DO YOU. DOWNTOWN
DO YOU. DOWNTOWN
DO YOU. DOWNTOWN
DO YOU. DOWNTOWN 2021 ANNUAL REPORT
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TABLE OF
CONTENTS A Message FROM THE Chair AND
President ..... 4
DO YOU. DOWNTOWN ..... 6
DO Local
DO
Businesses ..... 8
Safe, Clean DO
AND
Healthy ..... 12
ARTS AND CULTURE ..... 16
DO History AND Tourism ..... 20
MORE About OUR Work ..... 24
FINANCIAL
Statements ..... 37
STAFF
List ..... 38
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DO YOU. DOWN
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U. WNTOWN
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A
MESSAGE
FROM THE
CHAIR AND
PRESIDENT
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This past year was one of resilience and recovery. Though the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic continued to pose a challenge to our healthcare systems and daily lives, the advent of vaccines coupled with impressive citywide testing access at last permitted us to begin our return to occupying offices, patronizing our favorite businesses, travelling and to visit loved ones. After a quieter winter, Lower Manhattan came back to life in the spring and summer. Now, diners frequent restaurants and bars. Tourists take selfies outside the Charging Bull. Workers parade out of subway stations at rush hour and take lunch breaks at outdoor patios. Even with the emergence of Delta, New York’s case numbers remain largely stable, and the neighborhood once again feels vibrant, exciting and wholly awake. There is still work left to do to ensure Lower Manhattan’s recovery. The pandemic is an ongoing and unpredictable crisis, and though we have taken impressive steps forward since the vaccine rollout, it is hard to know what challenges await us in the months and years to come. Still, our neighborhood is no stranger to challenge. New York is the most resilient city in the world, and Lower Manhattan is one of its most resilient parts. After 9/11, we rebuilt. After the 2008 economic collapse, we encouraged residential growth that helped to transform a previously financial community. The pandemic has thrown us new curveballs. But it has also amplified Lower Manhattan’s creative community and collaborative spirit, inspiring us to find the connection, dynamism and opportunity here in new and exciting ways. As with 9/11’s physical transformation and the financial crisis’s demographic shift, Covid has sharpened our focus on the importance of arts and culture in Lower Manhattan. We leaned into it this year, sponsoring public art installations, live performances — like the Alliance-sponsored Downtown Live festival this past spring — and awarding grants to local cultural institutions, which have become the bedrock of the neighborhood’s recovery. Culture brings people together. It creates joy and community. Where culture can be found, creatives and the businesses that serve them follow. Lower Manhattan, now home to a wealth of industries including new media, technology, advertising and service industries, is already being transformed by that movement and will reap even more benefits of that dynamic in the years ahead, particularly with the much-anticipated opening of the World Trade Center Performing Arts Center (PAC) in 2023. Indeed, Lower Manhattan is and will continue to become a neighborhood where everything happens. Here, you will find a thriving culinary scene. Flourishing green spaces. An exciting and walkable history. Public art lining sidewalks, lamp posts and storefront windows. A wealth of museums and institutions. Lower Manhattan is an adventure of your choosing. And while you’re exploring, we’ll be here — removing graffiti, using our website and media channels to share information, and cleaning and patrolling our streets. Do you — we’ll do the rest.
Jessica Lappin President
Ric Clark Chair
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DO YOU.
Downtown Lower Manhattan has long been the beating heart of New York City. In the colonial era, Manhattan began here; in our taverns, where revolutionaries plotted over ale in hushed tones, and on the steps of Federal Hall, where our first president was inaugurated. In the years since, Lower Manhattan has worn many hats. After the Revolutionary War, it was the city’s theater district, home to the 2,000-seat Park Theatre near Ann and Beekman Streets. In the 19th century, media outlets like Joseph Pulitzer’s The New York World, along with The New York Times, the Herald and The New York Tribune, published here, creating a Newspaper Row along Park Row. In the 20th century, Lower Manhattan served as the city’s financial center, home to gleaming skyscrapers, prestigious bank headquarters and besuited commuters headed to their desks. Today, Lower Manhattan cannot be so easily defined. The banks remain, but they’ve been joined by a diverse range of industries, including media, technology, advertising, fashion and publishing. Commuters continue to come in and out of the neighborhood during the workweek, but they’ve been joined by more and more full-time residents who make their homes in classic skyscrapers and new developments. As Lower Manhattan’s population has grown and diversified, so too has its culinary offerings, which run the gamut from dive bars and cute cafes to Michelin-starred restaurants. Newer cultural institutions have joined old standbys like Trinity Church and the aforementioned Federal Hall. You can find public art and live music here, and with the upcoming addition of the World Trade Center Performing Arts Center (PAC), Downtown will be the center of culture. Indeed, Lower Manhattan is a choose-your-own adventure, whether you’re here for the arts, the restaurants, the amenity-stocked residential buildings, our safe-and-clean streets, our green spaces, or our storied history. Here is where you’ll find your ambition, your way of giving back, your New York dream. Lower Manhattan will help you make your world the way you want it to be. Let’s begin your journey.
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DO LO
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00 Y 10 SES L R NEA INES ILE S U IL B ARE M A T E U R E SQ N O IN
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HELPING DOWNTOWN
Businesses
GET BACK TO WORK Local businesses are the lifeblood of a neighborhood. Corner bars, lunch spots, wine shops, high-end restaurants, dry cleaners and grocers serve residents, workers and tourists. In turn, they create livelihoods for business owners and staffers alike. It is this pulsating ecosystem that keeps Lower Manhattan alive; it makes it a destination, a constant, a home. Here are some ways we support them.
Small Business Assistance Grants In 2020, we teamed up with retail design and strategy firm Streetsense, to provide free one-on-one technical assistance sessions to Lower Manhattan’s small businesses to help confront the Covid-19 crisis and ready their storefronts so they could open and operate safely during the pandemic. Streetsense also produced two detailed Covid recovery toolkits for retailers and restaurants. Thirty-one businesses received consulting sessions from Streetsense, worth $1500 each; in addition, we provided $3,000 implementation grants to 27 businesses.
Eat. Drink. Win. Thanks to lifting restrictions, offices across Lower Manhattan have begun reopening. To welcome workers back Downtown, as well as to encourage workers to support downtown businesses hard hit by the effects of Covid-19, this fall the Alliance teamed up with marketing and commerce platform Bandowango to launch a new program called Eat. Drink. Win., which rewards Lower Manhattan workers for patronizing local restaurants and bars during lunch and happy hours. Workers can download the Eat. Drink. Win. app and check in at any of the 10 participating restaurants in exchange for a free Downtown NYC tee. Those participating restaurants include Chinah, Industry Kitchen, Mad Dog & Beans Mexican Cantina and GunBae TriBeCa, among others.
Dine Around Downtown The “Dine Around Downtown: Cooking at Home Edition” virtual cook-along series launched in June 2020 at the height of the pandemic. Hosted by James Beard award-winning chef and author Rocco DiSpirito, the program connects audiences directly with Lower Manhattan chefs to support local restaurants and food-security charities of their choice. So far, the series has engaged 3,600+ registrants over 14 episodes to benefit our restaurants and their 11 chosen charities. The series will reprise in fall 2021 for its fifth season to promote three additional neighborhood restaurants, and plans are underway for the much-anticipated return of our Dine Around Downtown community food festival in May 2022.
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Dine Around at Home event with Nobu, featuring Rocco Dispirto
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safe, c
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heal
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clean
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G IN ICT R P I R E KE DIST EPA TS, E D R EN D H T OO SID AN G E S IN R R ER RS FO ORK ITO W VIS
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MAKING THE
Neighborhood A HOME
Lower Manhattan is home to more than 60,000 residents, hundreds of businesses and countless annual visitors. The Alliance works hard to ensure everyone Downtown enjoys a safe, clean and healthy neighborhood. Our Downtown Connection bus offers free rides around the neighborhood and has operated throughout the pandemic. Red Coat-clad public safety officers work with the NYPD to keep the streets and plazas safe. Our Sanitation team maintains the BigBelly trash cans that line the sidewalks, as well as remove graffiti, clean sidewalks and beautify the streetscapes.
The Annual Shred-a-thon On April 17, the Alliance held its annual Shred-a-thon, inviting Lower Manhattan residents, workers and visitors alike to bring all their old clothes and unwanted documents to Fulton Street between Cliff and Gold Streets. Documents went into a shredding truck, which securely disposed of and recycled old papers. Wearable Collections provided a bin to collect clean clothing, shoes, sneakers, belts, bags, hats and linens.
Tribeca Festival In June, The Tribeca Film Festival — now rebranded as The Tribeca Festival — returned with a new Covid-friendly format. Despite the name, this year Lower Manhattan served as the festival’s main stage, with screenings and other events held at venues like Brookfield Place and The Battery, in addition to outdoor spaces across the city. Stages were outfitted with impressive 40-foot LED mobile cinemas to facilitate socially distanced screenings. Films screened downtown included Steven Soderbergh’s No Sudden Move, the documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain and the thriller False Positive.
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Art
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Cult
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THE M THAT AGIC MAK ES LOW E R MAN HATT COM AN E TO LIFE
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MUSIC, ART AND
Live Performance DOWNTOWN
Arts and culture help make a city come to life. In New York, culture powers the whole world. In Lower Manhattan, we’ve done our best to augment our city’s reputation as the global cultural center. Here, you will find everything from world-class cultural institutions, to crowd-pumping live performances, to thought-provoking art — and that’s just a taste of it.
Arts Grants To support Lower Manhattan’s essential museums and institutions, this past winter, the Alliance awarded 11 local arts and cultural organizations with $10,000 individual grants as part of a wide-ranging effort to support the recovery of Lower Manhattan amid COVID. In recognition of the important role that arts and cultural institutions play, grants were awarded to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, 9/11 Tribute Museum, Battery Dance Company, China Institute, Fraunces Tavern Museum, Gibney Dance, Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, Poets House, Skyscraper Museum, South Street Seaport Museum and the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation.
The Alliance, EnGarde Arts and The Tank Present Downtown Live For two weekends in May, Economic Development presented Downtown Live, a live performing arts festival that featured 37 performances from a diverse mix of NYC-based emerging artists. The team set up stages at three privately owned spaces in Lower Manhattan. Downtown Live brought thousands of visitors to Lower Manhattan, netted some favorable press coverage and gave local businesses some much-needed extra foot traffic. Performers included Pulitzer Prize finalist and celebrated writer and performer Eisa Davis with Kaneza Schaal; Obie Award-winning, Off-Broadway favorite playwright and actor David Greenspan and composer Jamie Lawrence; hip-hop, spoken-word and performance artists Baba Israel & Grace Galu; and award-winning New York-based Brazilian Theater Company, Group.BR.
Public Art This was a big year for public art. The Alliance put together a number of exhibitions that brought color to the neighborhood and even (literally) lit up downtown. In February, LED installations “C/C” and “Talking Heads” debuted at 85 Broad as part of the Economic Development and Operation team’s Placemaking program. The installations were so popular they brought visitors from elsewhere in the city to downtown, and area restaurants reported an uptick in business while they were up. And this fall, we partnered with local public art non-profits for two exciting street exhibitions. In conjunction with Art on the Ave, we mounted works from 27 local artists at multiple vacant storefronts along Broadway, including 120 Broadway, Century 21 and the Fulton Center, all centered around the concept of “resiliency.” The pieces are all for sale, with 100% of proceeds going directly to the artists. And we worked with non-profit ArtBridge to post artwork on dozens of lampposts in Lower Manhattan. The works also explore the theme of resiliency ahead of the anniversary of 9/11. | 19
D
HIST
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TOUR
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N IS W O NT RY DOW HISTO URE RE T E U H F W THE S T MEE
TORY
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TAKING A
Trip Through DOWNTOWN
Millions of tourists come through Lower Manhattan every year, drawn as much to our cobblestoned streets and colonial past as they are to more modern pieces of history like the New York Stock Exchange and the 9/11 Museum and Memorial. There’s so much to see and do here that a day’s visit will net only a small slice of what Lower Manhattan has to offer — thankfully, we’ve got a world-class selection of hotels to choose from for an extended stay. Here’s a snapshot of what you’ll find here.
Explorer-In-Chief Josh Katz After an in-depth and much-celebrated public search, the Alliance chose street photographer Josh Katz to be our Explorer-in-Chief. He spent three months living rent-free at Mint House in Lower Manhattan and documented the neighborhood amid its pandemic recovery. He captured some incredible images, as well as helped launch our TikTok and Instagram Reels channels.
The 9/11 Memorial Pool Cleaner Ahead of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, we produced a short-form video in partnership with Explorer-in-Chief Katz and his friend, filmmaker Josh Charow. Katz and Charow interviewed James Maroon, an overnight pool cleaner for the 9/11 Memorial. The video was picked up by a national publication and went viral online.
Black History Month With Kamau Ware Lower Manhattan is rich with visible history, from the gleaming skyscraper totems to long-gone Wall Street titans to the cobblestone streets that recall New York’s early colonial days. But there is more to Lower Manhattan’s diverse past than meets the eye. In February, the Alliance teamed up with Black Gotham Experience founder and artist Kamau Ware for a blog series on downtown’s Black History, digging into oft-overlooked stories from the neighborhood’s complicated past. 22 |
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WE ER W W HO LO TAN KE AT A M ANH K M TIC
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OPERATIONS
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The Alliance’s Operations team is responsible for keeping Lower Manhattan clean, safe and inviting for Lower Manhattan’s residents, tourists and workers. Despite COVID’s impact on our daily lives, 2021 was no exception. As businesses reopened and people returned to Lower Manhattan, our public safety officers worked diligently to maintain street safety. They worked with the NYPD, the Department of Homeless Services and BRC homeless outreach to ensure homeless individuals in need of services were able to get the help they needed; in FY2021, 74 homeless individuals were placed in permanent housing as a result of this work where they also received medical, mental and drug detox treatment. Public safety officers also worked with the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs, Department of Health, and the NYPD 1st Precinct Neighborhood Coordination Officers to combat illegal vendors in the district, which helps keep our sidewalks and streets safe and clear. And after over a year of closure, this spring the public safety team began to prepare for the return of two of our information kiosks at Bowling Green and Pier A. The kiosks were repainted and branded with our new logo, staff were rehired and brochures were restocked in advance of their reopening in July 2021. On top of ramping up our usual cleaning and maintenance, the Alliance’s hard-working Santition team continued to address emerging quality of life and sanitation concerns. We paid special attention to graffiti removal, removing hundreds of graffiti and stickers during the fiscal year. In keeping with Covid-mitigation efforts, The Alliance also continued to upgrade our BigBelly trash and recycling units to more hygienic units with foot pedals. In FY2021, we installed 80 new trash-and-recycle units. In 2021, the Alliance finished implementing our District Identity plan, which was in-themaking prior to the pandemic. The plan created a cohesive and unified look to all of our public
realm assets, incorporating our new logo and highlighting the Alliance’s stewardship. This unified look was fully implemented across our BigBelly units, tables, planters, banners, uniforms, vehicles and Downtown Connection buses this year. With public spaces becoming increasingly important in the Covid era, the Alliance worked hard to maintain our plazas and green spaces. We worked with a group of volunteers to clean up planting beds, pull weeds, remediate soil and do plantings in Mannahatta Park. The much-awaited Elizabeth H. Berger Plaza opened over the winter and we resumed maintenance of the space, which included watering and keeping the planted areas free of trash, in addition to snow removal and general cleaning. The team also worked with Economic Development’s Placemaking team to install public art across the district. In addition to our year-round services, the Alliance’s Operations team hosted some successful special events this year. In April, we hosted a Shred-a-thon/Clothing Drop Off on Fulton Street, collecting truckfulls of clothing as well as shredding thousands upon thousands of sensitive unwanted documents. The Alliance supported this summer’s Canyon of Heroes parade, which celebrated essential workers and their contributions during the pandemic, by sourcing paper confetti and helping clean up after the event. In the coming year, we will commemorate the parade by adding a permanent granite ticker-tape parade marker along Broadway. And as always, the Operations team kept the free Downtown Connection bus running, now with an upgraded fleet — after contracting with a new bus vendor in Oct 2020, all buses have air purification systems in addition to plastic partitions between seats to facilitate social distancing onboard. As an additional hygiene measure, the team performed daily wipedowns of bus handrails and seats, ensuring riders had clean and free transport during the pandemic.
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ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT
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The Alliance’s Economic Development team track’s the neighborhood’s economic health, collecting data on leasing, new development, private sector employment and tourism trends. In the Covid-era, which has posed significant challenges to businesses small and large, the department has taken significant steps to ensure that economic health remains strong. One major step has been the implementation of grant programs intended to support businesses suffering economic blows due to the pandemic. Last year, the Economic Development team created the $800,000 Small Business Rental Assistance Grant Program, which provided desperately needed direct support to dozens of struggling Lower Manhattan retailers. This past year, we teamed up with retail consultant Streetsense to launch the Small Business Technical Assistance Program, which provides free one-on-one technical assistance sessions to Lower Manhattan’s small businesses to help confront the Covid crisis. Thirty one businesses were able to have consulting sessions with Streetsense, and 27 businesses each received $3,000 in implementation grant money. In addition to direct aid, Economic Development Associates have been regularly communicating with small retailers across the district to help keep them updated on the ever-in-flux regulatory landscape around Covid recovery, including capacity restrictions, curfews, mask recommendations and vaccination policies (to name a few). The team has also created an innovative Covid Recovery Dashboard that brings together all of the Alliance’s relevant data and research related to the impact of Covid on Lower Manhattan, in an effort to help businesses and the public understand how Covid continues to shape business conditions in the area. Team members regularly conduct in-person surveys of Lower Manhattan retailers to determine which businesses are open or closed, and launched a partnership this year with Placer, a technology vendor that tracks cell phone location data, to learn more about population changes in the neighborhood, as the number of residents, workers and tourists have fluctuated in the pandemic. And since last summer, the Alliance has conducted three surveys of the Lower Manhattan workforce to help gauge how comfortable people were about going back to work as well as eating and drinking downtown. Beyond its definitive research and work with local businesses, the Economic Development team worked with Operations to inject beauty and delight into the neighborhood. Economic Development spearheaded May’s Downtown Live festival, which featured threedozen live shows over the course of two weekends. Offerings ran the gamut from concerts at a covered loading dock at 4 New York Plaza, to short plays along the Stone Street Historic District at 85 Broad Street, to contemporary performances with harbor views at
1 Battery Park Plaza, to name a few. The performers included Pulitzer Prize finalist and celebrated writer and performer Eisa Davis with Kaneza Schaal; Obie Award-winning, Off-Broadway favorite playwright and actor David Greenspan and composer Jamie Lawrence; hip-hop, spoken-word and performance artists Baba Israel & Grace Galu; and award-winning New York-based Brazilian Theater Company, Group. BR, among others. The event earned a seal of approval from New York Magazine's theater critic Helen Shaw, who wrote that "it feels glorious to be an audience again," while amNY's Dean Moses noted that the shows appealed not only to attendees, but that the open-air arrangements meant that "outside diners and passersby couldn’t help but also stop and marvel at the entertainment." Vogue listed Downtown Live as one of summer’s must-see events. Numerous attendees from Lower Manhattan and well beyond came to check out the performances, transforming the whole neighborhood into its own mini-Coachella, one where you could hop from stage-to-stage and stop by a local establishment for a pint or bite in-between. And this fall, the Economic Development team once again worked with Operations on public art, teaming up with NYC-based arts nonprofits Art on the Ave NYC and ArtBridge to present two public art exhibitions featuring works by dozens of local artists, adorning Downtown lamp posts and storefronts, and engaging pedestrians. As part of the Art on the Ave project, pedestrians walking along Broadway could see work by 27 local artists posted in storefronts and at the Fulton Center. Each piece in the collection was guided by the notion of “resiliency,” the ability to demonstrate adaptability and the capacity to thrive in changing or challenging environments. The work was selected through a public application process, and spanned across mediums using collage, paint, charcoal and textiles to explore the theme. Also this fall, ArtBridge turned 65 lampposts in Lower Manhattan into temporary art installations with an exhibition that also explored resiliency. Works included “Dances of New York City” — artist Frances Smith’s bold and vivid meditation on social justice — and painter Michelle Weinberg’s “Geo Grid,” which utilizes the lamp post’s cylinder-like shape to “show movement as it swirls upward,” she explained. The shared theme of resiliency is fitting for Lower Manhattan, a neighborhood that has weathered extraordinary obstacles, including one of our nation’s gravest tragedies, and yet continues to thrive. Lower Manhattan’s resilience and grit, its grace and its authenticity, continue to inspire and surprise. |
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communications
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The Downtown Alliance’s Communications team works as a megaphone for all that’s happening in Lower Manhattan, sharing with residents and visitors information about everything from ongoing events to art installations to the best outdoor dining spots. The team manages the Alliance’s social media platforms, blog, newsletters and other means of, well, communication, and this past year, it added a few new and exciting tools to its arsenal. Before the pandemic, the Downtown Alliance’s blog was an excellent resource for neighborhood news and restaurant and event roundups. In the constantly-changing Covid landscape, it has become even more of an asset, sharing updated safety guidance and news of neighborhood openings (and reopenings) in addition to dining and shopping guides and historical walking tours. To make this important resource even easier to navigate, in the spring, the Alliance’s website got a shiny new facelift. The new site has a fresh and bold look while making it easier for constituents to find their favorite blogs, business listings and other essential Downtown information — especially from their phones. One particularly noteworthy, if temporary addition to the team was our Explorer-in-Chief, Josh Katz. In early 2020, the Alliance launched the Explorer-in-Chief Dream Job Contest. The winner would be paid to explore Downtown and live rent-free in a one-bedroom suite just off of Wall Street. The contest drew 700+ applications from more than 40 states and 30 countries, and netted hundreds of articles and television spots in the press. Ultimately, the Alliance picked Katz, a Bushwick-based street photographer photojournalist. He moved into a one-bedroom suite at Mint House one year later in May 2021, as the city began to recover from the pandemic. Katz explored Lower Manhattan with vigor. He posted 76 posts in 92 days on the Alliance’s social media channels, covering everything from the hottest hotels to the tastiest street food to the best rooftop views. He spent a night observing behind the bar at
The Dead Rabbit, and an early morning with the bakers at Eataly. His work with the Alliance was featured in the New York Times and other press outlets, and he created content that showcased over 50 businesses and organizations in the neighborhood. Most importantly, he captured tens of thousands of beautiful photos of life in Lower Manhattan — essential workers, tourists, everyday commuters, Silent Disco dancers, street musicians, you name it. His impressive work with us helped share and archive the joy and sense of hope that permeated the neighborhood during a period of recovery. Indeed, we marked an important milestone in Lower Manhattan this year — the 20th anniversary of 9/11, a tragedy that changed the landscape of the neighborhood, the city and the world. In anticipation, Katz and documentary filmmaker Josh Charow interviewed James Maroon, pool cleaner for the 9/11 Memorial, in a video that was picked up by Time Magazine and netted thousands, if not a million views. One of the most striking memorials in the city, the 9/11 Memorial consists of two reflecting pools that mark the footprint of the towers. The pools create a sense of inverse space: each is nearly an acre in size, filling the footprints of the North and South Towers with the largest man-made waterfalls in North America. Where the skyscrapers once started their ascent into the sky, water plunges 30 feet into a square basin, then drops another 20 feet into a center void. The design, by Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker, is called “Reflecting Absence.” All told, it’s a lot of water. And someone has to keep it clean, or else the droves of visitors each year couldn’t do much reflecting. Enter: James Maroon, pool cleaner for the 9/11 Memorial. Charow and Katz visited Maroon on an overnight shift and talked to him about what it’s like to climb into a pair of waders, drag out the vacuum and push a broom across the surface of the pools five nights a week.
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Maroon has been around the site his whole life. His father worked in and around the Towers; on September 11 itself, Maroon was working at the Mercantile Exchange building when the planes hit. “I spent most of my life down here,” Maroon says in the video. “This is a great opportunity to try to give back.” It may be “bad history,” Maroon says, “but we’re trying to make it better every day here.” The Alliance also published 20 in 20, a document spotlighting 20 significant developments that have popped up in Lower Manhattan since 9/11 allowing downtown to transition from the city’s financial center to a thriving commercial, culinary and residential destination. The list reflects new construction, billions in private investments to renovate office space, impressive conversions and new residential space, as well as a host of now-iconic developments that tell the story of Lower Manhattan’s rebirth in the face of tragedy. September 11 was not our only deep dive into history. For Black History Month in February, Kamau Ware, founder of the Black Gotham Experience, authored a series of dispatches illuminating the stories of the African Diaspora in New York, helping to show us exactly what ground we stand upon. In eight installments, Ware shared oftenoverlooked stories about New York’s early Black history, tying them to their specific geography. The history he shared was difficult but essential for us to remember. It included the Slave Market at Pearl and Wall Streets, which was established by the Common Council of the City of New York; the Great Negro Plot, an 18th century collaboration between enslaved Africans and poor whites to set fires across Manhattan in protest of New York’s slave economy; and the story of Downing Oyster House, a restaurant for Manhattan’s elite by day and a stop along the Underground Railroad by night. In addition to the new website, our Communications team did impressive work sharing our accomplishments, programs and reports with local and national media. The press campaign surrounding the
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aforementioned 9/11 anniversary was particularly far-reaching. We helped dozens of print, broadcast and radio reporters with research, data, and live interviews, with write-ups and spots in venerable outlets like NPR, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal and The Economist. And our Communications team expanded our social media reach and the platforms we use to promote Lower Manhattan. We added a TikTok channel and Instagram Reels to our repertoire, making it easier to share videos and other high-engagement content with our followers and constituents. Since the second quarter of 2020, we have gained over 2,000 new Twitter followers, over 4,000 Instagram followers and over 7,000 Facebook followers; in its short existence, our new Instagram Reels channel has garnered as many as 200,000 views. We now have nearly 30,000 Twitter followers, 40,000 Instagram followers and 46,000 Facebook likes in total. Over the summer, the Communications team collaborated with Lower Manhattanbased ad agency F&B to create a new marketing campaign — Do You. Downtown. The three-part campaign illustrates how our neighborhood is a special place where you can pursue your passions and write your own adventure. You can spot our colorful print and digital ads across the district and city, including on MTA LED screens. We’ve also partnered with Spotify to create playlists, so you can soundtrack a visit to, say, the Fearless Girl statue with Olivia Rodrigo and Sleater-Kinney, or hit up the Seaport listening to Otis Redding, or take Lin-Manuel Miranda and Tracy Chapman to Hamilton’s grave. The Alliance has also populated Instagram with filters that allow users worldwide to bring Lower Manhattan into their backyards; a contest will grant those who post the best virtual Downtown images a trip to visit Lower Manhattan.
DO YOU. DOWNTOWN
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FINDING
Community AT LMHQ
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Founded in 2015 by the Downtown Alliance, LMHQ is a nonprofit space focused on building and connecting a community of downtown makers, thinkers and doers. LMHQ offers flexible work, meeting and event spaces, and fosters new connections and ongoing inspiration through diverse programming and a robust network of members. This past year, the pandemic continued to impact our ability to gather in person. In response, LMHQ increased its delivery of public programming and hosted 59 virtual workshops, panel discussions, fireside chats and networking sessions. Many of these events focused on developing new skills, staying up-to-date on current trends and advancing their careers, particularly during this challenging time. Between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021, LMHQ’s events brought in 8,300 RSVPs and saw nearly 4,000 live participants. Removing geographic barriers broadened our community to include attendees across the United States to as far as Belgium, Israel and Indonesia. We
were also able to keep the majority of programs free and accessible to all to accommodate the financial and emotional stress of the pandemic. Programs included 12 signature Women’s Breakfasts, produced with with sponsorship from Verizon; four collaborative events with the Downtown Alliance focusing on the cultural, business and current events that impact the Lower Manhattan community; and a series of workshops with the League of Women Voters to educate New York City’s residents about the historic 2021 citywide local elections and ranked choice voting. LMHQ also collaborated with organizational partners including Impact Hub, the Gotham’s Owning It, WE NYC, Ladies Get Paid and more. The physical headquarters at 150 Broadway is currently open with Covid-19 mitigation measures in place. Both masks and vaccinations are mandatory.
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Alliance for Downtown New York Financial Statements (Dollars in thousands)
STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL POSITION June 30, 2021
(a)
June 30, 2020
(a)
Assets Cash
$
Certificates of Deposit and Treasury Bills
12,266
$
6,000
5,000
8,603
Contract Receivable
316
316
Prepaid Expenses
415
421
1,447
1,487
Property and Equipment Security Deposits and Other Assets Total Assets
126
139
19,570
16,966
1,182
1,022
486
1,190
1,668
2,212
17,902
14,564
-
190
17,902
11,597
Liabilities Accounts Payable and Accrued Expenses Deferred Rent Expense Total Liabilities Net Assets Without donor restrictions With donor restrictions Total Net Assets Total Liabilities and Net Assets
$
19,570
$
16,966
STATEMENT OF ACTIVITIES Year End June 30, 2021 (a)
Year End June 30, 2020
(a)
Support and Revenue Assessment
$
20,400
Programs, Contracts and Other
$
20,400
2,120
3,325
22,520
23,725
Sanitation
4,218
4,212
Public Safety
3,347
3,873
Bus Service
1,552
1,446
Other Services
2,142
Total Support and Revenue Expenses Program Expenses Neighborhood Supplemental Services
2,149
(b)
Total Neighborhood Supplemental Services
11,259
11,680
Communications, Marketing and Promotion
3,837
3,874
Economic Development and Research
1,704
1,848
Facilitation (LMHQ)
1,616
1,543
18,416
18,945
1,607
1,579
44
44
1,651
1,623
20,067
20,568
Total Program Expenses
(b)
Supporting Services Management and General Fundraising Total Support Services Total Expenses Non-operating activity Adjustment to deferred rent expense due to lease modification Increase in Net Assets
-
695 $
3,148
$
3,157
(a) Amounts were summarized from financial statements audited by Condon O'Meara McGinty & Donnelly LLP, CPAs, dated September 28, 2021 and November 9, 2020. (b) Other Neighborhood Supplemental Services include homeless outreach, horticulture, infrastructure and streetscape maintenance.
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BOARD OF DIRECTORS Ric Clark, Chair
Jeremy Moss
WTC Performing Arts Center
Silverstein Properties
Dr. Anthony Munroe Honorable Bill de Blasio Mayor of the City of New York
Honorable Gale A. Brewer Manhattan Borough President
Honorable Margaret S. Chin Council Member, City of New York
Betty Cohen Century 21 Department Stores
Tom Costanzo Fosun Hive Holding
K. Thomas Elghanayan TF Cornerstone Inc.
David V. Fowler The Bank of New York Mellon
Brett S. Greenberg Jack Resnick & Sons
Francis J. Greenburger Time Equities, Inc.
Daniel Haimovic Eastbridge Group
Thomas M. Hughes Residential Representative
Jonathan Iger The William Kaufman Organization
Jeff Katz Crown Shy
Marvin Krislov Pace University
Sarah Miyazawa LaFleur M.M.LaFleur
Stephen Lefkowitz
Borough of Manhattan Community College
Dan Palino New Water Street Corp.
Edward V. Piccinich SL Green Realty Corp.
Peter A. Poulakakos Ahead Realty/HPH Hospitality Group
Cynthia C. Rojas Sejas S&P Global Market Intelligence
Joel Rosen GFI Hospitality LLC
William C. Rudin Rudin Management Company, Inc.
Todd Schwartz Cushman & Wakefield
Frank J. Sciame F.J. Sciame Construction Co., Inc.
Allan G. Sperling Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, LLP
Brian R. Steinwurtzel GFP Real Estate
Honorable Scott M. Stringer
Office of the Comptroller of the City of NY
Kent M. Swig Swig Equities, LLC
Matthew Van Buren CBRE Group, Inc.
John Wheeler Jones Lang LaSalle
Jolene Yeats The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey
Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP
Josh Marwell HarperCollins Publishers
Tammy Meltzer Manhattan Community Board 1
Ross F. Moskowitz Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP
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Jessica Lappin President
STAFF Communications & Marketing Brian Abrams Andrew Breslau Ron Dizon Jessica Drucker Teresa Figario Rebecca Fishbein Kristin Heise Elizabeth Lutz Bathsheba Parker Craig Raia Finance & Administration Nancy Cascella Theresa Hottel Alice Itty Rebecca Jimenez Michael Ketring Taina Prado Mark Quinn Maria Tirado-Quinones
LMHQ Jihan Johashen Ulla Lonnberg Daria Siegel Elissa Verrilli Operations Paul Albano Natalie Armstrong Adam Bernstein Denise Blackwell Renee Braunstein Michael Cook John Coyle Edward Drivick Daniel Giacomazza Hans Guillaume Dave Harvin Sean Hayes Carl Homward Jamel Homward Dwayne Jacobs Joe Maggio
Christian Molina Pedro Molina Jason Rivera Anthony Rivetti Richard Serrano Kerwin Singh Justin Volz-Dizon Ron Wolfgang Jane Wolterding Research & Economic Development Destany Batista Ariana Branchini David Brice Jarrod Grim Joshua Nachowitz Technology Onike Browne Remi de Fleurian Patrick Liang Jeremy Schneider
PHOTO CREDITS IMAGE CREDITS: Lanna Apisukh -7, 15, 28, 30, 34, 36 & 40 Maria Barahara -10, Coutesty of Art on the Ave – 10 Stuart Ramson (AP Photography) - 4,26 Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images – 18 Ann-Sophie Fjello (AP Photography) – 19, 34 Josh Katz (@joshkatz) - 22, 23 Director Josh Charow, Producer Joshua Katz & Downtown Alliance – 23
WRITING + EDITING: Andrew Breslau + Rebecca Fishbein – Alliance for Downtown New York, Inc.
ART DIRECTION + DESIGN: Bathsheba Parker – Alliance for Downtown New York, Inc.
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Alliance for Downtown New York, Inc. 120 Broadway, Suite 3340 New York, New York 10271 The mission of the Alliance for Downtown New York is to provide service, advocacy, research and information to advance Lower Manhattan as a global model of a 21st century central business district for businesses, residents and visitors.
downtownny.com