With the closure of the John Hughes shelter, the nearest homeless shelter to Battery Park City is now in Tribeca. Joe Little of the New York City Rescue Mission gives a tour of the city’s oldest homeless shelter. With the bad economy and closure of other shelters nearby, demand for meals at the Mission have increased 20%.
To volunteer or donate money, contact (212) 226-6214 or go to http://www.nycrescue.org/
Construction on Route 9A, also known as The West Side Highway, and closure of the pedestrian bridge south of Albany Street have created a very dangerous situation. The ground-level crossing of The West Side Highway at Albany Street can be a death trap.
In February of 2009, Battery Park City resident Marilyn Feng was killed and her boyfriend seriously injured when a drunk driver struck the couple. Ms. Feng was an intern in Manhattan Borough president Scott Stringer’s office. In late September of 2009, another pedestrian was struck by a motorist, but he survived.
Funding for the permanent pedestrian overpass has been cancelled. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer discusses the problem.
The dangers of the Albany St/West Side Highway crossing have been well documented. Not so well appreciated are the dangers at the other end where Albany meets South End Avenue. Drivers making turns onto Albany are too occupied by looking down South End for other cars that they neglect to yield for pedestrians crossing Albany who have the white walk sign. The problem is particularly bad in the early evening.
BatteryPark.TV spent a mere five minutes filming the problem on a crude cell phone camera. Within that time, numerous cars violated the law and could have run over a pedestrian who was not paying attention.
If the NYPD posted patrol personnel, it could possibly earn more than $100,000 in revenue per year. Rather than ticket parked cars and do nothing to improve safety, perhaps the NYPD should try targeting more dangerous areas where moving violations are concentrated. Just a friendly suggestion: earn revenue and please the community.
In the second part of our interview with Ed Koch, he discussed the growing homeless problem in Battery Park and how it is similar to New York City in the late 70’s when he was Mayor and the City was near bankruptcy. He also discusses the upcoming NY Governor’s election.
On the evening of November 9th, at the corner of Battery Place and West Thames, construction crew began to jackhammer up a ditch in the road related to Con Edison gas lines. The work was non-emergent. The crew foreman claimed that they had a permit to jackhammer until 10:00 PM. He refused to give the name of his construction company.
To say the least, the South half of Battery Park City was outraged by the noise. This is in addition to the daily earthquake-inducing noise from the pile driving machines over at the Route 9A “Tire Swing Park” construction.
Matt Fenton has an interesting article in the Broadsheet about how State and City employees are parking their cars in no-parking zones on West Thames. The cars post government affiliations on their dashboard to avoid getting ticketed. Some use handicap passes.
The controversy is whether these car operators are really on government jobs and really handicapped or are just abusing the system while regular Joe’s like us get expensive tickets on the other side of the street.
As an update, we did notice this handicapped car was ticketed.
For the first time this decade, multiple homeless individuals are making the parks in Battery Park City their preferred location during the day. In particular, Wagner Park in front of the Jewish Heritage Museum is a popular spot.
James VarnHagen of the New York City Rescue Mission explains the reasons for this growing homeless problem. A key homeless shelter near BPC, the John Hughes shelter, did not receive a city grant and had to shut down causing many of the people that used to rely on it to spill into the park system. In addition, the budgetary problems of the city and increased unemployment have caused a 20% increase in homeless as the city shelters become overburdened.
To learn more and how to help, you may view the video now.
- Community Board 1, - First precinct, - Mayor's Office, Featured Residents, Volunteering | admin | 
March 10, 2010 12:41 pm | 
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