By JEFFERSON SIEGEL  |  On Sunday morning, Margaret Chin formally announced her campaign for a second term. Dozens of supporters, including local activists and powerhouse political allies like Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Congressmember Nydia Velazquez, filled the steps of Independence Plaza North in Tribeca to show their support for the First District’s first Asian-American [...]

BY TERESE LOEB KREUZER  |  Puppeteer Ronny Wasser-strom and artist David Evirett-Carlson were nervous. They had just emerged from a Community Board 2 Parks and Waterfront Committee meeting on May 1 where Manhattan Borough Parks Commissioner Bill Castro had faced a room full of expressive-matter vendors who were not shy about expressing their questions and [...]

BY LINCOLN ANDERSON  |   More than 400 people — many of them indignant and fuming — turned out for a Community Board 2 forum last Thursday night on bike-share and, specifically, the siting of the new bike-share docking stations. C.B. 2 Chairperson David Gruber opened the remarks by saying he was disappointed that, despite his [...]

BY SARAH FERGUSON  |  New York’s community gardeners were once derided as squatters, even “communists,” for staking out flowerbeds and vegetable patches on city-owned lots. But on Sat., April 27, they were greeted by the city’s mayoral contenders as something else: political stakeholders. Seven candidates — including frontrunner Christine Quinn, Comptroller John Liu and former [...]

BY SAM SPOKONY  |  Damaris Reyes, executive director of Good Old Lower East Side, was the final person to speak before the interim opening of Pier 42 last Saturday, but she told a beginning of its history. And with her organization, which works to support neighborhood and preservation, entering its 35th year — just after recovering from [...]

BY SARAH FERGUSON  |  Gregg Singer’s plan to convert the East Village’s old P.S. 64 into an upscale 500-bed dorm received favorable reviews from members of the Landmarks Preservation Commission on Tuesday. Although L.P.C. postponed a vote on the project pending further modifications, the commissioners generally praised the proposed reworking of the turn-of the-century elementary [...]

BY ALAN KRAWITZ  | “Sign, sign, everywhere a sign, blockin’ out the scenery, breakin’ my mind.” Those lyrics from the 1970s song “Signs” could also apply to some Downtown residents’ wariness about a new program intended to help people navigate city streets. The new city initiative, scheduled to begin later this spring, will include the placement [...]