Bed Bath & Beyond
Residents of the new luxury condos at 101 Warren St. won’t have to go far to furnish their high-end homes. Several sources say houseware giant Bed Bath & Beyond will join Barnes & Noble and Whole Foods in the buildings’ 50,000 square foot retail complex. The buildings and stores being developed by Edward Minskoff are scheduled to open in the summer of 2007.
Those residents wishing to truly celebrate the synergy should pick up a set of Bed Bath & Beyond’s “Tribeca Towels.” Selling for $19.99 apiece, the plush terries feature a cross-hatch stitching pattern and come in such condo-worthy colors as “seaglass” and “mocha.” Tribeca-themed dishware is also available.
Loose purse strings
If there is nothing like found money, could there be anything like losing it after it has been discovered?
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation thought last month it had found $67.5 million for a long-ago promised Downtown community fund, but it turns out they only found $61 million. Kori-Ann Taylor, L.M.D.C. spokesperson, said the corporation would not explain where the $6.5 million went, but said the new estimate came after refining the numbers.
Bettina Damiani of Good Jobs New York, a frequent L.M.D.C. critic, said the L.M.D.C. should be paying better attention to its last bit of federal dollars. “Ask small businesses if a few million here or there wouldn’t have been helpful to them,” she told UnderCover.
Factory gets the point
Community Board 1’s Tribeca Committee gave the Knitting Factory a needling Thursday night, but eventually recommended that the State Liquor Authority approve the multi-level rock club’s application for a liquor license renewal.
The club, located at 74 Leonard St., has come under fire in the past for allowing its late-night clientele to continue their revelry on the block. As such, many board members appeared skeptical when the license came up for renewal. The Factory’s fate was saved by an unlikely ally — newly appointed board member Allan Tannenbaum.
As a public member of the Quality of Life Committee, Tannenbaum had been one of the club’s major detractors. But after closely monitoring the Factory’s progress, he told board members that the club had made great strides by increasing its security, improving signage and corralling concert-goers behind a rope outside the entrance. He recommended that the board support the license renewal, but cautioned that the Knitting Factory must still work to reduce its noise output and prevent its bands from illegally blocking off side streets with their buses and vans.
If only the committee had the power to prevent The Cardigans from playing “Lovefool” when they come to the Factory on Oct. 31.
Scared mini-mayor
Now that Sean Sweeney, director of the Soho Alliance, has been dubbed one of the city’s “mini-mayors” by the New York Times City Section, he’s getting kind of scared. Whenever someone gets killed in a drive-by shooting or by a car that jumps a curb it always seems to be a man or woman known as “the mayor of the block,” Sweeney noted. Sweeney, who is also president of Downtown Independent Democrats political club, said he’s been invited to the upcoming birthday party of Jonathan Tasini — the antiwar candidate who got trounced in the Senate primary by Hillary Clinton — and that Tasini says he’s not going to fade from the political scene. “He wants to build a progressive movement,” Sweeney said. (By the way, the Times missed one “mini-mayor” — Rhome, the humongous, but friendly pit bull that belongs to Amy on Clinton St. “Everyone calls him the mayor of the block,” said Amy.)
