NINTH AVENUE DÉTENTE: Local businesses that lost valuable spaces for customer parking by the Ninth Avenue bicycle corridor, which was launched by the Department of Transportation in December with little advance notice, got some relief in January from local block associations, according to Community Board 4’s Robert Trentlyon. “All the stores had lost business,” said the longtime member of CB 4’s Transportation Committee, on the phone last week. “Over 50 parking spaces had been lost.” So Trentlyon and Jim Jasper, head of the 300 West 15th Street Block Association, began to approach block and tenant associations in the affected area, from 19th to 22nd Streets. “People were surprised,” said Trentlyon. “Then they were glad to do it.” The associations agreed to allow three muni-metered parking spaces on 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd and 23rd Streets, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. In addition, Dili E Punjab, the cabdrivers’ deli on the corridor’s southwest edge, will be allotted three taxi spots. The team even secured an agreement from the Fulton Houses tenant association, headed by Jimmy Pelsey, not to fight the new muni-meters. “They agreed not to disagree,” said Trentlyon, who was busy writing a letter on behalf of CB 4 thanking the associations and the DOT for their good teamwork.

A DELEGATE SITUATION: Hillary Clinton just can’t catch a break lately, it seems. Speaking of delegates, following this month’s New York primary election, Barack Obama and Clinton each will get three in Representative Jerrold Nadler’s Eighth Congressional District (Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Soho, Tribeca, Lower Manhattan, Upper West Side and parts of Brooklyn). Clinton won the district’s popular vote, with 49,586 votes to Obama’s 37,442, or 57 percent to 43 percent, but it makes no difference in terms of delegates. “There are 6 delegates. You would think that it would be 4 to 2,” said longtime Chelsea politico Robert Trentlyon. “It worked out to 3.42 for Clinton, and you can’t round up. Obama got 2.58, which rounds up to 3.” (Trentlyon, incidentally, is backing Obama, though his club, Chelsea Reform Democratic Club, went for Clinton. “I wouldn’t say I’m persona non grata, but they’re disappointed in me,” he said.) The delegates are selected based on who got the most votes, as well as alternating between males and females. On the Clinton side, the Eighth District’s delegates are State Senator Tom Duane, Assemblymember Deborah Glick and Borough President Scott Stringer. Obama’s delegates are State Committeeman Arthur Schwartz, Monica Lion and Molly Lombardi. Howard Hemsley, who headed Obama’s East Village and Lower East Side operation, didn’t make the cut, but has been assured he’ll go to the convention as an at-large delegate. Hemsley has vowed to push for gay marriage. “One of the things I want to do at the convention is to be part of a floor fight for a minority report from the platform committee which would call for gay marriage,” Hemsley told us. “After much hullabaloo and press coverage, we will lose. In losing, we will establish domestic partnership as not some radical idea, but a safe, comfortable, middle road. Then, next time, we take the next step.” Meanwhile, Schwartz said, Obama volunteers nationwide are being asked to take a week off from work and flood Ohio and Texas before those states’ key March 4 contests.

ABOUT ALL THAT GLASS: In this week’s “On the Record” Q&A about green building, we spoke to Jared Gilbert and Alice Hartley of architecture firm Cook+Fox about their tower at One Bryant Park, already famous before it goes up for potentially earning a “Platinum” certification from the U. S. Green Building Council. We talked about how its all-glass facade helped minimize the need for artificial light, but we never got to ask Gilbert, Hartley or Richard Cook about the 19th century building that Cook has said was One Bryant Park’s inspiration: the Crystal Palace, built in Bryant Park for the 1853 World’s Fair. The building, designed by architect George Carstensen, filled what is now Bryant Park with nearly 40,000 square feet of glass, 1,250 tons of iron and 70-foot columns supporting its central dome, according to the New York Times. We didn’t even get to quote Walt Whitman, who called the Palace “Earth’s modern wonder, History’s Seven out stripping, High rising tier on tier, with glass and iron facades, Gladdening the sun and sky—enhued in the cheerfulest hues...” The description makes Renzo Piano’s Times Headquarters or Jean Nouvel’s haute condo complex in Chelsea sound like glassy infants by comparison. We’re sure local preservationists like Simeon Bankoff of the Historic Districts Council, Joyce Matz of Community Board 5 and Ed Kirkland of Board 4 still wish, as we do, that we’d seen the Palace—before it burned down in 1857, when the building’s “fireproof” wooden frame smoldered and the glass shattered and melted. We wonder if Cook+Fox paid extra attention to that fire as they designed One Bryant Park, especially considering recent incidents at the Times building and other glass towers.

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