The Villager, week of Dec. 13, 2012

Page 1

Chin’s main music man, page 19

Volume 82, Number 28 $1.00

West and East Village, Chelsea, Soho, Noho, Hudson Square, Little Italy, Chinatown and Lower East Side, Since 1933

December 13 - 19, 2012

Durst pegs Pier 40 pile fix at $50 mil less than the Trust BY LINCOLN ANDERSON According to a new study by developer Douglas Durst, the Hudson River Park Trust’s cost estimate for repairing the piles at Pier 40 is excessively high — as much as $50 million too high. Earlier this year, Madelyn Wils, the Trust’s C.E.O. and president, and Daniel Kurtz, the Trust’s C.F.O. and executive vice president of finance and real estate, painting a dire

Photo by Sam Spokony

Amen! Free tuition-alujah! Reverend Billy and his choir blessed 11 Cooper Union students who had barricaded themselves in the Foundation Building clock tower after they ended their occupation Monday. “These people are saints in our church,” he said. See Page 4 for article.

Fracking foes take hacks at Con Edison and Spectra BY EILEEN STUKANE Four police officers stood at the entrance to the Village Community School where a meeting of Community Board 2’s Environment, Public Safety and Public Health Committee took place on Tues., Dec. 4. A New York Police Department van was parked at the curb directly in front of them. “The officers are just here as a precaution in case of O.W.S.,” an officer said,

referring to Occupy Wall Street protesters. He said “the borough,” as in Patrol Borough Manhattan South, had requested the police detail, not the Village’s Sixth Precinct. On its Web site, C.B. 2 had billed the meeting as an “Update by Con Edison on its connection to the Spectra pipeline.” It was mandatory for the meeting to be held, in that it was part of a negotiation that arose from a lawsuit filed by Sane

financial picture of the aging West Houston St. pier, said it would cost $80 million over the next 30 years to fix its metal piles, which Wils numbered at 3,700. Fourteen hundred of these piles — those in the worst condition — need to be repaired in the next five to 10 years, while the rest can be fixed in the following 10 to 15 years, Wils said then.

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Ed Council O.K.’s Village rezoning due to new school BY SAM SPOKONY Amid continued opposition from some parents and teachers, the District 2 Community Education Council on Dec. 6 approved a sweeping rezoning that will carve out catchment areas for two new public elementary schools, and will affect zones for current schools from the West Village all the way to the Upper East Side.

Energy Project, five other environmental groups and several individuals, against the Hudson River Park Trust. The suit states that the Trust violated the terms of its charter and did not comply with New York State’s Environmental Quality Review Act, or SEQRA, in granting an easement to allow Spectra Energy to construct its natural gas pipeline across

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5 1 5 CA N A L STREET • N YC 10013 • C OPYRIG H T © 2012 N YC COMMU NITY M ED IA , LLC

Most community criticism of the District 2 rezoning effort has been centered on the portion of the plan that creates a zone for P.S. 340, the new school located at W. 17th St. and Sixth Ave., which is scheduled to open in 2014 and has been dubbed the Foundling School because it will occupy the first six

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EDITORIAL, LETTERS PAGE 12

REVOLUTIONARY NUTCRACKER PAGE 25


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