Proving yet again that it has every amenity as the rest of the city, a coyote was spotted at the site of the old Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island. Nick Mirto was dropping off a load of soil at 7:45 a.m. on Thursday when something caught his eye. "I just looked to the left, and there he was, about 30 feet from the road we just drove down," Mirto told the Staten Island Advance. "He looks very healthy. There's plenty of food in there for him to eat." more ›

Budget gap or no budget gap, the city is committed to its continued search for 9/11 remains. A previous Brooklyn sifting that ended in December 2007 left victims’ family unsatisfied and wanting more so it’s shipped truckloads of debris from the World Trade Center site to Fresh Kills in Queens, where anthropologists and other experts will pick through it. The Post reports there is 844 cubic yards of the stuff is ready for sorting, starting April 5th; the effort is expected to cost $1.4 million and be completed in three months, according to the Medical Examiner's Office, that's overseeing it.
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Bowing to victims' families, the city has agreed to one last ditch effort to find human remains from the 9/11 attacks. Six to seven truckloads of debris from the World Trade Center will be shipped to Staten Island's Fresh Kills facility for hand sifting, to begin in April, reported the Real-Time News. “Anthropologists and other trained professionals will carefully evaluate and search the estimated 844 cubic yards of material gathered since December 2007 for any potential remains,” said the office of the chief medical examiner in a memo. “Any potential remains recovered will proceed to OCME laboratories for further testing.” It's estimated that the operation will cost $1.4 million and provide the equivalent amount of closure. more ›

In a U.S. Court of Appeals hearing, families of victims killed during the September 11, 2001 attacks at the World Trade Center argued that 1.6 million tons of debris at Staten Island landfill be removed, sifted and then prepared for proper burial because it may contain victims' remains. In the other corner is the city, which argued, "These ashes are undifferentiated dirt." more ›

Raj Kottamasu, coordinator of the Freshkills Park Project, is driving towards reconditioning the 2,200-acre Fresh Kills Landfill into a fruitful and attractive city destination three times the size of Central Park. Kottamasu and his team strive to "get people into thinking about this site as a park" and less like a "symbol of environmental neglect and wastefulness." With construction already begun, Kottamasu hopes to open 70 of the 2,200 acres within the next two to three years. He adds, "There are a lot of landfills that have been converted into parks, historically and contemporarily. Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens was the Corona ash dumps, which were referenced in 'The Great Gatsby.'" more ›

Staten Island might be the borough that demands the greatest need for its residents to have a vehicle, but that doesn't mean that drivers there by any means enjoy smooth sailing. Shaolin natives have been sending in reports to the SI Advance saying the roads feel like obstacle courses, have led to blown tires and even cause them to come up with creative directions in order to avoid the many problematic spots. The most horrific account comes from Rich Blazewicz of Great Kills who tells the paper how his ten-year-old daughter Gina "was hospitalized for two days with a concussion last month after she tripped in a pothole on Linton Place while playing basketball. She fell backward and hit her head...and was spitting up blood after the fall." Residents complain that when the DOT does show up, they only provide band-aid fixes that wash away after four or five storms. A rep for the DOT defends their current job performance saying, "Most roads have a 20-year cycle, with the evidence of a lack of investment in their upkeep showing up years—even decades—later." more ›

The hot and humid weather didn't stop a Staten Island couple from digging through a landfill to find a pair of $20,000 earrings mistakenly thrown out. WCBS 2 reports that jeweler Haya Sharon had put her earrings in a "small jar of cleaning solution," which one of their jewelry store employees "accidentally threw it away Tuesday." The Sharons contacted the Sanitation Department, which directed them to the old Fresh Kills landfill, where their trash--amid all the other collected garbage--was waiting to be compacted and shipped elsewhere. The couple found the earrings on Thursday, after 30 minutes of searching. more ›

A federal judge ruled in favor for the city, saying the city is not "required to re-sift through debris" from the World Trade Center in hopes of finding more human remains. more ›

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A group of influential paisans from Staten Island, drunk on the idea of starting the first vineyard in contemporary New York City, have been on a wine-tasting tour of Tuscany, researching vineyards to figure out the best way to bring their brain-child back to their home borough. Yes, you read that correctly – according to today’s Times, you’ll soon be able to step off the Staten Island Ferry and pick up a bottle of Fresh... more ›

It's the future, now! The Daily Intelligencer posted this Skidmore, Owings & Merrill/SWIM rendering of Freedom Tower's lobby, and finds out from SOM's TJ Gottesdiener that the lobby will shed "light into the memorial pool." Notice how the way light falls in Freedom Tower's lobby mimics how light would fall in the World Trade Center's lobby. It's wild to think there's a lobby rendering - remember when Freedom Tower was just redesign upon redesign? more ›

When Omar Freilla founded Green Worker Cooperatives, an incubator for eco-friendly worker coops, he set the initial goal of $700,000. “We weren’t even sure how we were going to raise that much,” he said in a recent telephone call. Almost four years later, the organization has raised well beyond their initial goal, thanks to RSF Social Finance and numerous local churches. more ›

Staten Island is not having a good week. In addition to the outrage over the weird ad copy appearing in part of a Virgin Mobile campaign, the borough’s president has also called for an ice cream boycott. Last Friday, a perturbed James P. Molinaro wrote a letter to Scott and Kim Myles, husband and wife co-owners of the Queens-based 5 Boroughs Ice Cream company. Someone had shown Molinaro a copy of a flyer printed off the 5B website, meant to help persuade local specialty food storeowners to carry the ice cream. There are currently eight 5B flavors, all made in small batches; each is named after a NYC locale or neighborhood. For Molinaro and many Staten Islanders, the offending ice cream flavor is Staten Island Landfill- a swirly mix of brownies, fudge, crunchies, and cherries in a vanilla base. Molinaro objects to what he considers old hat outer borough typecasting; the Staten Island Advance quotes his letter to the company as saying "I am hard-pressed to think of a more insulting and derogatory attack in the name of consumerism.” more ›

A number of documents were filed yesterday in the lawsuit against the city by family members of 9/11 victims who want the city to search the debris on Staten Island for human remains. Among the affadavits filed was one by Erick Beck, a recycling supervisor, who stated that some of the finely sifted debris taken by the Department of Sanitation was used to "pave roads and fill in potholes, dips and ruts." Beck, whose company was finding up to 2000 bones per day, also stated that his company was pressured to sift the debris quickly, which led to overlooking human remains. more ›

The planned makeover of Washington Square Park inched closer to reality yesterday following a decision by the state appeals court. The new ruling lifts an injunction imposed last summer in response to allegations that the Parks Department had not sufficiently disclosed its renovation plans to Community Board 2, The Landmarks Preservation Commission, and the Art Commission. more ›

Politicians believe more names need to be mentioned at the World Trade Center Memorial Museum. Assemblyman Michael Gianaris of Queens and State Senator Marty Golden of Brooklyn will be introducing a bill that would ask that the names of deceased Ground Zero workers be included. more ›

If at first you don't succeed... dig a big trench and wait for the next high tide. Bill White, president of the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum announced yesterday that the Intrepid aircraft carrier is scheduled to be moved to Bayonne next Tuesday. The first attempt to move the ship on November 6th ended after only a few feet of movement as the 36,000 ton carrier's propellers got stuck in the mud. more ›

1. WNBC has the only known video of September 11 terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui; it's taken as he is being transferred to to his maximum security prison in Colorado
2. A man was killed under an E train around 34th Street
3. The City still won't look for World Trade Center remains in the debris that was sent to Fresh Kills
4. A mistrial was ordered in a Colombo mob trial -- the jurors were deadlocked and three of the jurors cried!
5. Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn tackles Park Slope affairs; the Slope is moments from being the next setting of a Desperate Housewives-esque show
6. A NY1/Newsday poll shows, if they were to run, that Hillary Clinton leads over Barack Obama and Rudy Giuliani leads over John McCain
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With the surprise discovery of human remains in a manhole at Ground Zero on Thursday, the city said they would start a new search for remains of September 11 victims. The contractor who realized that the debris found on Thursday was human remains spoke to the Post:

"By the grace of God, I found the bones. I looked at what looked like bones, but it was muddy stuff. It might have been lumber. It turned out to be an arm bone and a leg bone."

Ha - of course, Mobil would deny everything. Anyway, Staten Islanders, Fresh Kills may not be a dump anymore, but seems like you're gonna have to live with strange smells.
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We never thought it would happen, but shows what we know. The 2,200-acre Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island really is going to be turned into New York City's largest park. The Parks Department has already put 14 feet of soil over the dump since 2001 and is now ready to start giving tours!

Fresh Kills Park will be nearly triple the size of Central Park and is expected to take more than 30 years and hundreds of millions of dollars to complete, though the city intends to open parts of it to the public starting next year. The plan for the park includes cycling trails, tennis courts, greenhouses, stables, birding platforms, a sports stadium and a 9/11 memorial — an earthen sculpture as long as the twin towers were tall, to be built on the mound where rescuers sifted through the World Trade Center wreckage.

New York Magazine decides to look at the city in the year 2016 in terms of architecture and real estate development - and how that'll impact New Yorkers. It's a great look at how drastically the city could change in ten years, which is all overwhelming, exciting, and kind of scary, because for every rendering of glassy buildings, what does that mean for the neighborhoods? Are they plans for more affordable housing to meet up with the luxury condos and pleasure palaces? At any rate, it's all interesting to see how the post-September 11 and Bloomberg administration have suddenly encouraged all this planning buzz. more ›

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg presented a $52.7 billion budget for 2007 with measured spending, in spite of a $3.4 billion surplus. He said the city had to anticipate slowdowns in real estate and from Wall Street, plus rising gas prices, with budget deficits in 2006, 2009 and 2010 possible; another concern is being able to address the rising cost of city employees benefits, so he's spending a few billion now to "reduce long-term costs." The budget has been praised by the Independent Budget Office, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum and City Comptroller William Thompson, who said, "Mayor Bloomberg has taken a creative, proactive approach to addressing the city's short- and long-term needs by setting aside resources to be available for future years, which are expected to be saddled with considerable budget gaps." But the City Council was less enthusiastic, concerned that it will still spar with the Mayor to restore funding to libraries and other programs before the budget is passed, as they do every year. However, Mayor Bloomberg did agree City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's request for $12 million in new bullet proof vests for the NYPD. more ›

- Really? NYU banned showing those controversial Danish cartoons at a campus talk called "Free Speech and the Danish Cartoons?" more ›

Kick-Off Party with DJ L’il Shalimar more ›

In case you missed our reminder last weekend, this weekend is Open House New York. Some of the sites requiring reservations are already full, but with so many sites available for touring, there's almost something for everyone. more ›