Alliance Solidarity
As far as we know, new Downtown Alliance president Jessica Lappin did not literally hit the ground running, but she did take a walk around FiDi with Community Board 1 chairperson Catherine McVay Hughes soon after taking office.
Lappin, the former Upper East Side councilmember, also showed up to C.B. 1’s Executive Committee last week, and expressed sympathy for the board’s efforts to relax some of the tight security restrictions proposed for the World Trade Center.
She said former Police Commissioner Ray Kelly was “very stubborn” about considering modifications, and she offered a smidgen of hope for a little change.
“There is a new administration, although a lot of this has already been set,” she said.
Indeed, although Bill de Blasio was highly critical of Kelly’s Stop and Frisk policies during last year’s mayoral campaign, he also told Downtown Express he admired Kelly’s anti-terrorism record, and would be reluctant to make any changes at the W.T.C.
The Arms of Downtown
F.Y.I., one of the New Yorker’s “Five Favorite Sentences” last week was this by Thomas Beller: “There is only so much real estate to be sold on a tank top without obscuring the team logo; sleeves are the equivalent of the landfill on which Battery Park City was built.” Apparently the NBA is considering selling ads on sleeved jerseys, in the same way B.P.C. added to Lower Manhattan’s lucrative real estate stock three decades ago.
Singing for Pete
Musicians and others will be celebrating the life of legendary folk singer Pete Seeger, who was also a longtime friend of Lower Manhattan harbor, Sun., March 2 from 2 – 5 p.m. at a “Memorial Sing” at John Street Church, 44 John St. New York Packet, sea chantey specialists, and the Folk Music Society of New York, organized the event, which, in Pete’s spirit, is being billed as a “free will donation” concert. Proceeds after expenses will go to Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, the environmental group co-founded by Seeger.
VIRAL TOWER HOAX
Any Tribecans who were browsing the real estate blogs probably spotted an alarming item — a rendering of a futuristically absurd, 860-foot residential “Sky Wing Tower” planned for 101 Murray St.
The story, as reported by the sites, was that developers Steven Witkoff and Fisher Brothers are jointly developing the gargantuan tower on the site — which is currently a St. John’s University building — after purchasing the site from St. John’s last year for $223 million.
Well, we checked it out…and although the Witkoff/Fisher purchase of the site is real, the story behind the rendering is false. We repeat, that monstrosity is NOT planned for 101 Murray St., according to the developer.
It turns out that Coop Himmelb(l)au, the Austrian architectural firm, which designed that rendering, has absolutely no connection to that development site, according to a spokesperson for Fisher Brothers. According to the firm’s site, the tower is planned for an unspecified location in New York City.
“There have been some recent online blog posts about 101 Murray St. that are wrong,” Suzi Halpin, the spokesperson, wrote in a Feb. 21 email to us. “There is no design rendering yet. The image that was used in those inaccurate posts is not the rendering, and the cited architectural firm is not working on the project.”
