The present context  |  The New York University public review process to add more than 2 million square feet to its two superblocks in the Village is drawing to its grand finale. The seven-month Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) application has received a resounding “no” vote from Community Board 2, “approval with conditions” from [...]

Ten years ago this week, no state in America afforded lesbian and gay couples marriage equality. The victory in Massachusetts was almost a year and a half away –– and New York’s, nine years. The sitting president in 2002 was hatching a strategy for re-election two years down the road that had as its cornerstone [...]

A bill that would have opened the Hudson River Park Act to significant changes was introduced in the Assembly this week, but failed to come up for a vote before the state legislative session ended. The bill was far from perfect. Notably, it did not include a provision to allow residential use on Pier 40, [...]

We rejoiced alongside 9/11 heroes and advocates when, on June 8, the federal government proposed to subsidize the treatment and compensation of first responders and others who developed cancer from exposure to Ground Zero toxins. Dr. John Howard’s forthcoming decision to add 50 forms of cancer to the James L. Zadroga 9/11 Health & Compensation [...]

Tom Duane, the openly gay Chelsea Democrat first elected to the New York State Senate in 1998, has announced he won’t seek re-election this November. At a press conference on Monday, Duane — indicating he was tired of the Albany grind — said he wanted to spend more time in New York City. Duane, 57, [...]

Community Board 4 will soon weigh in on the matter of allowing Jamestown Properties to vertically expand Chelsea Market — by adding as much as 330,000 square feet of office and hotel space to the building’s Ninth and Tenth Aves. sides. We urge C.B. 4 to oppose this plan in the strongest manner possible. A straightforward “Yes” [...]

We were glad to see Madelyn Wils at Community Board 2’s Waterfront Committee meeting Monday night, presenting the results of the recent consultants’ study on Pier 40. Wils, the Hudson River Park Trust’s president, laid out the basic facts of the study, as we have already reported them in this newspaper — namely, that of [...]

Providing a valuable service to the community, the Village Independent Democrats club held another bicycle forum last Thursday evening May 10. The club’s inaugural bicycle forum, held last April, was both thought-provoking and informative, and last week’s was no less so. The discussions at these panel forums help clarify the issues and challenges we all [...]

As we’ve said for sometime now, we support the efforts of the Hudson River Park Trust and its community task force to try to look “outside the box” and examine all ideas for Pier 40 and the entire 5-mile-long Lower West Side waterfront park. The park is facing an escalating financial deficit that threatens the [...]

The results of a new study for potential uses for Pier 40 were recently released, and are jumpstarting a vigorous discussion about the future of this critical, yet badly deteriorated, structure in the Hudson River Park. The study was largely done by HR & Advisors and finished up by Tishman/Aecom. It looked at seven different [...]