NYU must keep its promise about our supermarket
The Morton Williams supermarket has served the needs of the Greenwich Village, NoHo, SoHo and East Village communities at its current site on Bleecker St. for more than 60 years. The present threat to its continued existence, and to that of an adjoining community garden, exacerbates the widespread crisis of confidence by the public in those institutions established to serve the public good: in this case the university and our city government.
The foundation for any world-class teaching and research university like NYU consists of the university’s respect and credibility for truth. A university cannot disregard truth in its public representations to the community without calling into question the legitimacy of its entire enterprise.
City government best performs its role when it creatively facilitates outcomes which satisfy a multitude of pressing needs. In this case it doesn’t even take much creativity for the city to engender a triple win: for the community’s vital supermarket; for a public school, and; for NYU’s students and faculty.
More than a decade ago, NYU proposed a massive development in Greenwich Village. At every step of the land use review process, NYU loudly affirmed that it would include the store as part of its redevelopment plan. In the final iteration presented to the community and local elected officials NYU’s administration included the supermarket in the so-called Zipper building that ran from Mercer St. to Houston.
NYU reconfirmed this inclusion in President John Sexton’s summary of the full rezoning proposal submitted to the City Planning Commission — a plan supported by the Planning Commission on June 6, 2012.
NYU proposed moving the supermarket from its current location to Mercer St. because, as part of the negotiations with the city, the university agreed to give it the option to acquire the Bleecker St. lot for a public school.
The School Construction Authority has stated that it will decide whether to exercise its option by the end of this calendar year. However, at every step in the Uniform Land Use Review Process (ULURP), the preservation of the relocated store remained front and center, right up until the moment that it was mysteriously removed as a requirement.
In a project the size of the NYU 2031 plan, the actual legally binding document is not the land use resolution itself, but a restrictive declaration, a document drafted weeks after the public ULURP process ended. However, the declaration, drafted by NYU’s lawyers but approved by the city, removed any binding commitment from NYU to preserve our neighborhood market.
Throughout ULURP, the city joined with NYU in repeatedly assuring the community that the supermarket would remain on the superblock, the oversized block created in the early 1960s as part of an urban development plan which explicitly included a supermarket. They both failed to live up to their commitments.
During the pandemic, New Yorkers referred to supermarkets and their workers as essential. The city should show it means what it says. In an area which once contained three full-service supermarkets, only Morton Williams remains. During storms and hurricanes, it remained open 24/7. During the pandemic, it made deliveries to COVID-stricken residents. It provides a lifeline for those who lack feasible alternatives for their food, especially the elderly and physically challenged.
We are now calling on NYU and City Hall to keep faith with the public by adhering to their guarantees that the supermarket would remain on its current superblock without interruption.
No feasible alternative site for the supermarket in the vicinity exists, as a result of NYU’s failure to include the supermarket in its Mercer St. building. However, very feasible alternative sites for the school do exist nearby. Those sites include space on NYU’s campus, for which NYU would continue to receive rent it would otherwise lose from the current supermarket site. Locating the public school on NYU’s campus would allow for involvement of NYU’s School of Education in the new facility, resulting in the triple win: for the community, future public school students, and NYU’s Education faculty and students.
The time has come for government officials to use the many tools they have to hold NYU’s administration accountable for their promises to the community. We are calling on the city and the New York University administration to honor the commitment made to the entire Greenwich Village community to the continuous operation of a full-service supermarket on the block where it currently sits.
Let’s all work together in good faith to find the best of the available alternative school sites. Our community supermarket needs to stay right where it is, serving its community from its decades-long familiar site on Bleecker St.
Gerson, a former City Council member, and Callet are the co-chairs of the Save our Store campaign.
Truth or Consequences, N.M.: Once again, we have drama over the appropriations acts and the looming threat of a government shutdown. For far too long, the political parties have used the threat of a shutdown as a way to push and force their agendas on the American people. I, for one, am sick and tired of these selfish shenanigans. At one time, there was a spirit of compromise, the “give and take,” and to do what is right and best for the country. Unfortunately, that appears to be a thing of the past.
Some members of Congress would like to pass legislation calling for automatic two-week continuing resolutions in the event that Congress fails to enact appropriation legislation by the beginning of the fiscal year (Oct. 1). I have a much better idea: How about enacting legislation stating that neither members of Congress nor the president would receive any compensation in the event of a government shutdown? Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett (photo) says that he won’t accept a paycheck during a shutdown. Making it apply to everyone I bet would foster an environment more receptive to compromise and passing the appropriations acts in a more timely manner.
To end all the end-of-fiscal-year drama, hurt members of Congress and the president in the pocketbook. They don’t get paid until a viable continuing resolution or the appropriations acts are enacted and the president signs them into law. Of course, clean appropriations acts without any political pork agendas or riders pushing a political party’s platform attached to them have a better chance of getting enacted.
Hansje Kropis-Van de Geest
Better off
Brooklyn: To all the liberal Trump haters: He is not a politician, he’s a businessman who ran for president! His four years in office saw a boost in the economy, a drop in unemployment and us not pulled into war in Ukraine like President Biden has taken the country into! Yes, I do blame the Democrats. I’m not saying Trump for president, but a Republican who will put the United States first! John Corbett
Poor excuse
Kings Park, L.I.: Responding to my letter wondering why Donald Trump still has overzealous followers despite his many indictments, Voicer Frank Mauceri says, “Could it be that all his followers were bullied at one time in life and in some ways it brings back bad memories of what they went through?” That is the reason they support him? Interesting observation, but unless you have the research to back up your assertion, it holds no water. Being bullied — and trust me, many of us non-Trumpers can relate to being bullied in some form in the past — is no excuse to incite a riot and attempt an insurrection.
John Karahalis
Unpaid debt
Bradenton, Fla.: Neither Social Security nor Medicare are entitlements. The firms I worked for and I paid for my Social Security and Medicare. The U.S. government did not pay a single cent. How it became the depository for the funds is beyond me and has obviously turned out to be the incorrect decision. If the money that was deducted from my paychecks over the years and the matching contributions from my employers was deposited into any legitimate fund, I would have no problems collecting my own money, nor would I ever hear the word “entitlement.” How it is an entitlement if the government never contributed anything and had nothing whatsoever to do with the funds that were collected other than mandating that they be collected? Had the government not taken funds from Social Security and Medicare years ago, no one entitled to those benefits would have ever had a problem.
Gene Rado
So sacred?
Bay Shore, L.I.: All this hubbub about Congress’ dress code? Why don’t they start a GoFundMe drive to get Jim Jordan a jacket!?
John O’Connell
Mail it in
Brooklyn: The citizens of the state of Oregon have been voting by mail in all elections, including federal, since 1996. Gov. Hochul’s new early vote by mail law is a start, but it’s time to replace all in-person voting with voting by mail. The cost of operating in-person polls is often ridiculously expensive on a per-vote basis, as can be shown by low turnout on local elections. Vote by mail eliminates the threat of voter intimidation and would likely increase participation. Going to the polls on Election Day is a treasured tradition to many, but the cost and potential for intimidation negate all the warm feelings it brings. Hochul needs to go further and send some staffers to Oregon to see how it’s done. Ultimately, the entire country should vote by mail and those who are citizens and do not vote should be fined, as they do in another big democracy, Australia.
Anne Slamka
Migration tariffs
Port Jefferson Station, L.I: The migrants entering our country do so out of desperation. Their native countries have failed them and they have left for a variety of heartbreaking reasons. It seems to me that those countries should be sanctioned just as we have sanctioned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. America can not sustain the amount of people crossing our borders. So their native countries should pay a price, and monies recovered should be used for the migrants’ benefit. Doing this would help them and send a message to the countries they come from that they too will pay a price for failing their citizens. To my knowledge, no one in government has ever considered this idea. Joe Ayala
It adds up
Bronx: Voicer Ed Marks says that Thomas Von Essen (“Having trucks under MSG poses a big safety risk,” op-ed, Sept. 18) overstates the Garden’s capacity at 25,000. He seems to forget that MSG also has a 5,600-seat theater and employs several thousand people during events. 25,000 people 150 times a year sounds exactly right.
Andrew Larrier
Festival of cruelty
Manhattan: Mayor Adams, Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan and Police Commissioner Eddie Caban just aided and abetted cruelty to animals on a massive scale. In celebration of Kaporos this past week, pop-up slaughterhouses were erected on public streets without permits. The NYPD provided floodlights, barricades, security and other resources. Worse yet, they sat back and watched as living, feeling chickens suffered in the cold and rain, drowned in the bottom of crates submerged in puddles, and cannibalized each other due to starvation. According to one cop on the scene, “politics” stopped them from enforcing New York’s cruelty statutes. The fact that the government of NYC aided and abetted this horrific cruelty is outrageous, shameful, and obscene; so too is the silence of the members of the City Council, the press and other so-called leaders of NYC. When the bird flu comes to NYC, remember that animal rights activists told you so.
Peter Wood
New-school
Bronx: Voicer Martin Goldman criticized the Daily News editors for putting the divorce between Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas on the front page of Friday’s paper. He asked you to “think of the message it sends to our young generation.” Mr. Goldman, I suspect you are not aware that most members of the young generation do not read newspapers. They get their news on their phones.
Bruce D. Campbell
To reiterate
Manhattan: Pretty dumb of Voicer Joan Weisburg to assume I merely turned around in a circle, saw no spotted lanternflies and drew conclusions. Reread my letter — it’s well researched, including the Cornell University finding that contradicts the inflammatory rhetoric. Furthermore, all her references and joy about New Jersey “developing toxic sprays” etc. smacks of the same begging for government agencies to spray poisons over entire neighborhoods like the West Nile virus, another overly hyped condition — a practice that was finally banned. And really, Joan, you go as far as citing them flying into your car, which can happen with any bug. You also entirely missed my main message: The Department of Environmental Conservation, which profits from and fosters this hysteria, shouldn’t be directing the public and even children to smash and kill them, which creates the possibility of ladybugs, caterpillars, baby birds, etc. being stomped on in your zeal to kill them all.
Grace Luntz
Wait for it
Bronx: Why do the Mets batters swing at the first pitch, especially when they are losing? They have to learn to take a pitch.
Ralph Canzone Sr.