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Downtown Express photo by Milo Hess
Children’s Day ended with a crescendo Saturday night as fireworks lit the sky over the South Street Seaport.The colorful fireworks launched from barges in the East River followed a performance by the BrooklynPhilharmonic Orchestra and capped a day of free children’s music and theater. Gordon, a familiar face from“Sesame Street,” hosted the festivities.
BY JULIE SHAPIRO
The Sports Museum of America’s loss is LowerManhattan families’ gain.After the museum at 26Broadway went bankruptand closed earlier this year,the Dept. of Education isstepping in to convert thespace into school seats.The city has not signed thelease yet, but “We’re veryclose to an agreement,”D.O.E. spokesperson WillHavemann said Wednesday.Havemann would not con-firm any details about thespace or the lease terms,citing the negotiations.The Sports Museumoccupied at least 45,000square feet in 26 Broadway.That space will open up seatsfor a total of 1,000 students,said Paul Goldstein, direc-tor of Assembly SpeakerSheldon Silver’s districtoffice. He said it was pret-ty much a done deal. It isunclear when the seats willbe ready.The D.O.E. is alreadybuilding school seats inthe lower Broadway officebuilding for the UrbanAssembly School of Businessfor Young Women, a highschool that is moving in thisfall. As part of that project,the D.O.E. had long saidthat an additional 250 seatsin 26 Broadway would beavailable to the community.Now, with the city’s impend-ing acquisition of the SportsMuseum space, the 250extra seats will rise to 1,000seats, Goldstein said.The new Sports Museumspace could become a homefor the Greenwich VillageMiddle School, which needsto move from its currentelementary school building
First and goal for schoolspace in Sports Museum
BY JULIE SHAPIRO
It only took one softball game toconvince Alex Townes-West to stick tobaseball.“First of all, they pitched underhand,which I don’t really like,” said Alex, 9,her brown ponytail bobbing beneath herPirates baseball cap. “The ball doesn’tcome very fast, and sometimes it drops.”Ducking her head sheepishly, she said of the other softball players: “I just didn’tthink they were very good.”Alex is one of three girls this year onthe Downtown Little League Pirates,a Minors baseball team in a divisiondominated by boys. Of about 130 play-ers in the division, only six are girls.Coaches say this is the first time inrecent memory that three girls havebeen drafted by a single Minors team.“All three are excellent athletes,”said Paul Kussie, manager of thePirates. “They know the game, andthey seem very passionate about thegame…. They’re probably the top play-ers on the team.”Alex, a third-grader at NEST, is oneof the youngest on the team, but she hasa strong throw that serves her well whenshe plays third base, parents said. AvaVillalba, 9, is the team’s best hitter andshe plays shortstop because she thinksquickly and makes good catches. Andthe Pirates’ first draft pick this year was
The girls of summer
Continued on
 page 3 
Continued on
 page 21
®
 VOLUME 22, NUMBER 6 THE NEWSPAPER OF LOWER MANHATTAN
JUNE 19 - 25, 2009
A look at Fitermanbefore the fall
PAGE 5DENZEL RIDES “PELHAM 123”, P. 26
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Downtown Express photos by J.B. Nicholas
 
June 19 - 25, 2009
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downtown express 
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-17  Mixed Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 Seaport Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 
EDITORIAL PAGES
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CLASSIFIEDS
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30-31
C.B. 1
M
EETINGS
The upcoming week’s schedule of CommunityBoard 1 committee meetings is below. Unless other-wise noted, all committee meetings are held at theboard office, located at 49-51 Chambers St., room709 at 6 p.m.
ON THURS., JUNE 18:
The Quality of LifeCommittee will meet.Note: Community Board 1’s monthly meetinghas been postponed until June 30 at 6 p.m. inthe Southbridge Towers Community Room at 90Beekman St.
 S
EALING
 
 THE
 
ENVELOPE
?
Rumors of the Peck Slip Post Office’s demise justwon’t go away, and this week the U.S. Postal Servicefinally admitted they’re considering closing the Seaportoutpost.“It’s one of the options, but no final decision hasbeen made,” U.S.P.S. spokesperson
Darleen Reid
toldUnderCover.The Postal Service is doing a facilities optimizationstudy to see if they can make better use of their spaces,including the Peck Slip office, Reid said. E-mail andonline bill payments have cut into the Postal Service’srevenue, with mail volumes plummeting to levels notseen since the 1960s, so the U.S.P.S. has to make cuts,Reid said.Reid expects a decision to come by the end of theU.S.P.S. fiscal year Sept. 30.Meanwhile, UnderCover tipster
Paul Hovitz
heardfrom Peck Slip employees this week who were told thatin September, they would be moving to the much largerChurch St. post office. Hovitz is also hearing that thePeck Slip building was sold, but property records don’tshow a sale. Workers first began delivering the messageto Hovitz about the pending closure almost a year ago.
L
OST
 
HEARING
City Councilmember
Alan Gerson
does not have anydirect power over the parties mired in a dispute over thefuture of the World Trade Center site, but usually themajor players eventually show up to testify at Gerson’sLower Manhattan Redevelopment hearings.However, when Gerson scheduled a hearing on theTrade Center site for June 3, at the outset of the recenttense negotiations over the site’s finances, the PortAuthority begged off, requesting that Gerson move thehearing later in the month.Gerson agreed, on one condition: that Port Authorityexecutive director
Chris Ward
come to the rescheduledhearing. The Port agreed, and Gerson set a new hearingdate of June 15.But then, as the date approached, Gerson heard fromthe Port that Ward would be out of town during the newhearing and wanted to send written testimony. That wasunacceptable to Gerson, so he postponed the hearingonce again, now to June 26 at 10 a.m.“It’s so important to have [Ward] there to answerquestions,” Gerson said. “To wait one more week madesense.”UnderCover asked Gerson if Ward had promised toshow up to Gerson’s hearing if the major issues aboutthe site’s future remained unresolved. The parties havespoken very little publicly since negotiations started atthe beginning of the month.The Port Authority “made it clear that it was uncon-ditional attendance, whether or not they have a deal,”Gerson said. “It’s not going beyond this month, I assureyou,” he added of his thrice-scheduled hearing.
 T
HREESOME
Paul Newell
, who challenged Assembly Speaker
 Shelly
 
Silver
last year in his first primary in over twodecades, has entered the Downtown Democratic Districtleader fray to join a race that already pits incumbent
Adam Silvera
against
Avram Turkel
.“I didn’t know the job was so glamorous,” quippedSilvera.It is unusual, but not unprecedented, to have threepeople vying for the unpaid position, which is intended tohelp local Democratic legislators stay connected to theirconstituencies, rally the party troops, etc. There’s a maleand female leader for each part of an Assembly district.None of the candidates had much bad to say abouteach other — hey guys, if you run for an office not manypeople know about, can you at least make it fun?Newell did say he had wished Silvera had endorsedhim against Silver. There wasn’t much chance of thathappening, given Silvera has been a loyal Silverado overthe years. Which brings up another interesting point —Silver has not yet endorsed Silvera. The speaker told ushe’ll wait to see who makes the ballot before weighingin on the race.Newell said it would be good if one of the eight dis-trict leaders in Silver’s district did not always agree withthe speaker. (Newell did quickly endorsed Silver last yearafter losing the primary.)Newell and Silvera are backing
Pete Gleason
for CityCouncil while Turkel is in incumbent Alan Gerson’scorner.
C
REDIT
 
 SQUEEZE
A developer wants to overhaul the former Citibank head-quarters at 250 West St. and replace the offices with 105condos and a rooftop addition — but there’s the small matterof paying for it.Developer Elad Properties sought approval for the chang-es to the historic building from Community Board 1’sLandmarks Committee last week and plans to go to the cityLandmarks Preservation Commission July 7. C.B. 1’s com-mittee gave the project an advisory go-ahead, but the devel-oper doesn’t yet have the money to build the project.“Nobody is financing anything,” a candid
Yoel Shargian
,C.O.O. of Elad Properties, said after the C.B. 1 meeting.Company spokesperson
Lloyd Kaplan
later added, “It’searly on in the process. We haven’t crossed that bridge yet.”Kaplan said the company would not seek financing untilthey receive city approval.It’s been just over a year since the community board sawanother plan for the building, from developer Coalco NewYork. They defaulted on the property, Shargian said.
W
EDDING
 
BUS
Jason Sherwood
, 39, Downtown Express’s senior mar-keting consultant, and
Meryl Finger
, 32, tied the knotin Key West Sun., June 14. The lead up to the weddingwas a wild bus ride — literally. The happy couple took acrowded bus down from New York with Finger’s plus-sizeburlesque band, the Glamazons. Footage from the rideand the Orthodox Jewish wedding is expected to air inOctober on a wedding reality show that Sherwood’s confi-dentiality agreement forbids him from disclosing. Mr. andMs. Sherwood are back in the city and are hoping to takea short honeymoon away from the cameras soon. We wish ‘em well. Congrats.
N
EW
 
 ARRIVAL
Irene Chang
, general counsel to the Lower ManhattanDevelopment Corp., missed the L.M.D.C.’s meeting lastweek, but Chairperson
Avi Schick
assured the board that shehad a very good reason: Chang gave birth to a son,
DeganChang Cimino
, April 19. Degan, who weighed 7 pounds, 8ounces, was also welcomed into the world by father
PaulCimino
.
S
END
 
YOUR
 
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downtown express 
June 19 - 25, 2009
3
“Anticipated Completion: November2010,” reads the sign in front of P.S./I.S.276, the new K-8 school rising in southernBattery Park City.That date will come as a surprise to themany parents who have been watching theschool’s progress closely and are expectingit to open as promised in September 2010,not November. But Will Havemann, spokes-person for the city Dept. of Education, saidthis week that there’s no cause for concern:The School Construction Authority sign isincorrect and the school will open on sched-ule, Havemann said.The D.O.E. also had good news for par-ents earlier this month when they said thesixth grade at P.S./I.S. 276 would open in2010. Previously, the D.O.E. had said theschool would just have kindergarten andfirst grade classes in 2010, and the middleschool would not open until those studentsreached sixth grade in 2015.Jeff Mihok, who lives across from thenew school, is glad the D.O.E. agreed toopen the sixth grade earlier, but he wants aguarantee that local children will receive anadmissions preference.“We’re the ones who worked so hard tohave the school built,” Mihok said. “It wassupposed to be a neighborhood school in ourneighborhood.”Mihok’s oldest daughter is finishing fourthgrade at P.S. 89, and he hopes she will attendsixth grade at P.S./I.S. 276 in 2010.Havemann said the D.O.E. woulddecide on 276’s middle school admissionspolicy over the next year, working with theDistrict 2 Community Education Council.Most middle schools have no geographicpreference, yet they end up filling withlocal students anyway through self-selec-tion, Havemann said.Part of the reason Downtown parentswant a middle school with preference fortheir children is that the neighborhood’szoned middle school, Baruch, is up on E.21st St., a particularly long trek from south-ern B.P.C.
— Julie Shapiro 
City about to securemore school space
because it is overcrowded. The city brieflymulled moving G.V.M.S. temporarily toP.S./I.S. 276, the new Battery Park Cityschool, but it now appears more likely thatG.V.M.S. will move to 26 Broadway instead,Goldstein said.Havemann confirmed the possibility of G.V.M.S. moving to 26 Broadway and saidhe would have more information about theuse of the new space by the end of the sum-mer. The Greenwich Village school needs tomove in fall 2010.A move to the Financial District wouldlikely anger Village parents who have alsobeen fighting for school space, and hadhoped to find a spot closer to home for themiddle school, which presumably wouldchange its name.The principal of G.V.M.S. did not returncalls for comment.The city previously floated moving anoth-er middle school, I.S. 89, from Battery ParkCity to 26 Broadway, but local parentsprotested back then that the high-securityFinancial District was not a good place fora school.If the Greenwich Village school makesa permanent home at 26 Broadway, therewill still be at least 400 seats available inthe building that have not yet been spokenfor, Goldstein said. They could be elemen-tary, middle or high school seats, he toldCommunity Board 1’s Youth and EducationCommittee Tuesday night, and the com-mittee members appeared to favor middleschool seats. While the committee members, all localparents, appeared grateful that new schoolseats were on the way, they were concernedthat the city often forgets about amenitieslike gyms and auditoriums when they carveclassrooms out of office buildings. SeveralDowntown high schools in office buildingshave no gyms.“It’s not enough to have the seats,” saidLiat Silberman, a Youth Committee member.“There has to be the structure around theseats.”“I don’t think it’s a suitable space,” addedAnn DeFalco, co-chairperson of the com-mittee.Goldstein said he had raised the sameconcerns with the Dept. of Education, andhe thinks it would be hard to build largegathering spaces into 26 Broadway. He saidhis office would continue fighting for thecommon spaces, but he did not think it wiseto turn down classroom seats the city wantsto build.
 Julie@DowntownExpress.com
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Education Dept.: Don’t believe what you read
Continued from
page 1
Downtown Express photo by Jared T. Miller 
The Dept. of Education said this week that P.S./I.S. 276 will open at the beginningof the 2010 school year in September with a sixth grade, and not in Nov. 2010,despite a sign to the contrary.
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