Learning’s building blocks, page 29
Volume 82, Number 24 $1.00
West and East Village, Chelsea, Soho, Noho, Hudson Square, Little Italy, Chinatown and Lower East Side, Since 1933
November 15 - 21, 2012
Knickerbocker rent refunds won’t wash away tenants’ anger BY SAM SPOKONY After tension and complaints nearly boiled over into a rent strike, residents of a Lower East Side affordable housing complex will get rent refunds for the weeks they’ve spent without power, heat or running water following Hurricane Sandy, the development’s ownership announced on Tuesday night. At a public meeting attended by hundreds of tenants, as well as elected officials and emergency relief agency staff
members, a representative for the owner of Knickerbocker Village — a 12-building, 1,600unit complex that takes up two blocks along Monroe St. — also provided vivid details about why it took so long for maintenance workers to act on the massive basement flooding that shut down the buildings’ boilers and electrical equipment. Around 140 apartments remained without electricity as
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Chinatown’s plight predated the storm, local merchants cry Photo by William Alatriste/NYC Council
Christine Quinn this week presented a range of proposals on protecting the city against climate changefueled flooding.
Quinn floats raft of ideas for fighting future floods BY LINCOLN ANDERSON Saying that strengthening New York City’s defenses to withstand the impacts of future Sandy-strength storms is “the single most important infrastructure challenge of our time,” Council Speaker Christine Quinn offered a sweeping blueprint Tuesday for critical planning and preparation in an era of global warming. Her package of proposals to combat flooding ranges from massive, harborspanning, storm surge barriers to spongelike, water-absorbent sidewalks.
In backing the barriers, which Quinn wants to be federally funded, she’s clearly breaking with Mayor Bloomberg, who feels it would be impossible to secure the necessary money. But Quinn this week announced she now has a more powerful ally in U.S. Chuck Schumer, who has pledged to ask the federal Army Corps of Engineers to study the idea — the first required step in the process. “Two weeks ago we were reminded that our city is vulnerable to the forces of nature,” Quinn said, “that the reality of
climate change puts our homes and our safety at risk. What we do in this moment will determine whether we allow that reality to define us, to hold us back — or to inspire us, to push us to do what we know is hard.” Not only hard — but expensive. It could cost up to $20 billion to surge-proof the city, under Quinn’s proposals. That price estimate includes one very “big-ticket item,” she said, namely,
BY SAM SPOKONY Many Chinatown small business owners believe that current emergency assistance programs led by the city, state and federal government are not enough to help them fully recover from the impact of Hurricane Sandy. There is also general agreement between business owners, politicians and community leaders that Chinatown’s economy faces deep-seated problems — from difficulty
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attracting business and sustaining interest from tourists to dealing with a shrinking neighborhood — that existed long before the storm struck, and which cannot be adequately addressed by shortterm solutions, such as emergency loans and general relief efforts. After outcry from some business owners at an emergency relief forum held on Friday at
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EDITORIAL, LETTERS PAGE 12
ROBOTIC RENDEZVOUS PAGE 23