News In Brief

Pharmacy for B.P.C.
Eckerd Drugs will move into a new 9,000 sq. ft. retail space in the 4 World Financial Center Courtyard, with an entrance on Vesey St., at the end of the summer, according to Brookfield Financial properties, owner of the building.

The pharmacy chain has signed a 10-year lease on the space and is expected to open its first Manhattan branch at the end of August or the beginning of September, said Melissa Coley of Brookfield.
“We’re most pleased that Eckerd plans to be open seven days a week. It’s an important feature for Battery Park City,” she said. Brookfield formerly used the space for storage.

Eckerd will be the second pharmacy in B.P.C. Battery Park Pharmacy, a small independent store, has doing business at 327 South End Ave. near Albany St. for the past 20 years serving residents in the south end of the neighborhood.

“We’ve been here since the inception of Battery Park City and we’re not running away,” said Elizabeth Kwack, the owner. “You have to face competition wherever you go and you just have to do your best to satisfy your customers’ needs,” Kwack said.

Linda Belfer, a Gateway Plaza resident, said Battery Park Pharmacy has been a dependable source for residents but the new store will be a boon to the north end of Battery Park City. “We’re grateful for any new business in the neighborhood,” Belfer added.

Tenants in the Hallmark, a senior citizens’ residence on North End Ave. near Chambers St., have been depending on deliveries from Kings Pharmacy on Hudson and Reade Sts., according to Pearl C. Scher, a Hallmark resident. A new store, Eva’s Pharmacy, opening this week at Greenwich and Chambers Sts., is also promoting delivery service.

“I’d say that 90 percent of the people in the Hallmark take two or three prescription dugs every day,” said Scher, “This building and the others around it are a goldmine for any drug store that delivers,” she added.

Precinct meeting
The First Precinct Community Council will meet at 7 p.m. April 29 in the security office of the Alliance for Downtown New York, 120 Washington St. just north of Rector St.

Saving face on Pearl St.
The facade of the embattled Greek revival building at 211 Pearl St. will be preserved, according to an agreement finalized last week among city and state officials and Rockrose Development Corp., said two of the parties involved.

Since the fall, preservationists had rallied to save the building, which had been slated for demolition. Rockrose, the building’s owner, is developing a 650-unit residence at 2 Gold Street, and 211 Pearl St. was to be cleared for a rear entranceway.

The first floor of 211 Pearl will be removed for the construction of garage access, said Bob Rumerman, a Rockrose spokesperson, but the rest of the five-story facade will remain.

If Rockrose wants to change the terms of Monday’s agreement, which is binding, the company must come back to the state Historic Preservation Office and go through another negotiation process, said Cathy Jimenez, a spokesperson for the state agency.

Alan Solomon, the independent researcher who led the fight to save 211 Pearl, said it concerned him that there could be modifications.
“A facade is like a monument to the politics of preservation,” Solomon said.

The building is nestled in a row of historic Greek revival buildings, and Jimenez said that Monday’s compromise would retain the building lines.

Solomon acknowledged that preserving a portion of the building was preferable to demolishing the whole structure, but said that he won’t be able to fully gauge the impact on the neighborhood “until the dust clears.”

Preparations for the demolition of the rest of 211 Pearl St. began last week.

Budget woes
While it’s too early to tell exactly how the mayor’s proposed budget cuts would effect Lower Manhattan, early indications show that Downtowners might feel the cuts most keenly in public education.

The City Council has not yet approved the $600 million in budget cuts that the mayor released last week as his best-case scenario. But it’s clear that, with a projected $2.9 billion gap between forecast revenue and spending for fiscal year 2004, deep cuts are inevitable.

Included on the mayor’s chopping block was $179 million in education funding. The plan would eliminate more than 1,500 part and full-time school aide positions. This means fewer aides helping out in crowded classrooms, monitoring lunchrooms, and taking attendance.

“We’d be devastated” if the cuts go through, said Barbara Santella, a supervisor at Manhattan New School in District 2, who attended a recent meeting of the aides’ union.

In the 1990s, teachers won the right to be exempt from lunchroom duty. It remains unclear whether teachers will once again have to resume responsibility for this and other tasks, including attendance.

“I think that would be terrible,” Santella said. “Then they’d have to give [teachers] an extra prep time. It takes away from the learning of the children.”

George Olsen, president of the P.T.A. at P.S. 234, said that the school isn’t sure what kind of cuts are coming down the pike.

“We’re expecting there’s going to be problems, but we don’t know what they are yet,” Olsen said.

If the city doesn’t get the necessary funding from Albany, then the mayor would shift to his “doomsday” budget, or $1 billion in cuts. The City Council is expected to propose its negotiated budget in late June.