Brooklyn Man Acquitted in Case Hurt by Witness Fear

Brooklyn Man Acquitted in Case Hurt by Witness Fear
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/05/nyregion/05CND-ACQU.html

A Brooklyn man was acquitted of murder charges today in a case that highlighted the dangers of witness intimidation and New Yorkers' often unspoken fears about cooperating with law enforcement officials.

The man who was acquitted, Dupree Harris, has become a frustrating figure to Brooklyn prosecutors. In two separate murder cases in which he played a central role, prosecutors have spoken of brazen efforts to silence witnesses. The killing of a witness in one of the cases, Bobby Gibson, 21, drew national attention to flaws in witness-protection efforts across the country.

In the latest trial, involving a 1999 Bedford-Stuyvesant killing, the prosecution's case was damaged by what law enforcement officials said appeared to be an orchestrated effort to threaten witnesses. As they were leaving the Downtown Brooklyn courthouse today, two of the jurors said the jurors all agreed that Mr. Harris had committed the murder.

Brooklyn Waterfront Landmark to Be Remade

Brooklyn Waterfront Landmark to Be Remade
By GLENN COLLINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/nyregion/03EMPI.html

It is called the Empire Stores, and for more than 50 years the cavernous, forbidding warehouse has been abandoned, a magnificent ruin between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges along the East River.

A signature of the Brooklyn skyline for at least 130 years that has transfixed residents and, to an extent, defined the waterfront, it has nonetheless resisted all efforts of developers, public officials and community stewards to reclaim it.

Now, Empire State Development Corporation, owner of the warehouse, has, through a subsidiary, signed an agreement with Boymelgreen Developers to transform it into a $100 million gateway to Brooklyn from the East River.

According to this plan, the echoing spaces, cobwebs and rusting iron shutters of the 400,000-square-foot structure, a city and state landmark in the neighborhood known as Dumbo, are to yield to a Chelsea Market-ish conglomeration of restaurants, retail shops, art galleries and performance spaces. Its opening is scheduled for 2007.

From Grit to Chic to Très Chic

COMMERCIAL PROPERTY; From Grit to Chic to Très Chic
By JOHN HOLUSHA
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/realestate/23COV.html

ON a typical weekday there is a bustle of activity at Chelsea Market, which occupies the ground floor of the old manufacturing building that covers the block between Ninth and 10th Avenues and 15th and 16th Streets. Shoppers browse the food stores to the sweet smell of baked goods, while others enjoy a snack at the tables spotted at strategic corners of the irregularly shaped main-floor corridor.

On the roof, meanwhile, invisible to the shoppers and office workers below, contractors are building a 100,000-square-foot addition to be used as studios and offices by the Food Network, which is to commence operations there about the middle of next year.

Diagonally across Ninth Avenue a new hotel, the Maritime, opened earlier this year in a building that once housed sailors. A couple of blocks to the south, at Ninth Avenue and 13th Street, another hotel, the Gansevoort, is under construction and scheduled to open early next year.

Just to the west, in what was once called the meatpacking district, now the Gansevoort Market Historic District, fashion designers, restaurants and clubs are rapidly replacing meat wholesalers.

The West Chelsea and meatpacking district areas are rapidly being transformed from tired industrial and distribution centers to one of the most hip, lively areas of the city. The influx of media tenants, designers and retailers is raising rent levels and speeding the process of change. ''There is something very New York about all this -- the way a neglected industrial neighborhood becomes not just a little gentrified, but suddenly a destination,'' said Richard Born, one of four partners who own and operate the Maritime Hotel.

Hipsters, Meatpackers and Families, Too

Hipsters, Meatpackers and Families, Too
By CLAIRE WILSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/07/realestate/07LIVI.html

THE contrast is so New York: on one block on a recent sunny Saturday, restrained crowds of grown-ups in dark glasses waited for outdoor tables at Pastis, a hot see-and-be-seen restaurant in the ultra-hip Gansevoort Market meatpacking district. On another, at the Bleecker Playground, howling children in colorful clothing cavorted excitedly under a shimmering canopy of bright yellow ginkgo and maple leaves.

The two scenes are vastly different slices of the pie known as the Far West Village, where stylish hipster types in the neighborhood's only remaining warehouse district share turf with more and more young families and energetic preservationists. Bordered by West 14th Street to the north, West Houston Street to the south, Hudson Street to the east and the Hudson River to the west, the area is among Manhattan's most architecturally diverse as well as one of its quietest and most villagelike. Housing ranges from lofts to luxurious town houses, on tree-lined streets sprinkled with one-of-a-kind boutiques, restaurants and strong public and private schools.

2 Columbus Circle

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; A Building's Bold Spirit, Clad in Marble and Controversy
By HERBERT MUSCHAMP
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/24/arts/design/24MUSC.html

Let us now celebrate the aristocratic satisfaction of not pleasing. Huntington Hartford gave himself that pleasure when he commissioned Edward Durell Stone to design the Gallery of Modern Art (1964), the legendarily exotic building at 2 Columbus Circle.

A campaign is under way to have the building declared a city landmark before it undergoes a major renovation. I would regret the loss of the building. Whether the campaign succeeds, I hope that New Yorkers will take the opportunity to renew the independent spirit the building embodies.

Decades Old Cabaret Law Faces Repeal

Decades Old Cabaret Law Faces Repeal
By MICHAEL COOPER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/20/nyregion/20CABA.html

The age-old battle between the New York of nightclubbing revelers and the New York of sleep-deprived neighbors entered a new phase yesterday when the Bloomberg administration said it would move to repeal a Jazz Age law that prohibits dancing in bars and nightclubs that do not hold special licenses.

Declaring her intention of putting "the dance police" out of business, Gretchen Dykstra, the commissioner of the city's Department of Consumer Affairs, called for scrapping the old cabaret licenses. In their place, she said, the city should issue new "nightlife licenses" that would allow it to regulate the unwanted side effects of nightlife that people really care about: noise, disorderly crowds and filthy sidewalks.

8 Designs Confront Many Agendas at Ground Zero

8 Designs Confront Many Agendas at Ground Zero
By GLENN COLLINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/20/nyregion/20REAC.html

Victims' families yearned to touch the bedrock where the World Trade Center stood. Firefighters had to see their buddies' names listed together. Artists dreamed of a revelation. The fiercely protective hoped for an expression of the essential horror of the tragedy, and the spirit of the city that endured.

Expectations could not have been higher yesterday when the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation announced eight designs chosen by a 13-member jury to memorialize those lost to terror, and to engender hope while bearing witness to evil.

The jurors had many constituencies to please. And many were unhappy, although there was nowhere near the vehemence as when the initial plans to rebuild the site were announced last year. The chorus of conflicting voices ranged from the outraged to those who found inspiration in the proposals' creativity, but many also expressed the need for further contemplation.

East River Pilots

Clear to Land, but Dodging East River Flotsam
By MICHELLE O'DONNELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/18/nyregion/18SEAP.html

Of all the airplane runways in New York City, the longest and most treacherous is the murky vein of the East River. It does all a river can do to distinguish itself from the asphalt lanes at Newark and La Guardia and Kennedy.

It coughs up piano casings and the shells of old refrigerators. It sends back corpses from its depths. Its currents have currents, its eddies have eddies, and cargo ships and high-speed ferries crisscross it with no apparent regard for an aeronautical grid.

But to a small and select breed of aviators, the urban bush pilots, the East River and its slapping waves have a special draw. These fliers honed their skills landing seaplanes in wilds from the Caribbean to Alaska and have transported their skills to New York City, where they ferry vacationers to the Hamptons instead of tourists and mailbags to the bush.

The Phone Call

The Phone Call
By JEREMY SMERD
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/16/nyregion/thecity/16rami.html

Fernando Ramirez felt surrounded by people who loved him, the people he worked with and sold coffee to at the Fairway supermarket near 125th Street in Harlem. Like a lot of solitary New Yorkers, cut off for one reason or another from their real families, he had found another kind of family in one of those peculiar improvised communities that spring up so randomly in the city.

This family sustained Mr. Ramirez for 15 years, first at the Fairway on Broadway at 74th Street, then when he moved to the store's Harlem branch. At the very end of his life, his son re-entered it, and briefly sweetened it in a way that seemed miraculous to both of them.

At Play in Chinatown's Backyard

At Play in Chinatown's Backyard
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/13/nyregion/13COLU.html

Blind Man Chin shuffles into Columbus Park in Chinatown, lifts his wooden chess set and shakes the pieces inside, sounding a crackle that scatters the pigeons. It is his invitation to play.

Someone always accepts, rising from among the dozens of Chinese chess players to lead him to a picnic table and set up his board. Mr. Chin, 60, whose first name is Wing, plays from memory, shouting the moves he wants to make and listening to those called out by his opponent. He plays game after game until the sun sets over Lower Manhattan. Then he takes the train home to Brooklyn.

Benson Li, 19, enters his own piece of the park on the opposite end, three basketball courts away. He glides across the concrete pavement in a baseball cap and cargo pants, shaking friends' hands with a special finger snap that is their private greeting, and then settles in for a game of cards, usually hearts or spades.

Mr. Chin and Mr. Li have never met. They live in distant worlds, separated by language, age and, in some ways, cultural identity. But they share one palpable need: to keep coming back to the same small and crowded patch of green that is Chinatown's communal backyard.

Aiming to Be the Next Big Amenity

Aiming to Be the Next Big Amenity
By MOTOKO RICH
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/13/garden/13TURF.html

AS the horizon turned to a deep pink outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of their serene living room, the Cantone family looked out over the Hudson River and pondered the meaning of living "green."

Robin Cantone was enthusiastic about the air filtration in their apartment at the Solaire, which opened in Battery Park City in May to great fanfare, billed as the country's first high-rise residential "green building." She pointed out the energy-saving washer and dryer and the kitchen cabinets, made without the usual formaldehyde.

Her husband, Robert, talked about living for less. Though the apartment has three bedrooms and three bathrooms, its electricity requirements are about the same as for the smaller apartment they used to rent in Chelsea.

Newspaper War, Waged a Character at a Time

Newspaper War, Waged a Character at a Time
By JOSEPH BERGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/10/nyregion/10CHIN.html

During the blackout in August, reporters for the city's four Chinese dailies did not have electric generators to see them through the night. But that did not stop one of them, Ming Pao Daily News, from trying to best its rivals.

The half-dozen reporters in the Chinatown bureau of Ming Pao wrote their stories in longhand on a large table inside a generator-powered Holiday Inn.

One reporter then walked with the stories uptown and across the Queensboro Bridge to the newspaper's main office, in Long Island City, where five editors who had camped out overnight typed them into the computers as soon as the electricity came back on at 5:15 a.m. By 10 a.m., the papers were in readers' hands.

Although some of the city's 300 ethnic newspapers may have a languid, less-than-fresh feel, the Chinese press is aggressive. And the competition is about to get more cutthroat. The Oriental Daily News, among Hong Kong's biggest newspapers, is considering coming to New York City to become the fifth Chinese daily.

Return of the Club Scene

Big, Loud Clubs Seek New Glitter
By JULIA CHAPLIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/fashion/09CLUB.html

I DIDN'T invite her," said Eve Salvail, a model with a dragon tattoo on the side of her head, who gets $500 to linger a few hours and look cool at Avalon, the latest incarnation of the Episcopal church in Chelsea once known as Limelight.

It was 3 a.m. on a recent Sunday, and Ms. Salvail, a part-time employee known as a tastemaker — a k a eye candy — watched helplessly from her free V.I.P. table in the hip-hop room while the uninvited woman, who looked like the Colombian pop star Shakira with streaked hair and a mini-kilt, wrapped herself around a stripper pole. When the woman began a deafening tap dance in her knee-high boots, two male models in Ms. Salvail's entourage gathered their free glasses of vodka and cranberry juice, slid out of the banquette and left.

"She's scaring people away," Ms. Salvail said. "I wish she'd just sit down."

So it goes on the front lines of New York's latest attempt to revive the glittery era of huge dance clubs — that halcyon 80's moment of celebrities, downtown artists and well-dressed nobodies mixing under strobe lights at Danceteria and the Palladium.

A new batch of entrepreneurs is betting that chic New Yorkers, after years of holing up in low-key lounges, are ready to hit the dance floor with the masses again. Over the next four months, no fewer than five clubs — each with room for hundreds or even thousands of dancers and featuring new-generation diversions like bungee-jumping cocktail waiters and raw-food kitchens — will open in two square blocks of West Chelsea. The area — bounded by 10th and 11th Avenues and 26th and 28th Streets — is already thick with art galleries. Now it bids to become the center of New York clubland.

Photo District Face-Off

Face-Off
By STEVE KURUTZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/nyregion/thecity/09feat.html

Ray Higgs marched into his tiny, hastily furnished office wearing the tense look of a man juggling six projects at once and dissatisfied with them all. It was barely noon on a Monday, and Mr. Higgs already seemed tired. "This business," he said, "is very high pressure."

Mr. Higgs runs Company Photo, a new film-developing lab on West 22nd Street off Seventh Avenue on the western fringe of the photo district, a six-block chunk between 17th and 23rd Streets crowded with processing labs, frame shops and equipment rental houses. Mr. Higgs is a doughy, anonymous-looking fellow, but in this part of town he is a boldface name.

For nine years, his bend-over-backward work ethic and highly personal service (3 a.m. calls from panicked clients are not uncommon) have made him a valuable ally to dozens of the city's professional photographers and made them deeply loyal. As Matt Salacuse, a photographer who has known Mr. Higgs for several years, put it: "Everywhere else, you're dealing with lackeys. With Ray, you're getting the boss to run your film. It's like the owner of Starbucks asking if you need more milk in your latte."

Mr. Higgs's reputation is less glowing a block and a half away at Coloredge, arguably the city's most popular film lab. Until August, he worked there as a sales representative. But when the owner, Raja Sethuraman, learned that Mr. Higgs planned to open a rival lab and try to hire away Coloredge employees, he confronted him. The next week, Mr. Higgs and three partners opened Company Photo.

Calling In Late

Calling In Late
By KATE ZERNIKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/fashion/26CELL.html

ON Wednesday night, Schiller's Liquor Bar, the brightest new bauble on the Lower East Side, throbbed with diners, drinkers and loud music. Customers waiting for companions and tables stood pressed against the front doors, their faces reflecting the glow of the cellphones clutched to their cheeks.

One, Nick Goldin, looked particularly peeved. "He's late," he told his wife, Carrie, clamping his phone shut. "He's always late."

"We said 8," she said reassuringly. "It's only 8. He's not late yet."

"You give him a grace period?" Mr. Goldin shot back.

At 8:07 the phone buzzed. "Where are you?" Mr. Goldin demanded. "What?"

Two minutes later, in walked the tardy one, David Goldin, Nick's brother, looking utterly unrepentant. After all, he had called.