Can’t trust dorm plan
To The Editor:
Re “Dorm plans O.K.’d for former CHARAS; Mendez vows to fight” (news article, Aug. 28):
The contracts seem so flimsy, vague and full of holes, that it appears there may only be a few dozen students, and otherwise the place will be run as a tourist hostel.
If the developer is legitimately making a dorm, then he needs to produce contracts with educational institutions showing that they will populate it. Instead he has a vague agreement for “right of first refusal” and a commitment to 10 of 132 beds.
And this doesn’t even cover the summer months. What happens during those months? He operates as a tourist hostel. What happens when Cooper Union decides it doesn’t need any beds and Joffrey Ballet School just takes a dozen? He operates as a tourist hostel.
The whole point is that the developer has repeatedly lied and broken promises in the past, so no one trusts him now.
Cormac Flynn
Time to compromise
To The Editor:
Re “Dorm plans O.K.’d for former CHARAS; Mendez vows to fight” (news article, Aug. 28):
I think that this conversion is the best option for the neighborhood. I would rather have students and dancers living there than whatever might occupy the building. Nothing is perfect, but we need to compromise.
I would much prefer to see the old school restored and remain in place, than some god-awful glass tower built. It is a beautiful structure, whose scale fits the neighborhood.
David Jarrett
Rich kids will rule
To The Editor:
Re “Dorm plans O.K.’d for former CHARAS; Mendez vows to fight” (news article, Aug. 28):
Tompkins Square Park will be overrun with students. It will be their playground, maybe even their beer hall.
Students are fine, but not in large numbers in a residential neighborhood. It is stupid to mix lifestyles this way. Our park, our wonderful amenity will be ruined.
I went to the hearing on this at the Municipal Building. I believe it was said that students from any school could reside there. Did I hear the Joffrey Ballet School mentioned? It’s a great academic institution. But it will be a rich kids’ paradise, East Village and all.
How much money will be made on the project, and by whom?
It was a regular club there at the meeting. Smiles all around. Greed ruled. Too disgusting. I’ve been a Village East Towers resident since 1969. I think I now prefer the bad old East Village days.
Eve Cusson
Energetic till the end
To The Editor:
Re “Rebecca Lepkoff, L.E.S. photographer, dies at 98” (obituary, Aug. 28):
In the last number of years, I would run into Rebecca in the Village, still traipsing around with a point-and-shoot. She was taking pottery at Greenwich House, just a few years ago. At the age of 96, she still took the subway up to her apartment in Harlem, where she moved with Gene, her husband of more than 70 years. I loved running into her occasionally in Washington Square Park.
Tequila Minsky
Stranger than fiction
To The Editor:
Re “To be or not to be? Shakespeare & Co. to close” (news article, Aug. 28):
An important factor to note is that when community staples like this close, nothing new opens in their place. After the demise of the big chain music stores — Coconuts, Sam Goody, Tower — nothing, not one new music store opened. When the Virgin Megastore closed at Union Square that was the end of an era.
Now, the Barnes & Noble on the corner of Eighth St. and Sixth Ave is gone.
Yes, Shakespeare & Co. was a smaller space, but again, rest assured, there will be no new bookstore replacing it. So ask yourself — in your new pseudo tech-savvy world — just what you are so quick to bid farewell to. You were warned.
It’s like something out of a Ray Bradbury sci-fi story, where technology advances to the point that there’s no need to even leave the house anymore and your plasma flat-screen is viewed as a family member.
Does anybody out there remember the goths at the Funhouse on Eighth St. not far from Sixth Ave. God help me. I miss you guys!
Terrence Confino
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