It was only a committee meeting and not a full board meeting. The group that pre- sented their plans to build at the site of the old Burlington Coat Factory on Park Place did not have to show up. And the committee chair did not have to put them on the meeting’s agenda.

Days after Community Board (CB) 1’s Financial District Committee passed a unanimous resolution in favor of the Cordoba Institute moving to Lower Manhattan to build a community cen- ter with a mosque, local and national media outlets pounced on the story. Ro Sheffe, the committee chair, was disappointed, to say the least, with the coverage.

inaccuracy in so many of the media accounts of this proposal,” said Sheffe last Friday. “From what we were told at the meeting - what we were hearing was a secu- lar community center with a mosque attached. Everything we heard obviously we liked. It was unanimous.”

Though the coverage has been exhaustive - from web-only news outlets to the New York Post, even an anti- Cordoba House Facebook group with 53,000 members already opposing the group - few elected officials have taken a stance on the issue, save for New York State Senator Daniel Squadron.

“Community religious and civic organizations have been a big part of the extraordinary resurgence of

A border war is flar- ing between Soho and Chinatown as two new ini- tiatives are causing activists and property owners to ask: Who calls the shots?

Sean Sweeney, director of the Soho Alliance com- munity group, is outraged that the Chinatown Working Group has the nerve to con- sider rezoning a portion of the southeastern corner of the historic artists’ enclave. As part of its rezoning

efforts, the working group is focusing on the area around Canal, Centre and Lafayette Sts. — parts of which were just included in the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s extension of the Soho Cast-Iron Historic District, which was desig- nated May 11.

“Just because a Chinese person owns a business there, doesn’t mean it’s Chinatown,” Sweeney pro- tested.

Squadron supports
Cordoba move; CB
need not approve

On the surface it appears to be a rather typical dispute between a land- lord and a tenant – pay rent or eviction proceedings begin. However, the story is much more complicated because the landlord and tenant in question are anything but typical.

Let’s start with the tenant. The typical tenant doesn’t have a slew of elected officials and community leaders rush to their aid when they fall behind on rent. And the typical landlord is not a public authority.

received a letter from his landlord, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which stated that eviction proceedings were set to begin due to a failure to pay rent and that the organization owed the authority $360,000. Almost as quickly as that letter arrived, Congressman Jerrold Nadler and State Senator Daniel Squadron sent a joint letter to the MTA asking for a suspension of the eviction proceedings and to begin a rent negotiation process to allow the media and theater group to remain at its 80 Greenwich Street location.

Katrina,” said Cunningham. “Even though it comes from greed, it is still a disaster.”

Cunningham does not dispute the fact that his group fell behind in rent. However, it is the reason 3.L.D. fell into rental arrears that led to the strong outpouring of support from the community. According to Cunningham and also noted in the let- ter from Squadron and Nadler, it was the MTA’s failure to hold up their end of the lease agreement in regard to construction involved with the space.

GIRLS
SOFTBALL,
P. 16

The Drawing Center has been kicked around a few times through the downs and downs of building a cultural center at the World Trade Center, but the Soho group tells UnderCover it’s okay with losing 8 of the $10 million it was promised to help build a new home in Lower Manhattan.

president, told Community Board 1 last week that the corporation was shifting $8 million the corporation set aside for Littman in order to help other Downtown cutural groups. Littman’s group spent about $250,000 studying the feasibility of the Seaport and other sites, leaving about $1.75 million.

We heard the L.M.D.C. wanted to leave some money in the pot for a Drawing Center project. Littman said he’s had some discussions with Emil on various ideas but nothing is imminent. He also said the group’s build- ing on Wooster St. could use a capital upgrade and they remain interested in partnering with a developer once the economy picks up.

He said forces behind the group’s control including the economy made it impossible to open a new space. He did not mention the troubles they had with former Gov. George Pataki five years ago.

win the competition for a space at the WTC in 2004, Pataki stepped in the next year and made censorship demands the group found to be untenable. The center walked away from the site, and the L.M.D.C. felt so bad, it offered a $10 mil- lion consolation prize to open somewhere else Downtown.

Battery Park City’s Olivia Goodkind landed the lead in M.S. 104’s production of “The Pajama Game” and will be performing Thursday and Friday. The school has had a high-powered drama program for many years and its most famous alum may be Jon Cryer, star of “Two and a Half Men.” A source close to UnderCover still remembers Cryer’s performance in “Bye Bye Birdie” about three decades ago. Break a leg, Olivia.

Students from IS 89 will preview their upcoming play, Madwomen of Tribeca: Don’t Bulldoze Tirbeca for Big Oil at 3:30 p.m. in front of the Ghee Whiz Restaurant at Greenwich Street and Warren. Then at 4:15 p.m. students from IS 89 will join a citywide coalition in a protest march to prevent the closing of Manhattan Youth’s after school program.

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The upcoming week’s schedule of Community Board 1 committee meetings is below. Unless other- wise noted, all committee meetings are held at the board office, located at 49-51 Chambers St., room 709 at 6 p.m.

will be held at the Three Legged Dog Art and Technology Center located 80 Greenwich Street (at Rector Street) at 6 p.m.

Tango Dancing and Music
Mon, Tues, Wed. 9 pm to 12 Midnight
Swing Dancing Thurs.
Jazz Friday 7pm to 10pm
Mediterranean Greek Dining 5pm to 11pm
Saturday - Tango 9 pm to 2am

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On a recent evening, a woman who is calling herself “Francine” was assaulted by her ex-boyfriend in her Downtown Manhattan apartment. The man fled before the 9th Precinct cops arrived. A local hos- pital referred Francine to Safe Horizon’s domestic violence hotline. Within a few days, Francine was assigned to a Project SAFE coordinator, who arranged for a police escort and a locksmith to accompa- ny her to her apartment. The victim’s door locks were replaced, and she felt “much safer having the cops there.”

Deadbolt locks are known to reduce break-ins and domestic violence. Now, Safe Horizon, a victim-protection orga- nization that has long supplied free door locks to people under threat, has received a big boost from the lock company Schlage.

At a press conference held last Tuesday at Safe Horizon’s headquarters at 2 Lafayette Street, Schlage announced that it is donating a total of 2,000 high-security deadbolt locks to Safe Horizon’s Project SAFE. Schlage has previously made similar donations to Habitat for Humanity and other organizations.

“The desire to provide security and peace of mind to our customers is at the core of everything we do,” said Ann

Matheis, Schlage’s Brand Director based in the company’s headquarters in Carmel, Indiana. “These locks…will hopefully go a long way toward restoring a sense of security to those who need it most,” she added.

Project SAFE has installed 70 of the donated Schlage devices in the homes of 47 abuse and violence victims throughout New York City. The donation from Schlage represents the first time in Project SAFE’s 31-year history that locks have been donat- ed rather than bought from retailers.

“Anyone who has filed a police report is eligible for a free lock installation under Project SAFE,” said Nathaniel Fields, senior vice president of Safe Horizon’s DC Shelter Programs and Hotlines. A lock can be changed within 48 hours of a request. Victims of rape or sexual assault do not have to file police reports in order to obtain locks from Project SAFE, Fields added.

Safe Horizon partners with local lock- smiths to install locks in the homes of crime victims who “urgently need to restore a sense of personal and emotional safety in their lives,” according to Schlage’s May 18 press release.

It has been a busy couple of weeks for the Hive at 55, a new workspace on Broad Street for freelancers. Mayor Bloomberg stopped by last week to see the cutting-edge facility and to praise both the entrepreneurial spirit it fosters and the freelance industry it sup- ports. Then on Wednesday night the space hosted a launch party for one of its tenant’s products, a point-of-sale software program for retailers.

“[Shopkeep.com] is the first real com- pany to have a launch here at the hive,” said Hive at 55 Director Daria Siegal. “And that is really important to us because we want to support the companies that work here.”

The Hive opened its doors in December of last year and is sponsored by the Alliance for Downtown New York and the NYC Economic Development Corporation. The majority of the office space is leased to ten- ants on a month-to-month basis with no real commitment.

“It’s based on how often people need to come in,” said Siegal. “We’re catering to the way that small businesses and freelancers operate.”

Shopkeep.com has been leasing Hive space since last April. Prior to that, owner Jason Richelson was primarily working from a back room at his other business, the Green Grape, on Liberty Street. And it was the Green Grape, which also has a location in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and Richelson’s own struggles as a small business owner that led to the creation of shopkeep.com.

“The technology that is out there for small retailers to run their stores is like 20 years old,” said Richelson. “I was upset that I could never see what was going on in my store without running the reports through the old system. I was like, well there has to be someone doing this on the web. I looked and there was nothing.”

That was his eureka moment and shop- keep.com was born. In a nutshell it’s a simple way to run a register, track sales tax, keep track of your customers and track inventory.

“It’s a retail management solution that is simple and accessible,” said Richelson’s col- league Cameron Peek. “It’s centered around a web-based point of sale manager that allows owners and mangers of retail stores to run their stores from the web so they don’t have to be tied to the store’s physical locations.”

“Its easy for everyone to see how the store is doing,” said Peek. “It’s information that can be shared up to the minute, rather

And the selling point is that shopkeep. com, when compared to other similar point- of-sale programs like Quickbooks’ Intuit software, is nearly dirt-cheap. According to Peek, Intuit would cost a retailer $900 up front and then an additional monthly cost of anywhere between $500 and $2,000. Not to mention, one would have to make an appointment for someone to come in and set up the program.

With shopkeep.com, that entire model, from payment to installation, is transformed. Peek said they have run some numbers and determined that a retailer could have shopkeep.com for almost 19 months before approaching the type of costs associated with one month of Intuit or its equivalent Microsoft program.

“We’re doing away with the [old model],” said Richelson. “If you want [a program] to do the basic things that a retail store does, and you want to pay $50 a month, then go online and go to shopkeep.com.”

On Wednesday night, upwards of 75 people attended the launch. A gigantic screen was set up, shopkeep.com was used to man- age the sales of wine and beer and attendees were able to see the program in action. As people purchased drinks at the bar, shopkeep. com displayed a running tally on the screen. All proceeds from the wine and beer sales went to the charity projectshunshine.org.

Recognizing the important work being done by Safe Horizon’s Project SAFE Program, which offers free lock replacement to victims of domestic violence and other crimes throughout NYC, Schlage donated 2,000 locks to help victims and their families regain a sense of personal and emotional safety. Left to right: Schlage Brand Director Ann Matheis presents a symbolic key to Safe Horizon CEO Ariel Zwang and Senior VP Nathaniel Fields.