STOP AND SMELL THE PARTICULATES: That’s what veteran environmental gadfly John Culpepper was saying to bystanders on 27th Street and Seventh Avenue on Wednesday, as he sat by his “E-Sampler Particulate Monitor,” a machine that takes those tiny fragments spat out by vehicles, factories, power plants and construction sites (any of those nearby?) and measures them. Such “particulates,” now linked to increased rates of asthma, are all the rage among clean-air wonks these days, talked about by Lucas Shapiro of the West Side Neighborhood Association and Rohit Aggarwala of the Mayor’s Office on Sustainability. In the booming tone of a preacher, Culpepper took credit for much of the fuss and told Chelsea Now, “What’s missing is the people!”
According to Peter Kostmyer, of the Citizen’s Committee for NYC, which helped Culpepper pay for the $17,000 machine and had agreed to let him set up that day in front of the group’s offices, Culpepper’s Lower Washington Heights neighborhood Association is the only group in town that has its own monitor; Culpepper, who therefore rents himself out all around the five boroughs, told us that he was also now on the “Citizens Committee” of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He said he hadn’t heard about the lawsuit HKNA v. Bloomberg, which pits the Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Association against the city for violations of the Clean Air Act. But upon getting the scoop, Culpepper said, “They should connect with me and get this information. We gotta work together!”
FEELS LIKE THE FIRST TIME: When the news came out two weeks ago that Governor Eliot Spitzer had signed a bill requiring the state to increase its “shelter allowance” for tenants of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), we unforgivably let it slide, ignoring the hard work put in by Assemblymember Richard Gottfried, State Senator Thomas Duane, and numerous local advocates such as John Raskin at Housing Conservation Coordinators and Rev. Elizabeth G. Maxwell at Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen. We had thought the bill’s approval something of a foregone conclusion, given its inclusion in NYCHA’s 2007–2008 budget. But last week, when we were sniffing around to uncover the developers chosen to erect buildings on Chelsea’s NYCHA parking lots (at the Fulton and Elliot-Chelsea Houses), City Council aide Woody Pascal told Chelsea Now with some excitement about more than $40 million in new state money for NYCHA. He then emailed an announcement from the City Council backing up his claim, which stated that the new shelter allowance bill would provide “a maximum of approximately $47 million a year in additional dollars for the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) by 2010.” Nice to know that even when the battles are old, some people still feel that tingle.
FIGURING NYCHA PARKING LOTS: Uncovering the winning bidders of the NYCHA parking lot jobs is like cracking the code at Fort Knox, given that HPD and NYCHA are keeping their hands close to their chests until Mayor Michael Bloomberg holds his press conference sometime this fall, announcing the winners. We nevertheless got one step closer this week when a local activist passed along an email from his contact at NYCHA, naming the two developers that are in the running to build affordable housing on the Fulton Houses parking lot: Settlement Housing Fund, whose executive director is Carol Lamberg, and Artimus Construction, led by president Robert Ezrapour, are in the running. According to our source, who prefers not to be named, someone else at NYCHA told him that Aritimus has actually been anointed winner to develop not only at Fulton Houses but at the Elliot-Chelsea Houses parking lot site as well. We’ll see if this is on target when hizzoner grabs the mic and sends a shout-out to NYC soon.
