New Urban News: Empire Station, BrooklynSpeaks & Nieuw Amsterdam.
Happy Fourth of July!
CNU NYC is pleased to be a member of the Empire Station Coalition and a BrooklynSpeaks sponsor. We have news to report on both fronts (scroll down). Plus, we are happy to announce that CNU NYC Chair John Massengale will speak at one of the many It Happened Here events taking place in downtown Manhattan over the Fourth of July weekend (registration details below).
Next year, the Fourth of July will mark the 250th birthday of the United States. Last year was the 400th anniversary of Nieuw Amsterdam and New York City. This year, It Happened Here will compress five centuries of history in Lower Manhattan into five days, with each day devoted to one century. The program will include tours, panels, and special events at many of the places where history happened downtown. Click here for more information.
Empire Station News: Catesby Leigh has a thorough analysis of the current state of affairs at Pennsylvania Station in the City Journal. The best news is that Andy “Train Daddy” Byford is the new Special Advisor to the Amtrak Board of Directors. See Leigh’s story Three Visions for a New Penn Station: The Pros and Cons of Each. There’s more information in two CNU NYC posts Lead Us Not Into Penn Station – But Deliver Us From Vornado, which have links to stories from many sources.
BrooklynSpeaks News: The long and tortured history of Atlantic Yards / Pacific Park continues. Empire State Development (ESD) is refusing to honor a 2014 settlement that provided for monetary damages if commitments for the construction of affordable housing weren’t met by June 2025 (they weren’t). Instead, the REBNY-dominated state agency proposes trying a new version of the same risky single-source strategy under which two previous developers failed. BrooklynSpeaks has rallied community leaders, civic groups, and elected officials to demand that Governor Hochul make good on promises for affordable housing at Atlantic Yards. Links on BrooklynSpeaks’s homepage have more information about past struggles. CNU NYC hopes that if Zohran Mamdani succeeds in his race for mayor he will make a clean sweep of the top officials at other REBNY-influenced agencies like the New York City Economic Development Agency (NYCEDC) and the Landmarks Preservation Committee (LPC) as part of his plan to ramp up the creation of affordable housing that doesn’t rely on Big Real Estate’s luxury towers for most new housing in the city.
It Happened Here Events: It Happened Here begins July 3 and ends Monday, July 7. At 2 PM on the final day, five Lower Manhattan residents and workers including CNU NYC Chair Massengale will form a panel to discuss People First For Lower Manhattan, focusing on the future of the Financial District’s streets and public spaces. Massengale will discuss his work with the Financial District Neighborhood Association (FDNA) and Buro Happold.
Congestion pricing has arrived downtown, where traffic is going down. In 2025, over 75,000 people call FiDi home. Now is the perfect time to look at how to achieve the city we want in the old, man-made canyons of Wall Street, where corporate skyscrapers sit on narrow Dutch streets. The question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from the question of what kind of people we want to be, what social relations we seek, what relations to nature we cherish, what style of life we desire, and how to make a just, resilient, city for all.
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