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Coney Island's Astroland owner calls it quits; park closing Sunday forever
Coney Island's Astroland owner calls it quits; park closing Sunday forever

BY JOTHAM SEDERSTROM
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Updated Friday, September 5th 2008, 1:32 AM


Last year, a rally was held on its last day of the Summer to keep the park open.


Egan-Chin/News

Juliet Victoria Paradise, 2, looks longingly at Astroland amusements shuttered for the day.

Coney Island's world-famous Astroland Amusement Park is set to shut down once and for all on Sunday - more than a month before the amusement park season officially ends.

After months of bickering with developer Thor Equities over the renewal of a lease, Astroland owner Carol Hill Albert announced she had no choice but to pull the plug.

"I have not given up on Coney Island as Thor Equities has stated," said Albert, who employs 75 year-round employees and 275 seasonal workers. "I have given up on trying to get Thor to negotiate, which I have attempted to do every month since June, and numerous times in August."

The park, which would normally close Oct. 13, had teetered dangerously close to shuttering ever since Thor purchased it in 2006, despite a public push to keep it open until a larger plan for the area was approved by the city.

Albert said the decision was based on a concern for her employees and the amount of time it takes to pack up the rides and games now operating at the 3.1-acre park.

"My employees cannot live in a state of limbo any longer," Albert said in a statement.

The brinksmanship between the two had been bubbled under the surface, but it exploded last week when Astroland lawyer Sid Davidoff sent a letter threatening to shut down the park unless Thor approved a two-year lease agreement.

Coney Island Development Corp. President Lynn Kelly said Astroland's closing illustrates the importance of wrapping up and approving an ambitious zoning plan by the city.

"This further underscores the need for the city's comprehensive rezoning plan as the only hope for preserving the amusement area and bringing the necessary jobs, infrastructure and affordable housing to the neighborhood," Kelly said.

Thor spokesman Stefan Friedman blasted Albert and suggested she was the one leaving Coney Island high and dry.

"We are extremely disappointed that Carol Albert has decided to give up on the future of Coney Island when her current lease isn't even up for a number of months," Friedman said. "However, Coney Island will be fully open for business in the Summer of 2009 with amusements, games, shopping and entertainment galore."

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/ny...l?ref=nyregion
City Suspends Rigger’s License After Fatal Fall From Crane

By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
Published: September 5, 2008

City officials late Friday suspended the license of the master rigger who was overseeing the dismantling of a tower crane on West 42nd Street on Thursday when a man working to lower it plunged 40 stories to his death.

An investigation found that the master rigger, Gene J. Altobelli, 56, failed to supervise the operation and that unsafe conditions existed at the site, where two residential towers overlooking the Hudson River are being built, city officials said.

Investigators determined that the worker’s safety harness was not secured and that a safety railing was missing from the platform where he was working, according to a statement from the Department of Buildings and the Department of Investigation.

Mr. Altobelli told investigators that he was not on the crane when the accident occurred about 9:30 a.m., but was taking a break in a street-level shed on the construction site, according to administrative charges that were filed against him on Friday in conjunction with the license suspension.

“The investigation revealed inattention to basic safety precautions,” said Rose Gill Hearn, the investigation commissioner. “It’s outrageous that in the face of well-publicized tragedies, an individual would be charged with permitting blatant safety violations on a construction site, 40 floors above the ground.”

Mr. Altobelli said Friday night that he had not been notified of the suspension and had not seen the charges, and therefore would not comment.

The accident, which occurred at Silver Towers on the River, a 58-story residential project at 600 West 42nd Street between 11th and 12th Avenues, was the third fatal crane accident in the city in six months. The two others, which left nine people dead — as well as the fatal Deutsche Bank fire in 2007 and a series of other fatal accidents and construction accidents — have brought intense scrutiny to the Bloomberg administration and the Buildings Department.

Since the two earlier crane accidents, the city has adopted a variety of measures to increase the scrutiny of tower crane operations.

A criminal inquiry has resulted, so far, in the arrest of two Department of Buildings crane inspectors, one on charges of taking bribes to ensure that the cranes of one company passed inspection and that its workers were granted lower-level crane licenses.

Still under scrutiny by the office of Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau and city investigators is the crane company that prosecutors believe paid the bribes, people briefed on the matter have said.

That company, identified by those people as Nu-Way Crane Service, at one time employed Mr. Altobelli, but a person briefed on that inquiry said he had not been implicated.

The man who died Thursday, Anthony Esposito, 48, was working on a platform attached to the crane at the 40th floor when he apparently lost his footing.

The charges, which will be adjudicated by the city’s Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, accuse Mr. Altobelli of “negligence and incompetence,” engaging in acts that endangered the public and failing to cooperate with investigators.

The city building code requires that a master rigger supervise the erection or dismantling of a tower crane.

The rigging company handling the job for DiFama Concrete, which rented and operated the crane at the site, was Tower Rigging.

None of the principals of Tower have a master rigger’s license, and the company was working under Mr. Altobelli’s license, which officials said was not improper.

If he is found guilty of the administrative charges, Mr. Altobelli could lose his license and be fined up to $25,000.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/ny...ml?ref=thecity
A Venerable School, and a Future Hotel

By GREGORY BEYER
Published: September 6, 2008


Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Xavier High School, foreground, sold its air rights, and neighbors sued.

THE buses returned last week to West 16th Street: back to school for the young men of Xavier High School, which has been between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas in Chelsea since 1850. As the students entered the school, the affiliated Church of St. Francis Xavier, a great stone scowl of a building, looked out at them and the nearby apartment buildings like a stern headmaster.

But there may soon be a big change to the longstanding scene. The city has approved the sale of the school’s unused air rights to a developer who plans an adjacent hotel at 31 West 15th Street. It would rise at least 20 stories — much taller than the five- to six-story apartment buildings that cluster midblock on the local streets. But some neighbors of the school are unhappy with the scale of the hotel, and say they were not adequately notified about the project.

“You want to shrug your shoulders and say, ‘How could it have gotten this far?’ ” said Risa Fisher, who lives with her husband and two children at 36 West 15th Street, across from the planned hotel site. The opponents’ objections are weighty ones, she added, centered on the neighborhood’s ability to sustain such a large project. “This is not about the view,” Ms. Fisher said.

In June, the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals granted the transfer of the school’s air rights. Then, in July, Ms. Fisher and other members of the 15th and 16th Streets’ block association filed suit in State Supreme Court in Manhattan to overturn the ruling and have the transfer re-examined. These actions would require an environmental review of the project, which the hotel’s opponents think would show that the neighborhood cannot support the planned hotel and its deliveries and round-the-clock maintenance.

Bud Perrone, a spokesman for the developer, Tishman Hotel and Realty, said the company would not comment because of the pending court case. The Rev. Daniel Gatti, the school’s president, declined to comment for the same reason. But Martin McLaughlin, a spokesman for the school, said, “Xavier’s involvement in this project is the sale of air rights, which will go toward its endowments and enable qualified students who can’t afford to pay the tuition” to attend.

On Wednesday night, at a meeting of Community Board 5 to discuss the matter, one man denounced the hotel as “a behemoth on our streets.” Most of the 70 residents attending, though, were dismayed at how little notice they said they had had of the plan.

John Gillis, the executive director of the New York/New Jersey Regional Joint Board of Unite Here, which represents low-wage workers in the restaurant, hotel and garment industries, had a different perspective on the dispute. The current building at 31 West 15th Street, which would be demolished to make way for the hotel, was the union’s hall for more than 75 years.

“We were here when the new condo and co-ops were built,” Mr. Gillis said. “Some of our new neighbors did not like the sight and sound of our members having union meetings. It’s a little ironic that they are the ones making the noise now.”

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TalB

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/re...ref=realestate
Worldly, Meet Other-Worldly


Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

CERTAIN DIFFERENCES St. John the Divine and its new neighbor, Avalon Morningside Park.

CERTAIN Upper Manhattan buildings, like the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, are equipped with lightning rods, to conduct electricity. Other buildings in the area are lightning rods in and of themselves.

Take Avalon Morningside Park, a new luxury apartment building that looms over a corner of the cathedral’s property. Since the day it was proposed in 2003, the 20-story high-rise, which is being developed by AvalonBay Communities at West 110th Street and Morningside Drive, has generated criticism about its size and aesthetic.

As the building went up, there were frequent complaints about noise from rock removal and late-night trucks; the construction also doomed a popular playground and rose garden.

Still other detractors questioned how a house of worship could allow the commercial use of its land, even if the money generated by the $130 million project might let St. John complete some long-overdue repairs.

Now, as the dust settles and tenants finally move in, it remains to be seen whether the critics come around. But St. John, for one, is upbeat.

“We’re obviously excited about it anchoring the financial future of the cathedral,” said the Very Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski, the church’s dean, of the new building. “But we also think it brings a lot to this neighborhood.”

Part of what it brings is 295 apartments, from 483-square-foot studios to 1,443-square-foot three-bedrooms, finished with stainless-steel appliances and stone counters — and representing an upgrade from the neighborhood’s stock of aging co-ops and rentals.

Dean Kowalski also expressed satisfaction that the building was reserving 20 percent of its homes, or 59 units, as affordable housing, which limits tenant income to about $23,000 a year. Thirty-five percent of those units have been leased since July, said Fred Harris, a senior vice president at AvalonBay.

About the same percentage of the building’s 236 market-rate apartments, meanwhile, have been leased in that time frame, for $2,425 to $6,620 a month, said Mr. Harris, adding that the project, which began in March 2007, should be completed early next year.

To cross that finish line, AvalonBay must fulfill its development deal with St. John, which will involve rebuilding a long-collapsed retaining wall along West 110th Street now engulfed in barbed wire and other fencing.

There is also a plan for a public plaza, with benches, plantings and schist slabs excavated from the rocky site. Nearby, the developer has agreed to plant a replacement rose garden.

Beautifying other sections of 11.3-acre property, which has largely been a work in progress since the cathedral’s granite cornerstone was laid in 1892, is also a goal of St. John’s leaders.

The 99-year lease that St. John signed with AvalonBay will generate $2.5 million in annual rent; though the amount will be open for renegotiation in 20 years, Dean Kowalski said, the money will be put to good use in the meantime.

One addition will be an access road from Morningside Drive to improve traffic flow. There are also plans for a new playground by the cathedral’s southern wall, he said.

Yet such projects don’t change the fact that Avalon Morningside’s gleaming glass facade clashes with the locale’s granite-and-brick architecture, said Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell, who represents the area.

In fact, if the neighborhood or the cathedral had ever been accorded landmark status, as Mr. O’Donnell has been advocating for years, the apartment building might have looked quite different, he said.

“I know that the financial situation of the cathedral isn’t great,” he said. “But I don’t think it adequately addressed other solutions that were available.”

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TalB

Bad sentiment rising over skyscraper plan at Hutch Metro Center
Bad sentiment rising over skyscraper plan at Hutch Metro Center

BY BILL EGBERT

Monday, September 15th 2008, 4:20 PM

A skyscraper that would loom over an east Bronx neighborhood - and make an easy target for terrorists, some people fear - is getting a big thumbs down from the local community board.

But there's little it can do to stop city plans for a 374-foot-high backup 911 call center the city wants to build at the Hutch Metro Center in Morris Park.

The building would rise just south of Pelham Parkway, with 800 employees and a 500-car parking lot.

The backup call center would be the second-tallest building in the Bronx, behind only Tracey Towers on Mosholu Parkway.

After a joint FDNY/NYPD presentation to the Land Use Committee of Community Board 11 last Thursday, the committee voted overwhelmingly against the project, with the full board voting next month.

"When they first met with us, it was going to be seven stories," said the board's district manager, John Fratta. "The next time, it was going to be 17 stories. This thing just grew."

The community recently downzoned to prevent new oversized apartment buildings. "This is going to cast a big shadow over our community," Fratta said of the 37-story building.

CB11 Land Use Chairman Joseph McManus called the project "a monster of a building."

McManus also predicted a traffic nightmare: "You're going to need a helicopter to get across Pelham Parkway."

He also told an NYPD representative a number of community residents fear the building will be a standing target for terrorists.

Fratta and McManus said the city shot down a series of suggestions from committee members to make the project more palatable to the community - such as turning the planned adjacent 500-car parking lot into a garage and spreading the building's footprint over the entire parcel, or adding access to the Hutchinson River Parkway to reduce the traffic burden on Pelham Parkway.

The NYPD pointed to Department of Homeland Security regulations requiring wide setbacks from the street for making the facility tall enough to fit on the lot.

As for access to the Hutch, Fratta said the city told them simply that they looked into it and decided "that can't happen."

The FDNY press office did not respond to requests for comments by press time.

Fratta stressed the board understands the need for a facility to back up the main 911 call center at Metrotech in Brooklyn. It just wants the city to make some adjustments to reduce the negative impacts.

"We want to help the city," said Fratta, "but the city isn't cooperating."

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