Downtown Express, 7-24-9

Photo by Joe Woolhead

Tanya Ridley, a metal lather, hoists a rod of rebar at Tower 4 at the World Trade Center site.

BY JULIE SHAPIRO

Claremont Prep’s $30million expansion is back ontrack after the school final-ized a lease this week for200,000 square feet at 25Broadway.Claremont will use thespace for middle and highschool classes starting in thefall of 2010, said MichaelKoffler, C.E.O. of Met Schools,Claremont’s parent company.Koffler made a similarannouncement in March,saying the school had leasedspace for its expansion at 100Church St., but Claremontopted out of that dealbecause the 25 Broadwayspace was better, Kofflersaid. A major tipping pointwas 25 Broadway’s location, just steps from Claremont’sBroad St. home.“You walk right out ourdoor, cross Bowling Green,and there you are,” Kofflersaid. “It’s a wonderful build-ing, it’s close by, and thestaff is really thrilled.”Claremont was able toback out of the 100 ChurchSt. lease because owner TheSapir Organization took along time to get their bankto sign off on the deal,Koffler said.The asking rent at 25Broadway was $39 per squarefoot, compared to $40 at100 Church. Koffler said hepaid very close to the askingrent at 25 Broadway, whichis owned by the WolfsonGroup. Wolfson and Sapircould not immediately bereached for comment.Claremont had detailedarchitectural plans and ren-

25 Broadway makes the grade for privateschool’s expansion

BY JULIE SHAPIRO

Ashia Johns goes to work every daywearing a white hard hat on her headand a ﬂashy white-gold diamond ringon her left hand.The hard hat keeps her safe as shebuilds the new Goldman Sachs head-quarters Downtown. The engagementring look-alike, which Johns boughtfor herself, also keeps her safe — fromthe attentions of the dozens of men sheworks with.“I wear the ring as a decoy,” Johnssaid, laughing as she ate lunch onthe edge of the construction site on arecent afternoon. “They don’t reallybother me,” she said of her male co-workers. “I just use [the ring] to throwthem off.”Johns, 35, is one of the rare womenwho choose carpentry as a career. Forevery 65 male carpenters, there is onlyone female carpenter, according to a2008 U.S. Dept. of Labor study. Othertrades are even more skewed towardmen — in the same 2008 study, themost unbalanced of all professions inthe country was bricklaying, whichboasted only one woman for every 230men.On the whole, women represent2.5 percent of the total workers in theconstruction and excavation industry,up from 2.1 percent 20 years ago, the

Rosie the Riveter redux:Women work it at W.T.C.

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VOLUME 22, NUMBER 11 THE NEWSPAPER OF LOWER MANHATTAN

JULY 24 - 30, 2009

Knitters get In The Loop

PAGE 10

COLLABORATIVE ART SHOWS, P. 23

July 24 - 30, 2009

2

downtown express

S

TILL

IN

THE

RACE

Arthur Gregory

, a City Council candidate, started aphone conversation with us recently by saying, “In case youheard the rumors, I did not drop out of the race.” We actually hadn’t heard that rumor yet, but it quicklybecame clear why it had sprung up. Gregory waited until 10minutes before the midnight deadline last Wednesday nightto ﬁle his petitions with the Board of Elections, so other can-didates ﬁgured he was a no-show. He also has not registeredany campaign contributions with the city.Gregory said he likes being the last person to do some-thing — for example, he claims that he was the last personin Manhattan to vote for

Obama

on election night. As forthe lack of campaign contributions, Gregory says he hasabout $35,000 in undeposited checks. He didn’t want totake people’s money until he was sure he would qualify forthe ballot, he said.Gregory admits that he was considering dropping outbecause he has to have surgery on his ankle, but that can waituntil after the primary. If he had dropped out, he would havegiven his vote to incumbent

Alan Gerson

, he said.The ﬁve-way race is still without a clear overall frontrun-ner this week — at least in terms of the candidates’ petitionsignatures and quarterly fundraising stats.

Margaret Chin

is leading the way in fundraising, hav-ing brought in nearly $114,000 so far. But

PJ Kim

is closebehind, with just over $91,000, and he has more moneystill in the bank than Chin, about $41,000 compared to her$37,000, their campaigns said. The city’s generous matchingfunds make small fundraising differences nearly irrelevant.Gerson has raised $54,000 and his campaign managerwould not say how much he has left. Another candidate,

PeteGleason

, has raised $37,500 and has about $11,000 left, hiscampaign said.None of the candidates challenged the others’ petitionsignatures, though many of them privately questioned eachother’s numbers. Gerson indisputably came in with the most,a total of 7,100 and far more than the 900 needed. Kim saidhe had just under 5,500, Chin’s campaign said she had nearly4,700, Gleason’s campaign said 4,500 and Gregory said hewould up with nearly 1,600.

T

HREESOME

NOW

A

TWOSOME

While the First District City Council battle rages on, a lesswell-known race got a little simpler this week when

AdamSilvera

stopped campaigning for Democratic district leaderand endorsed fellow candidate

Paul Newell

.Silvera has been district leader for 16 years, but he saidhe’s ready to try something new.“It shouldn’t be a life term,” Silvera told UnderCover.“There should be movement, opening up the opportunity forother people.”District leader is an unpaid position and doesn’t usu-ally engender so much interest, but this year Silverafound himself facing not one but two opponents. Firstthere was

Avram Turkel

, a strong advocate of incumbentCouncilmember Alan Gerson. (Silvera supports Gersonchallenger Pete Gleason.)Then Newell joined the fray last month. Also a Gleasonsupporter, Newell had made an unsuccessful bid last year totopple Assembly Speaker

Shelly Silver

.Silvera said he made the decision not to run while on thetrail collecting petition signatures, and he said in some wayshe felt relieved to be done.Turkel and Newell, the remaining candidates, both shiedaway from criticizing each other in the press, but after Silverachallenged the signatures Turkel collected, Turkel is challengingNewell’s. Turkel said he collected just over 900 signatures andNewell said he got about 1,200. They each needed 500.

V

ACANT

LOT

Good news for the people who are tired of staring at thegarbage-heaped vacant lot at Greenwich and W. Thames Sts.: Itcould soon be cleaned up and home to construction trailers.

Pat Moore

, a Cedar St. resident, has been railing against thelot for months, calling it an eyesore totally out of keeping with theneighborhood just south of the World Trade Center site. A gapin the lot’s fence is wide enough for people to squeeze through,and the lot is ﬁlled with empty beer bottles, discarded fast-foodwrappers and even some threadbare items of clothing.The city was apparently having trouble getting the ownerto ﬁx up the lot, but now it looks like Bovis Lend Lease,which is managing the work at the Deutsche Bank build-ing, wants to use the site for construction trailers.

John DeLibero

, spokesperson for the Lower Manhattan DevelopmentCorp., said Bovis is in negotiations to take over the site forthe next six months. When Moore heard, she was happy, but not thrilled. “So,it’ll be a trailer park,” she said.

S

CAFFOLDING

SALE

There are plenty of recession specials popping up at shopsall around the city, but here’s one that was new to us: A valuemart on Chambers St. is advertising a “Super ScaffoldingSale,” using signs dangling from said scaffolding to boastdiscounts of 25 percent or more.The scaffolding covering the RHX Super Value, andmuch of its block on Chambers St. between Church St. andBroadway, went up a couple months ago, partially hiding thestore from view. Sale specials at the store include bottledwater for 19 cents and rolling suitcases for $19.99.

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EY

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AMES

PERFORMANCE

This year’s July 25 celebration of the Feast of St. Jameswon’t be limited to a feast for the appetite; locally renownedorganist

Jonathan B. Hall

will perform in Lower Manhattanfor the day’s ceremonies.Hall, who was a former dean of the American Guildof Organists and is one of the premier organists in themetropolitan area, will play a special concert at 8 p.m.that day in honor of the holiday. He will also play the 11a.m. Mass the next day. He will be joined by saxophonist

William Powers

.The performances will take place at St. James Church,located at 32 James St. Sunday’s festivities will also includeother musical performances, a ﬂea market and food, avail-able on James St., which will be closed to trafﬁc.

NEWS

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EDITORIAL PAGES

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CLASSIFIEDS

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C.B. 1

M

EETINGS

The upcoming week’s schedule of CommunityBoard 1 meetings is below.

ON TUES., JULY 28:

The Community Board 1monthly meeting will be held at 6 p.m. at the Museumof Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Pl.

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downtown express

July 24 - 30, 2009

3

BY JULIE SHAPIRO

After years of enduring the seeminglyendless construction on Fulton St., AleksMisyuk thought he finally had some goodnews.Several months ago, city representa-tives told him that his business, MyOptician at 88 Fulton St., would receive agrant to improve its storefront.“They said there’s no way you will notbe approved,” Misyuk said. “It was hardfor me to believe in that — there’s nothingfree in this country. But they were comingin one day after another, very energetic.It was hard not to believe in that after awhile.”However, when Misyuk filled out anapplication and submitted it, the answercame back quickly: He was not currentlyeligible because his landlord had out-standing violations on the property.“You said you want to help out businessowners,” Misyuk said angrily, referring tothe city. “I am a small guy. You said youwant to do something in particular for mystore — why don’t you do that?”Janel Patterson, spokesperson for thecity’s Economic Development Corp., saidin an e-mail that the city is trying to con-tact Misyuk’s landlord and hopes to workwith the building’s commercial tenants tofind a solution. Patterson said that whilebuildings with warrants, liens and viola-tions are not automatically disqualifiedfrom the program, any problems must becleared up before the city begins work onthe property.The $15 million Fulton NassauCrossroads Program offers free design,engineering and construction manage-ment, along with up to $275,000 forconstruction, to buildings on Fulton andNassau Sts. The idea behind the pro-gram, funded by the Lower ManhattanDevelopment Corp., is to improve thestorefronts along the major Seaportretail corridors that have undergone alot of recent construction. The city hasapproved about 50 businesses so far andis still taking applications.Several business owners who arereceiving grants lauded the program thisweek, but it is unclear whether Misyukwill ever benefit from it.Thurcon Properties, the owner of Misyuk’s building, has received more thanhalf a dozen violations from the Dept.of Buildings over the past three yearsfor failing to maintain the elevator. As aresult of the repeated violations, Thurconowes more than $20,000 to the city,according to D.O.B.’s online records.Thurcon did not return calls for com-ment.Misyuk did not criticize his landlord,but rather said the city should find a wayto still give him the grant money, which hewas promised. City representatives toldhim the only way he would not get a grantwas if he owed taxes or was a criminal,Misyuk said.Misyuk has long thought his storefrontneeded work, and before he had evenheard of the city program, he had alreadytaken out a private loan of $20,000 torenovate it. But once city representativestold him he was virtually guaranteed agrant through the facade-improvementprogram, he spent the money on advertis-ing and other costs instead.“I wasted my loan,” Misyuk said thisweek, and now he cannot afford to takeout another one to do the storefront workhe had planned. He estimates that heneeds $12,000, which falls well within thelowest tier of the city’s program. Misyukhopes an all-glass storefront would attractmore customers into his shop, which hassuffered during two years of water-mainconstruction on Fulton St.John Fratta, chairperson of CommunityBoard 1’s Seaport Committee, was sur-prised to hear of Misyuk’s difficulties.“That’s outrageous,” Fratta said.“That’s unbelievable, that they will leavethat storefront unrenovated… The mon-ey’s not going to the landlord, the moneyis going to the storeowner.”The city’s program has three tiers,representing varying levels of funding andscopes of work. The lowest level, whichMisyuk applied for, gives business ownersup to $15,000 for basic improvements totheir storefronts. The upper tiers are formore extensive work, possibly coveringthe entire building, and require owners tocontribute some money as well.Those who have been approved for theprogram said it is coming not a momenttoo soon.Alex Cardinali, who owns the Ruben’sEmpanadas on Fulton St., said he lost 40percent of his sales since the water-mainconstruction started two years ago, andthe only way he’s able to stay open is byusing profits from his other three Ruben’slocations to pay the bills. With up to $15,000 from the city,Cardinali will buy a new electric gate, repainthis storefront and replace the air-condition-ing unit. He said he could not afford to makethe improvements on his own.“People are optimistic — for a change,”Cardinali said of some of his neighbors,who are also receiving grants. “We’vebeen suffering for the past two years.”The city’s program also offers consult-ing that is particularly helpful for ownersof landmarked buildings.Andy Kettler, an owner of the land-marked 127 Fulton St., qualified for allthree tiers of the city program, whichmeans he will receive hundreds of thou-sands of dollars worth of work, though hehas to match a portion of it. The grantswill allow him to restore the long-vacantstorefront to its 1893 condition, and alsoto clean the entire facade.“It’s working out great for us,” Kettlersaid. He hopes the work will begin thisfall and finish in the spring, and that he’llfinally be able to attract a ground-floorretail tenant to the space.Sadia Brangan just heard this week thather Nassau St. eyebrow salon, Thread,was approved for the program. The storehas been draped in scaffolding since sheopened it almost two years ago, and a pre-vious owner’s sign still lurks behind thatscaffolding, Brangan said. She hopes thescaffolding will come down soon, so shecan use her grant to put up her own signand get a new security gate.Brangan said the city’s program has thepower to transform the hodgepodge retailcorridors into a more visually appealingplace to shop, like Soho or the Lower EastSide. The more businesses take advantageof the program, the greater the impactcould be, she said.“When you walk down Nassau St., youdon’t have a trendy feel,” Brangan said.“It would help us more if other businessesupdated their look.”

Julie@DowntownExpress.com

Faced with construction, merchants want facade funds

Downtown Express photo by Jared T. Miller

Aleks Misyuk in front of his Fulton St. store.

‘When you walk downNassau St., you don’t havea trendy feel.’

Sadia Brangan,Thread eyebrow salon

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