THE WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF LOWER MANHATTAN

Downtown Express photo by Elisabeth Robert

The Fulton St. water main project is driving away customers and making it hard to walk around, business owners and residents said this week at a community meeting on the project.

Fulton water project drowns out business and sleep, Downtowners shout
By Julie Shapiro
At a rowdy meeting Monday evening, residents and business owners told city agencies exactly how they feel about the Fulton St. reconstruction project — and they’re not happy.

60 Hudson bollards confirms the building’s ‘lie,’ C.B. 1 says
By Julie Shapiro
In an unusually biting resolution, Community Board 1 censured the owners of 60 Hudson St. last month for not acknowledging the building’s safety hazards.

‘Green’ condo project looks to expand garage
By Patrick Hedlund
As Battery Park City’s newest high-rise, the Visionaire, strives to achieve record green certification for a residential building, developers here want to double the number of parking spots belowground — with no plans to address the added exhaust.

NEWS
Developer pays $5m into housing fund to greenlight condo tower
By Josh Rogers
Downtowners being squeezed by rents might not have to move to Brooklyn after all. The developers who told them to do that have just agreed to pay $5 million into a Lower Manhattan affordable housing fund in exchange for city approval of their luxury condo and hotel building at 50 West St.

Former Trust chairperson pleads guilty to tax fraud
By Lincoln Anderson
Was hubris the cause? It may never be known. But James Ortenzio — the classics-quoting former chairperson of the Hudson River Park Trust — last week pleaded guilty to a felony tax charge, as well as a misdemeanor violation of the state’s Public Officers Law.

Pier 40 ideas floated at meeting

W.T.C. neighbors make noise over construction noise
By Julie Shapiro
Continuous noise from the World Trade Center construction site is getting unbearable, residents say.

Southbridge debates selling land to get a park
By Julie Shapiro
Southbridge Towers may sell a parcel of land to the city for a new DeLury Square Park, but not all the residents are on board.

Immersed in ritual, mikvah thrives on the East Side
By Bonnie Rosenstock
To unobservant passersby, the classic-revival, limestone-and-brick building at the intersection of Grand St. and East Broadway would be just another spectacular Lower East Side structure if not for an intriguing bronze sign on the facade that says “Ritualarium” in English.

C.B. 3 renews discussions on Seward Park renewal
By Joe Pompeo
Affordable housing was among the priorities community members placed on a wish list for the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area at a Nov. 13 Community Board 3 task force meeting.

DOWNTOWN ART & LIFESTYLE

The wedding crasher
by leonard L. quart
The indelible signature of Noah Baumbach’s first three films has been the wryly humorous and perceptively affecting depiction of relationships.

Cultures clash in ‘Drum of the Waves of Horikawa’
By Adrienne Urbanski
The similarities between the refined art of traditional Japanese Kabuki theater and ’70s punk rock might not be obvious, but Theater of a Two Headed Calf’s production of “Drum of the Waves of Horikawa” explores the parallels between the two.

You can’t always get what you want
By Scott Harrah
Jonathan Marc Sherman’s unfocused new drama “Things We Want” rambles in many different directions, but playwright and director Ethan Hawke never quite defines a point to this offbeat story of three brothers living in their inherited childhood home after their parents’ suicides (their father and mother both jumped out a window, respectively, five years apart).

Monica Bill Barnes reinterprets Las Vegas classics
BY BRIAN McCORMICK
Karaoke offers average people the opportunity to do something extraordinary.

Road scholar
By Stephen Wolf
Last Friday, in honor of the 50th anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s highly influential novel “On the Road,” the largest collection ever assembled of Kerouac’s works entitled “Beatific Soul: Jack Kerouac on the Road.”

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