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September 22, 2002, Sunday
THE CITY WEEKLY DESK NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: GREENWICH VILLAGE; On Racy Christopher Street, Anxiety Over a Possible BID By KELLY CROW (NYT) 295 words For 13 years, George Forbes has worked at the Lucille Lortel Theater Foundation, which sits on Christopher Street near a chocolate factory and a store that makes leather whips and chains. Mr. Forbes enjoys the diversity of this famous street, but he also misses the family businesses that have been displaced. Garbage and late-night noise have also grown, he said. So last month, Mr. Forbes and other merchants proposed a Christopher Street Business Improvement District to address those problems. A similar idea failed eight years ago because residents worried about the effects of privatizing this bohemian stretch, said Aubrey Lees, chairwoman of Community Board 2. Now, she said, they seem to want the neighborhood cleaned up. But Melissa Sklarz and others in the gay and transgendered community are wary. They fear that the BID might push out the area's partygoers and prostitutes. ''If it's just about picking up trash and bettering the street, I'm all for it,'' said Ms. Sklarz, a community board member. ''But, what kind of trash are we really talking about here? We need to know more, because the rhetoric makes me nervous.'' Mr. Forbes has tried to reassure the board that the venture will not be discriminatory. ''We're absolutely against prostitution, because it's illegal,'' he said, ''but we're certainly not anti-transgendered people. KELLY CROW ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company |
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