and tour buses that inundate Downtown. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. has some money for a garage, and Pier 40 needs money, so “There could be a synergy there,” Townley said.
The Greenwich Village Little League, which plays near the pier parking, may call that one foul.
Spicy opening
We hear that Tamarind Tribeca, the bigger, better outpost of Avatar Walia’s Indian restaurant in Flatiron, is opening on Monday. Located at Hudson and Franklin Sts., the 6,000-square-foot, two-story space is sumptuous and well lit, according to our tipster, who got a peek inside this week.
Baby names
For those Lower Manhattan residents or aficionados who want to name their offspring after a neighborhood street, the Web site nameberry.com recently posted a list of several dozen Downtown streets that could make good baby names, along with their historical roots.
A few names won’t raise any eyebrows — for example, John St. (named for 17th-century shoemaker John Harpendingh) or William St. (possibly named for John Jacob Astor’s son). And a few unusual ones actually sound nice, like Forsyth St. (named for Lt. Colonel Ben Forsyth). But many of the others are harder to imagine bestowing on an infant: Ludlow (a War of 1812 hero), DeLancey (a farmer on the Lower East Side) and Barclay (the Rev. Henry Barclay was a rector at Trinity Church), just to name a few.
