WestView

Letters

February 2010

Dear WestView:

Fine article by Joan McAllister on “Unlocking the Homeless Cycle.” It’s an indication of the vast amount of sympathy Mayor Bloomberg has for the less advantaged that New York City now has 10,096 families in the shelter system (including more than16,000 children). Imagine how many others have nowhere to go in the bitter cold, like the man lying on a heat grate on the sidewalk directly outside a New York University building on Mercer St., two days in a row. The “new rules” McAllister lists, which include permitting shelters to evict families even when their children would be removed and placed in foster care, are sick.

Meanwhile Mayor Bloomberg’s wealth has increased exponentially while he’s been in office. That must be why he says it’s the best job in the world.

Name Withheld

Dear WestView:

This is seismic. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has just declared portions of the far-West Village’s Hudson River gold coast to be in a hundred-year flood-plain (meaning they think the basement mechanicals and heating plant of affected buildings will be under water sometime in the next hundred years, after a hurricane storm surge). If no flood insurance, then no more Fannie Mae mortgages.

It’s nationwide. According to the January 4, Los Angeles Times, “The new maps are part of a nationwide effort that FEMA began in 2003 to better identify properties that could flood in a so-called 100-year storm—the type of deluge that FEMA calculates has a 1% likelihood of occurring in any given year. In much of the country, the redrawn maps greatly increase the number of homes included in flood zones.”

I have an interest in a building near Barrow St. and West St. that has just had to buy an annual flood insurance policy for over $30,000 since owners there could not get a mortgage without it.

I’m told the 18-building West Village Houses complex has just bought flood insurance for all 18 buildings. It could be that every building facing the Hudson all up West St. is going to have to buy flood insurance for thousands and thousands forever or forego ever getting another federally backed mortgage. (This is extrapolation, not a fact known by me.)

Welcome to climate change. And what about Pier 40? Who would invest in that location with this flood insurance nightmare looming?

T. Hoover

Dear WestView:

It is more than Baby Buddha although I certainly depend on that business on a regular basis and will be, with others, shocked if it is closed by greed.

The Gottlieb family has the whole West Village in a stranglehold. All those empty stores on Hudson Street. The three on the corner of Bank St. and Hudson St., the old Hudson Corner restaurant at 11 St., the big parking lot at, I believe Charles St. and dozens of other parcels about the Village which they leave empty and, to all appearances, abandoned.

Gottlieb, when he was alive, was the scourge of the Village in his broken down station wagon.

Why do they want to take Baby Buddha when they leave all those stores empty on Hudson St.? There are about 12 vacancies between 10 St, and 12 St. (not all Gottlieb).

The prime corner, with two stores on Hudson St. at Bank St., next to Imperial Liquors, iempty for at least five years, and the corner Italian restaurant closed, since, I believe, last year, are perfect Gottlieb examples. They have done nothing with these properties along with the very large Hudson Corner at Hudson St. at 11 St., once Janice’s Fish House, once The Road House, a gay bar, and way, way back, a French restaurant named Dorgene.

Jack Dowling

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