LOST IN BATTERY PARK CITY
We’re not sure if this is petty, snarky, beside the point, or could it be what writers always look for: the telling detail. You decide.
Before the now infamous Battery Park City board of directors meeting Dec. 4 when the board left the fate of North Cove Marina and its leader Michael Fortenbaugh uncertain, we happened to notice that two of the members had difficulty finding the authority’s office. They tried to go to different floors in what we still like to call One World Financial Center before they got to their desired destination.
Neighbors and local pols have been asking for years to get more B.P.C. residents on the board, which only has one.
Like we said, it may not mean anything, but we just hope the lost souls know their way around the nabe, better than they do the offices.
COINING OUR 2 CENTS
The Port Authority’s Glenn Guzi last week sounded like he was happy to break free from chains like the ones once needed to rein in pedestrians at the dangerous corner of Vesey and Church St.
Guzzi said the years-long problem of commuters and walkers fighting through the narrow space on Vesey is gone now that World Trade Center construction fences have moved back, and 1 World Trade Center is open.
This paper began calling the problem the “Vesey Squeezey” in April, but we’re pretty sure the term would not have picked up steam if it hadn’t been immediately embraced by another Vesey veteran, Catherine McVay Hughes, Community Board 1’s chairperson.
“Hopefully, Catherine will never ever call it the ‘Vesey Squeezey’ again,” Guzi said at a C.B. 1 meeting Dec. 8.
He said there’d be more improvements there. What’s next, Easy Vesey?
Last Call
It could be a record — the Tribeca Committee finished in an hour last week.
The Community Board 1 committee has sometimes spent about the same amount of time discussing one liquor license. But Dec. 10, the committee gave advisory yes votes to liquor licenses in a swift manner. Bar Cyrk, on 88 Thomas St. between W. Broadway and Hudson St., was asking to extend to an hour later during the week, to 1 a.m. and to 2 a.m. on the weekend. The owners came armed with a list of 140 signatures of residents in support of the restaurant.
Speaking of C.B. 1 and liquor licenses, Michael and Frank Gleeson, father and son owners of the Whitehorse Tavern at 25 Bridge St. sat through a two-hour Seaport Committee meeting before they started their presentation Monday. A few minutes later, the committee realized the application should have been sent to the Financial District Committee, and politely cut them off.
Incidentally, before we get to the end of our story, the Gleesons are not connected to the Village people who own the almost indentically-named, more famous historic bar. The Village’s White Horse Tavern is where poet Dylan Thomas (the inspiration for Bob Dylan’s recording name) is said to have drunk himself into a fatal stupor. Michael tells us the first White Horse was opened in the 18th century in Rhode Island so the Village tavern has no bone to pick — it’s a common bar name like the Dew Drop Inn, Frank added.
Anyway, Michael opened in what is now FiDi 38 years ago and was looking to add Frank to the license. The committee wasgoing to try to add Whitehorse to the full board meeting Dec. 18.
Frank said he was fine with sitting through a meeting for naught. “We learned a lot,” he told us.
