Downtown Express photo by Elisabeth Robert

Two of the “BlackBerry” kittens who were born recently in the Goldman Sachs building under construction inBattery Park City. They and two of their siblings are up for adoption. The mother and a ﬁfth kitten are missing.

BY JULIE SHAPIRO

City CouncilmemberAlan Gerson finally wonthe chance to run forreelection this week whena State Supreme Court judge reversed a Board of Elections ruling.“I’m very gratified,”Gerson said once he fin-ished shaking his support-ers’ hands outside JudgeEdward Lehner’s courtroom Wednesday afternoon. “It’sfull speed ahead.”The only thing thatcould stop Gerson now isan appeal by Pete Gleason,one of his four opponentsin the Sept. 15 Democraticprimary. Raymond Dowd,Gleason’s lawyer, plansto bring the case to theAppellate Division onTuesday.But after Judge Lehner’sdecision Wednesday,Gerson sounded confidentthat the embarrassing ques-tion of whether he wouldbe allowed a spot on theballot after spending eightyears in office had beenlaid to rest.Gerson first raninto trouble two weeksago when the Board of Elections refused to let himon the ballot because hiscampaign made a series of mistakes on the qualifyingpetitions. Gerson submit-ted about 7,000 signaturesto support his candidacy,far more than the 900required, but on some of

BY ALBERT AMATEAUAND LINCOLN ANDERSON

The disastrous collisionof a sightseeing helicop-ter and a private plane off of W. 14th St. over theHudson River on Saturdayprompted elected ofﬁcialsto demand regulation of the air corridor over theriver and prompted HudsonRiver Park advocates toinsist on an end to touristhelicopter ﬂights.The accident, in whichnine people perished,occurred at an altitude of 1,100 feet, which is 1 footbelow the ceiling at whichair space is controlledby the Federal AviationAdministration and, thus, anarea where safety dependson pilots’ vigilance.The helicopter originatedfrom the W. 30th St. heli-port. Located on HudsonRiver Park property, theheliport has long been thetarget of neighbors andpark advocates because of noise and engine fumes.Moreover, the 30th St. heli-port is the subject of a 2008

Gerson can runafter all, judge rulesWith 9 dead in theHudson, copters comeunder ﬁre again

BY JULIE SHAPIRO

The first tenant of the new GoldmanSachs tower paid no rent and signed nolease when she moved in this spring.Pregnant with quintuplets, she com-mandeered just a few square feet of space in the 43-story skyscraper thatis nearing completion. It was not theprime real estate with river views, butrather an alcove tucked between twosheets of plywood at the tower’s base.There, unnoticed by the interna-tional banking firm, the black cat builta bed of newspaper and cardboardboxes. At the end of June, when hernew home was ready, she brought fiveinky black kittens into a noisy world of jackhammers and backhoes.“I’ve never experienced anythinglike that,” said Silkey, a traffic flaggerfor the Goldman site, who discoveredthe kittens. Silkey, who goes by a singlename, noticed the pregnant cat trot-ting across Murray St. this spring andstarted feeding her before the kittenswere born. Local workers asked Silkeyabout the cat and soon several peoplewere taking turns buying food.“A lot of people here love cats,”Silkey said as she waved cars downMurray St. this week. “You don’t wantto see nothing happen to them.”Silkey and others cared for the catand kittens as best they could, but

Kittens born insideWall Street’s biggest lion

Continued on

page 3

Continued on

page 10

Continued on

page 14

nto

express

VOLUME 22, NUMBER 14 THE NEWSPAPER OF LOWER MANHATTAN

AUGUST 14 - 20, 2009

FRINGE FEST BEST BETS, P. 24

August 14 - 20, 2009

downtown express

ITERMAN

COMING

DOWN

The long-awaited work to take down Fiterman Hall hasbeen going on for a few weeks now. So far it’s been largelyinvisible from the street, but soon passersby will beginnoticing pieces of the damaged Borough of ManhattanCommunity College building just north of the World TradeCenter site coming down, said

Benn Lewis

, vice president of Airtek Environmental Corp., the project’s consultant.“This week there might be something visible from below,”Lewis told UnderCover.

URAL

COMPETITION

Downtowners who complain about the unsightliness of the World Trade Center construction now have the chanceto do something about it. The Port Authority and the city areholding a design competition for a mural that will cover theChurch St. fence between Liberty and Vesey Sts.The high-visibility mural has to be bold and colorful andshould optimistically reﬂect “the vibrancy of the thrivingDowntown commercial and residential neighborhood,” theguidelines state. Perhaps because it would be hard to showany optimism right now about the site’s future, the guidelinesadd that the mural should “not address the future construc-tion or development of the site.” Renderings blanketing otherparts of the site still show ofﬁce towers that likely won’tbe built anytime soon because of the bad economy and theimpasse between the Port and developer

Larry Silverstein

.The mural application, available at nyc.gov/urbanart, isdue Oct. 1. The mural will go up on the vinyl mesh panelsalong Church St. in December and will stay up at least untilNovember 2010.

ERSON

REPRIMANDED

Even supporters of City Councilmember

Alan Gerson

have been known to complain about his long-windedness.Usually, his listeners can do little more than wait until heﬁnishes, but Gerson found himself with a much less receptiveaudience last Thursday at a hearing about his inability to geton the ballot for reelection.Referee

Leslie Lowenstein

, who heard the case, grewimpatient when Gerson repeatedly embroidered answers towhat should have been direct, yes-or-no questions.“Mr. Gerson, we went through this the other day,”Lowenstein said as Gerson testiﬁed for the second time. “Iwant you to answer the question. There is no need for embel-lishment. This is not a speech-making forum. This is nothingof that sort. This is a proceeding under law. Respond to thequestions and that’s the end of it.”“Yes, sir,” Gerson replied, but he found it hard to breakhimself of the habit of long responses, and soon found himself in hot water again. “Sorry, your Honor, it is a hazard of mytrade,” Gerson said when Lowenstein stopped him again.Lowenstein was not pleased and continued to remindGerson to keep it brief throughout the rest of his testimony.

ERTILE

CROWD

A fundraiser for the Fertile Grounds Project, an educationalnonproﬁt, brought 200 people to the Soho apartment of

AaronRosenstein

last Thursday night, where they danced into the weehours of the morning and raised about $25,000.The money will cover full scholarships for 20 teenagers toattend a two-week creative arts summer camp, said

Avram Turkel

,who sits on the organization’s advisory board. Turkel is a candidatefor Democratic district leader running against

Paul Newell

.Turkel got involved in Fertile Grounds through Rosenstein,his friend since second grade, and went to Stuyvesant HighSchool with the organization’s co-founder,

Becky Raik

.“We’re all looking for an avenue to help out,” Turkel said. Itsounds like the party’s cocktails and cannolis didn’t hurt either.

ARKET

RETURNS

The New Amsterdam Market is returning to South StreetSeaport with a lineup of four dates this fall.

Robert LaValva

, founder of the market, planned the datesto coincide with major city events. The market’s opening daywill be Sun., Sept. 13 in celebration of Harbor Day, part of the Henry Hudson quadricentennial. Farmers and purveyorswill line up along South St. between Beekman St. and PeckSlip, selling fresh produce, local meats and dairy productsand more. The market is scheduled to return on three addi-tional Sundays: Oct. 25, Nov. 22 and Dec. 20.The New Amsterdam Market previously held two popularone-day market events in the Seaport. This market is sepa-rate from the twice-a-week Fulton Stall Market that Seaportowner General Growth Properties opened in May, which hasbeen struggling to stay aﬂoat. That market cut out its Fridayhours last month and is now down to just Saturdays.LaValva said it was too early to write off the FultonStall Market, since even the gargantuan Union SquareGreenmarket took years to get off the ground.

OSMOPOLITAN

OTEL

The new designs for the Cosmopolitan Hotel additionlook a lot like the old designs, which could be why theLandmarks Preservation Commission did not hold a hearingon the plans that was scheduled for Tuesday.Back in June, architect

Matthew Gottsegen

showed thecommission his plan for a new six-story building next to theCosmopolitan at Reade St. and W. Broadway — replacingthe squat Mary Ann’s restaurant building that’s there now —and the commissioners called the design “bland.”New designs sitting just outside the commission’s hearingroom Tuesday showed few changes: The new building is stillorange brick with a glassy storefront and a barely articulatedcorner. The biggest change is that the brick now goes all theway up to the top ﬂoor, replacing the gray painted aluminumthat wrapped the so-called “attic” ﬂoor in the earlier design.The glass storefront also has more pronouced columns,coated in what looks like ribbed glass.Gottsegen made some changes to the Cosmopolitanbuilding as well, now proposing to get rid of the hunter greenawnings that went up over the storefronts a few years ago.

NEWS

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-19 Mixed Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18

EDITORIAL PAGES

. . . . . . . . . . 20-21

YOUTH

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22

ARTS

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23-26 Listings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26

CLASSIFIEDS

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27

LARIFICATION

The news article “Gerson’s opponents make the bal-lot, but he’s kept off another week” (Aug. 7-13) unclear-ly stated the position of Raymond Dowd, a lawyerrepresenting Pete Gleason. Based on Dowd’s testimonyat an Aug. 4 hearing, we reported that Dowd accusedincumbent City Councilmember Alan Gerson’s of pur-posely falsifying his address on his qualifying petitions.At a subsequent hearing last Thursday, after DowntownExpress went to press, Dowd was given time to morefully argue his position, which is that Gerson’s campaignknew about the address mistake on the petitions beforethe campaign submitted the signatures to the Boardof Elections. Dowd also argued that when the boardcaught the mistake, Gerson’s campaign tried to blameall the problems on the petition printer when really thecampaign was more responsible. Gleason is challengingGerson in the Democratic primary Sept. 15.

Read the Archives

www

DOWNTOWNEXPRESS

com

NDER

over

August 14 - 20, 2009

BODYWORK

Derek Newman

CMT, CYT

derekshealingarts.com

YogaReikiYogic hypnosisCraniosacralSwedishThaiDeep tissueMeditationBreath workEmotional releaseSpiritual counseling

ten years experiencein West Village or your home

917-741-6895

downtown express

the pages his address was listed incorrectlyas 1505 LaGuardia Pl., instead of 505LaGuardia Pl.The Board of Elections called Gerson’scampaign in to fix the problem, but thevolunteer elections lawyer who respondedforgot to sign and date the amendedcover sheet on the petitions, according toGerson. The campaign says the volunteerrealized his mistake and submitted a sec-ond amended cover sheet, but the Boardof Elections refused to accept it, saying acandidate only has one chance to correcta mistake.Lehner decided that the Board of Elections should have given Gerson a sec-ond chance to fix his mistake — the “onechance” policy is merely a matter of theboard’s practice and is not written intothe law. The second amended cover sheetput Gerson “in substantial compliance”with the law, Lehner said.“The candidate should have the rightto correct an error,” Lehner said.Lehner also considered the argumentsof Dowd, Gleason’s lawyer, who saidGerson should be disqualified because hiscampaign committed fraud on the peti-tions. While the address mistake was ini-tially a printer’s error, Dowd argued thatGerson’s campaign responded by coveringup the error and lying about it rather thanfixing it.Lehner did not agree.“It wasn’t fraud at all,” Lehner said. “Itwas an error.” Lehner called the Gersoncampaign’s errors “minuscule.”Lehner based his decision on thehour and a half of testimony he heard Wednesday and also on the opinion of referee Leslie Lowenstein, whom Lehnerappointed to hear lengthier argumentslast week. Lowenstein, too, discountedDowd’s accusations of fraud and thoughtGerson should be on the ballot.Lehner, though, criticized Lowensteinon one point. Lowenstein did not letDowd cross-examine Gerson during thehearings last week, and Dowd shouldhave had that chance, Lehner said. Dowdsaid he could have proved his fraud caseif he’d been allowed to ask Gerson “lead-ing questions,” which are not allowed in adirect examination, but Lehner disagreedsaying the error was not fatal to Dowd’scase.Dowd plans to make the cross-exami-nation issue a large part of his appeal.Dowd tried to prove that there wasfraud and that it was directly attributableto Gerson, but Lehner said he didn’t makethe case.Specifically, Dowd focused on one vol-ume of petitions collected by the HarryS. Truman Democratic Club. The sevenpages of signatures, a small fraction of the total number collected by Gerson’scampaign, originally had the incorrectaddress and then were modified by hand.The Board of Elections sent a letter toGerson on July 22 asking when and howthe addresses were changed, but Gersonnever responded directly, Dowd said.During testimony last week, ReneeAbramowitz, one of the signature collec-tors for the Truman club, said she nevermodified the address on the petitions. Butwhen the Board of Elections received herpetitions, the address was changed to thecorrect one and the change was initialed“RA.” Abramowitz said she had not writ-ten her initials there.Jessica Loeser, president of the Trumanclub, said she corrected some of theaddresses after people had already signedthe petitions, but she put her own initialswhen she did so.Abramowitz’s testimony also raisedeyebrows because of the connections shedescribed between politics and her job atthe nonprofit United Jewish Council of the East Side. Abramowitz said she regu-larly receives signature collection assign-ments on her desk at work, and whenshe’s done she turns them in to her boss.The Daily News reported that U.J.C.received $16,000 in discretionary moneyfrom Gerson the last two years.In addition to these issues, Dowdpointed out on Wednesday that whenGerson’s volunteer lawyer submittedthe amended cover sheet, the volunteerincluded the flawed seven-page volume of petition signatures from the Truman club,even though it was clear that the Board of Elections had a problem with it.Lehner agreed that it wasn’t smart forGerson’s lawyer to include the problemvolume, especially because Gerson hadmore than enough signatures without it.“I would guess that if you had to doit over, you would drop that volume,”Lehner said. Still, he did not agree withDowd that Gerson’s actions constitutedfraud.After Lehner gave his decision Wednesday, Gerson said the worst part of the whole matter was that many of his vol-unteers told him over the past week thatthey never want to carry petitions again.“It discourages grassroots participa-tion,” Gerson said of petitions chal-lenges.Asked if he now felt differently abouthis decision to challenge Gleason’s peti-tions back in 2003, the first time Gleasonran against him, Gerson called the ’03race “ancient history.”Gerson added that he challengedGleason back then because he thoughtGleason did not have enough petitionsignatures, which he thinks is a morefundamental and important issue thanthe ones Gleason raised over the pasttwo weeks.Gerson said all the time he has spentin court recently has not set back his cam-paign. He said that while he spent some of Wednesday’s 90-minute hearing listeningto the lawyers’ arguments, he spent muchof the time thinking about unrelated dis-trict business. He added that it was niceto have a solid block of time to sit andthink, uninterrupted by his cell phone.

Julie@DowntownExpress.com

Gerson wins place on the ballot

January 19 - 25, 2009

Continued from

page 1

‘It wasn’t fraud at all. Itwas an error.’

Judge Lehner

BY JULIE SHAPIRO

Margaret Chin dropped her challengeagainst fellow City Council candidate PJKim this week after it became clear thatshe had little chance of knocking Kim off the ballot.A. Joshua Ehrlich, Chin’s lawyer, hadaccused Kim’s campaign of fraud in thecollection of petition signatures. AlthoughKim submitted about 5,500 signatures,well over the 900 required, Ehrlich hadargued 5,000 were invalid.“I’m happy we can ﬁnally focus on theissues in the campaign,” Kim said afterEhrlich withdrew his claim. He accusedEhrlich and Chin of “perverting the judi-cial system of political purposes” and saidtheir actions amounted to harassment.Leslie Lowenstein, a court-appointedreferee who heard the case last week, foundno evidence that Kim or his campaigncommitted fraud. Lowenstein’s job was tohear arguments from both sides and thengive an opinion to State Supreme CourtJudge Edward Lehner, who was to decidethe case. Lowenstein recommended thatthe judge not only keep Kim on the ballot,but also that the judge sanction Chin andEhrlich for bringing a “frivolous” lawsuit.Lowenstein made his recommendationon Tuesday and Judge Lehner was sched-uled to make a decision on Wednesday.But just beforehand, Ehrlich withdrew hiscomplaint against Kim, which meant the judge did not have to rule on it at all.Lehner took the opportunity of Wednesday’s hearing to criticize Chin andEhrlich for bringing the suit, but he decid-ed not to issue sanctions against thembecause he did not see “real, deliberatebad actions.”Still, Lehner said the suit “probablyshould not have been brought” and added,“Maybe, Mr. Ehrlich, you’ll reconsider thistype of [petition] in the future.”After the hearing, Ehrlich said he dis-agreed with the judge and that Kim’ssignatures had serious problems. He previ-ously argued that the signature witnessesfor Kim’s petitions either forged theirnames or committed other fraud. Ehrlichsaid his case was hampered by the factthat only nine of the 29 witnesses he sub-poenaed showed up at the referee’s hearinglast week. Kim said his lawyer never got acopy of the subpoenas, though Ehrlich saidhe sent them.Kim and Chin are just two of thefour candidates challenging incumbentCouncilmember Alan Gerson for his seatin the Sept. 15 Democratic primary. Earlierin Wednesday’s hearing, Lehner grantedGerson’s request that he be placed on theballot, after the Board of Elections previ-ously removed him.A critic of what he called “draconian”election law, Lehner appeared pleased atthe end of Wednesday’s hearing that hehad allowed all ﬁve of the candidates achance to run.

Kim remains in the race after Chin’s ‘frivolous’ lawsuit

Downtown Express and its sister pub-lication, The Villager, are sponsoring aforum for the primary candidates in theDistrict 1 City Council race on Mon., Aug.17, at Pace University. All ﬁve Democraticcandidates in the race for the LowerManhattan seat have conﬁrmed their atten-dance. They are City Councilmember AlanGerson, Pete Gleason, Margaret Chin,Arthur Gregory and PJ Kim.The forum will be held at 1 Pace Plaza,entrance at Spruce St. near Gold St., inthe multipurpose room. Doors will openat 6:30 p.m. and seating is limited. Theforum, which is free and open to the pub-lic, will start promptly at 7 p.m. and endabout 8:30 p.m.The co-moderators, Josh Rogers, asso-ciate editor of Downtown Express, andLincoln Anderson, the associate editor of The Villager, will ask the questions, whichwill include some written by attendees.Readers can also email question sugges-tions appropriate for all five candidatesto news@downtownexpress.com (put“Forum Question” in the headline) ormail them to Downtown Express at 145Sixth Ave., NY, NY 10013.