Schwartz on the mend: Former Greenwich Village Democratic District Leader Arthur Schwartz had quadruple bypass surgery last week. Calling us from Cornell-Presbyterian Hospital on E. 68th St. where he was spending a week recovering, he said he had been feeling sluggish and winded recently and went in for a checkup with a heart specialist, who found Schwartz had 17 narrowed arteries. Schwartz’s father died young of a bad heart, so Schwartz elected to have surgery the next morning. Schwartz had to hang up for a moment. Calling back, he said his client Roger Toussaint, head of the Transport Workers Union, had just stopped by to check up on him. “I visited him every day when he was in jail, so he visited me,” he said. A longtime Community Board 2 member and currently chairperson of the board’s Parks and Waterfront Committee, Schwartz said unfortunately he had to cancel his big hearing on the city’s plan for a marine waste transfer station at Gansevoort Peninsula, but that he’ll be ready come September to tackle a full agenda of issues, including the newly hot issue of the Washington Square Park renovation. Also, though it’s hard for him to concede it, he won’t be actively campaigning for State Committee. “I can’t exactly be going door to door,” he said. Yet, he’ll still be on the ballot in September, since he missed the deadline to withdraw from the race. But he still took a dig at the incumbent, Larry Moss, saying, “Ask him if he’s raised any money.”
Thanks for being fair: After our recent Meat Market special section, we got a call from David Rabin, head of the New York Nightlife Association and owner of Lotus nightclub on W. 14th St., calling just to thank us for “getting it right” and quoting him accurately, as opposed to most of the newspapers, which he claims always try to portray him in the worst possible light and often misquote him.
‘Clueless’ candidate: Ken Diamondstone is going on the attack in his primary race against State Senator Martin Connor, saying that Connor has done nothing to try to change the wrong-way toll on the Verrazano Bridge that floods Lower Manhattan with car and truck traffic. But Connor scoffed that Diamondstone doesn’t have a clue, and that it’s the federal government that must make this change, since the original toll modification was packaged into the federal transportation bill by former Senator Al D’Amato.
Bicyclists might have to roll: Steve Stollman, who owns the Time’s Up space on E. Houston St., said he may sign a contract of sale for the space any day now with a group of builders who usually build two-to-three-family homes in Westchester. He said they plan to build a 10-story condo building. If a contract of sale is signed, Time’s Up can stay another six months, he said. After six months, when and if Time’s Up leaves, construction on the new building will begin and should finish in one-and-a-half to two years.
Forever affordable: The Villager’s recent report on the draft East Village/Lower East Side rezoning failed to note that every affordable unit generated through the inclusionary zoning (or IZ, as housing advocates like to call it) would be permanently affordable. That is, the units would not eventually be able to become market rate, as is possible, for example, under the “80/20” 421-a program, in which developers receive tax breaks for building 20 percent affordable units, but the units can become market rate after the life of the bonds.
Corrections: A recent news brief on Michael Alfano being named New York University’s executive vice president, incorrectly stated that he was director of the federal Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration. It was his predecessor, Jacob Lew, who was O.M.B. director. Alfano was previously an executive at a dental equipment company…. Regarding the article on Trump’s Hudson Square condo-hotel two weeks ago, while Lee Grodin, a legislative aide to Council Speaker Christine Quinn, was at the meeting, she didn’t issue a statement. State Senator Tom Duane’s and Assemblymember Deborah Glick’s staffmembers did make statements against the project at the meeting.
