Is there a need for a new school on the Lower East Side? According to the Department of Education, the answer is "no." During the summer, members of District 1's Community Education Council asked Community Board 3 to make...
For the past year, we have conducted in-depth interviews with a wide range of Lower East Side residents about the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area. Last night, Grand Street residents Julia Kent and Ernest Wurzbach forwarded us a letter...
We'll have our usual blow-by-blow account from Community Board 3's SPURA task force meeting in a day or two. In the meantime, here's a quick update from tonight's session at P.S. 124 on Division Street.
The committee finally took up...
A lot of people have big expectations heading into tonight's fourth and final mediated discussion on the future of the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA). At the last session, in August, facilitator John Shapiro acknowledged members of Community...
Last night, Community Board 3 and city planners took the SPURA show on the road. A fairly large group of residents from the Grand Street cooperatives attended a briefing at the Educational Alliance on a two-year-old initiative to finally...
After a two month hiatus, a Community Board 3 panel seeking a consensus on the redevelopment of the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA) will reconvene on October 20th. It will be the fourth and final "facilitated session" led...
Community Board 3's SPURA task force will not meet again until October. The committee trying to reach a consensus on a plan for the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area was supposed to reconvene this month, after a summer hiatus....
Barry Chusid is fighting to stay in his home, a 100-year-old, city-owned tenement located at 400 Grand Street. But this is not your average story of a guy at war with City Hall. That's because Chusid (and the residents...
In the past four decades, generations of Lower East Side residents have grown accustomed to walking past the parking lots and abandoned buildings that make up the seven acre Seward Park Urban Renewal Area. But what most people don't...
John Shapiro, an urban planner working with Community Board 3's SPURA task force, said it succinctly last week: "There's not much here to work with, quite frankly." He was talking about the results of a game in which participants...
