Tuesday: Freedom Tower As Nightmare; Whole Foods As Virus; Realtors As Racists
The face of dissent
Will the government solve the Freedom Tower's impending tenant problem by sending state and federal agencies to fill it up? Not if those employees--some of them veterans of two WTC attacks--refuse to go. As Port Authority chairman Anthony Coscia (right) has said, it "would simply carry too much emotional weight." Might Mr. Pataki force folks down there? (New York Times)
As first-home and second-home ownership numbers rise for minorities, racism in realty has increased too. Enlightened Manhattan isn't immune: the Department of Justice is receiving claims from "upscale sections in and around New York," charging brokers with "steering minority clients away from nonminority neighborhoods." (WSJ)
Can too much bright green healthiness be a bad thing? Manhattan will find out--maybe as soon as early next year, when two new Whole Foods Markets open at Greenwich & Warren and Bowery & Houston. (Lucky Brooklynites will some day get their 52,000-square-foot baby in Park Slope/Gowanus). (Curbed)
"The Good Life" at Hudson River Park's Pier 40 museum presents a global vision of how we use our public spaces. East Berlin gets 100 blue deck chairs, Dublin gets singing sidewalks (really), and NYC gets measly little Lincoln Center, Chelsea's High Line, and the East River Waterfront. (Citi Limits)
The Nets (whose stars include 'Jefferson Thomas') have extended their lease at New Jersey's un-glamorous Continental Arena through 2013. They can bail out, though, as soon as Frank Gehry's Atlantic Yards glass arena is ready, which should be anytime now. (New York Times)
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Max Abelson
