The South Street Seaport redevelopment plan, released yesterday, is unsurprisingly being met with immediate backlash. Councilman Alan J. Gerson, who the NY Times reports has a significant voice in the approval, has stated with confidence that the plan is “certainly not going to pass in its present form.” The developers, General Growth Properties, told Gerson of their “willingness to work with him” and have mentioned refining the plan, though have not mentioned to what extent.......

Sure, the 2008 election is exciting, but hundreds of candidates are expected to run for city office next year. Of the current City Council, 36 members out of 51 are up for reelection or getting the boot due to term limits. Former Bloomberg aide William Cunningham advised the Sun, "Put on your helmets and put on your seat belts: It's going to be like a demolition derby." It'll be a donation derby as candidates who......

Photograph by Jake Dobkin Later today, the city will discuss whether the I.M. Pei-designed Silver Towers should be landmarked. The Observer reported that NYU announced its support today, a reversal from an earlier position over three years ago. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation pushed for landmarking the complex, located between Bleecker and Houston Streets and LaGuardia Place and Mercer Street, a few years ago, calling it "an innovative modern design by I.M.......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: shots fired on Soundview Ave. in the Bronx, a gas leak on Snyder Ave. and East 34th St. in Brooklyn, and a bank robbery on West 4th and 6th Ave. in Manhattan. High school girls (including a pair from Long Island) swept the top prizes in both team and individual categories for the first time in the history of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technology. Houston St.......

City Council members Jessica Lappin and Alan Gerson have introduced a bill that would pass tickets received by food deliverycyclists and bike messengers on to their employers. The fines, which range from $100 to $300, are supposed to encourage restaurants and delivery firms to firmly encourage employees to cycle safely in the city, aside from being killed themselves. Council member Lappin says that reckless riders received 1,800 citations in her Upper East Side district alone......

Yesterday morning, around 7AM, Queens resident Hope Miller was fatally hit by a truck turning right onto Houston Street from 6th Avenue. The driver, Roger Smiley, was fleeing the scene of an accident at Prince and 6th Avenue. Miller had been crossing Houston Street, near a construction site. 1010 WINS reported that the impact "knocked her out of her shoes." Smiley was arrested and charged with "leaving the scene of an accident, driving under the......

Yesterday, firefighters and the community were in Bay Ridge to remember Joseph Graffagnino, one of the firefighters who died while fighting last Saturday's 7-alarm fire at the Deutsche Bank building. The building, which was in the process of being dismantled, has been described as a deathtrap, what with the contractors using flammable materials, a broken standpipe (which couldn't deliver water to the fire), and a lack of FDNY inspection. Graffagnino and fellow Engine 24,......

The ACMA (Alliance for Creative Music Action) is a group of musicians, artists and supporters of the arts who are joining together "as a pressure group to bring awareness about the needs of art in our communities." Tonight they'll be holding a Town Hall Meeting, demanding that the city provide "an adequate subsidized performance space in Manhattan." The meeting will be held just a block away from Tonic, a recent casualty amongst downtown performance spaces.......

AMNY continues the ongoing story about clubs and venues in New York closing. They report on the irony of it all: "Images of edgy nightclub Sin-é are flashed on oversized plasma screens in the sales office of a new condominium development. Buyers, lured by the mystique of the Lower East Side's arts and music scene, pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to live at the center of it. A few years later that same edgy......

Yesterday a press conference on the steps of City Hall was held in response to the eviction and closing of Tonic, the downtown venue that shut its doors after nine years. A committee of musicians, cultural activists, and supporters made a call for public and political intervention to protect new music/indie/avant/jazz in New York City and to ask the city to provide a minimum 200 capacity, centrally located venue for experimental music. From the press......

Police and street vendors don't mix. The Villager reports that comedian and Soho resident Whoopi Goldberg thinks the treatment the police give the vendors is "atrocious," and she's not alone. Recently a group of sidewalk artist vendors staged a protest against the harassment by the First Police Precinct. While many (including residents, business owners and the art vendors themselves) agree that the illegal street peddlers should be stopped, the police have been going after the......

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg signed a City Council bill that requires businesses with bicycle delivery workers to improve its bicycle safety measures into law. Read all about bill 24-A, which requires businesses to supply helmets, to make sure the delivery guys wear them, and to make sure the bikes are safe, as well as 58-A, which requires signs about bicycle safety and laws to posted in English, Spanish or whichever language is spoken at the......

The food blogs were all in a buzz yesterday about the possibility of a foie gras ban, similar to the one recently enacted in Chicago, being instituted here in New York. It seems that Councilman Alan Gerson was poised to introduce a ban today; Ariane Daugin of D'Artagnan, a prominent purveyor of foie based in New York, sent an email to her food-related contacts urging action. Jennifer Leuzzi posted the email in its entirety......

Augh! The NY Sun reports:Speculation is heating up that the Municipal Building, the soaring limestone landmark that overlooks City Hall, could be among the government real estate assets to be sold off and converted to residential buildings as municipal employees prepare to move into a new, privately managed office building planned for ground zero.Why? Because the city signed an agreement with World Trade Center developer to assume 600,000 square feet of space at Tower......

Family members protested at Ground Zero, asking that Mayor Bloomberg involve the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) in the renewed search for remains from September 11, 2001. Local politicians like Representative Carolyn Maloney and City Councilman Alan Gerson support the families, but Mayor Bloomberg feels it's the "city's responsibility. We're not going to walk away from our responsibility and let somebody else bear the pressure of the work." The families argue that in spite......

A Chinatown bus story that does not involve its speed or quality of the ride: The NY Sun reports that the police aren't very happy with Chinatown buses using previous curbside space, because things are crowded enough. Which led some City Council member Alan Gerson to suggest that a bus terimnal be created for Chinatown: "These buses have more pick-ups and drop-offs than the Port Authority." Michael Lau, the commanding officer of the 5th Precinct,......

Right when you thought we were done bitching about the Washington Square Park renovations, leave it to the Villager to bring us right back in. The issue at hand now? The cleanliness of the water in the soon to be moved Park fountain. It seems that at the Art Commission hearing where the renovations were approved earlier this month a few new bits of information were brought to light. Namely, that the new fountain would......