ONE-WAY PLAN DEAD City Caves to Community Outrage Over Proposal
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Brooklyn’s Real Newspaper BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 834–9350 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2007 BROOKLYN HEIGHTS–DOWNTOWN EDITION AWP/16-18 pages • Vol. 30, No. 12 • Saturday, March 24, 2007 • FREE INCLUDING DUMBO ONE-WAY PLAN DEAD City caves to community outrage over proposal By Christie Rizk a DOT presentation at New York ment — to treat the neighborhood still-unbuilt Atlantic Yards by de- The Brooklyn Paper Methodist Hospital — unani- like one long through-street. stroying Park Slope’s residential mously rejected turning Seventh “The last street we converted feel. A city proposal to turn two and Sixth avenues from slow- to one-way in Brooklyn was “We asked you to make it bet- Park Slope avenues into one- moving two-way streets into one- Glenmore Avenue [in East New ter and you’ve made it worse,” way streets is dead, a victim of way thoroughfares. York] in 1998,” Pri- she said, urging DOT to not only last week’s unanimous commu- The vote came after a DOT meggia said. kill its own proposal, but consider nity board rejection of the presentation by Deputy “What we found turning Eighth Avenue and scheme, city officials and com- Commissioner was a 16-percent Prospect Park West — the neigh- munity leaders said this week. Michael Primeg- decrease in total borhood’s much-reviled, fast- “We’re listening to the commu- gia that claimed accidents.” moving one-way avenues — into nity and not moving ahead with the one-way streets ONE-WAY 7TH But Slopers two-way streets. proposal,” said Department of save lives and re- weren’t buying This time, Primeggia wasn’t Transportation spokeswoman Kay duce accidents. it. “Everyone is buying it. Sarlin, who had earlier promised He added that con- completely united “Converting those two streets that the agency would kill the con- verting the avenues ONE-WAY 6THagainst this,” said Lydia would make them less safe, and I troversial proposal if “the commu- would allow traffic to Denworth, president of the Park never recommend making streets nity” rejected it. circulate better within Slope Civic Council. “The com- less safe,” he said, citing statistics That blitzkrieg rejection came Park Slope, yet not encourage munity has come together like as well as prior DOT experience. last Thursday, when Community outsiders — such as basketball never before.” But Slopers already consider Board 6’s transportation commit- fans driving to and from the Denworth complained that that their one-way avenues unsafe at tee — prodded by more than 400 planned 19,000-seat Nets arena in DOT proposal was an attempt to any speed. A few days before the angry Park Slopers who stormed the Atlantic Yards mega-develop- solve the massive traffic from the See ONE-WAY on page 5 READERS TRASH PLAN: P. 12; GERSH GUSHES OVER IT: P. 5 / Julie Rosenberg The Brooklyn Paper The Brooklyn LOBBY HOBBY Nice to snow ya! Ratner spends millions on influence Finally, just a few days before spring, kids got a chance to enjoy a little snow from a depressingly flake-free winter. By Gersh Kuntzman requires companies to register and Here, two speedy tykes enjoy a last run down the hill behind the Tennis House in Prospect Park. The Brooklyn Paper post their lobbying expenditures twice a year. Bruce Ratner spent more than Grandeau said the same pattern Paying up $2 million to lobby state and local played out in 2005 when groups in- lawmakers last year — the year in Bruce Ratner spent more than $2 million to lobby state volved in the West Side Stadium which his Atlantic Yards project fight poured money into Albany. agencies and officials last year — the year that his $4- slid through the state approval billion Atlantic Yards project was moving through the It is unclear from Ratner’s dis- process. closure reports — posted on the state’s public review process. Last year’s bill for wining, Ratner’s $2.105 million in lob- Commission’s Web site this week dining, calling and otherwise trying to persuade elected bying expenses — the most — what he got for his $2.1 When Dice rolled officials represented an increase from Ratner’s expendi- he’s ever spent in a single million. tures in years past. In total, Ratner has spent $3.33 mil- year — placed him The single largest lion on lobbying since 2003. — The Brooklyn Paper third on the state list expense — $1.4 mil- The real story of Andrew Clay Silverstein for 2006, close behind lion — paid salaries LOBBYING FEES the Healthcare Asso- at his seven outside By Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway ciation of New York lobbying firms and for The Brooklyn Paper $2,000,000 State (a consortium his own in-house An old friend of mine is trying to make of insurance compa- team of 41 part-time $1,750,000 nies) and Verizon, the influence-makers. a comeback with a new reality show. The global communications press says he’s full of hate and anger, so I The rest was spent giant. on cellphone bills, copy- think it is time to tell about another side of $1,500,000 The state’s lobbying ing, printing, supplies and Andrew Dice Clay — a side I encountered overseer said he wasn’t thousands of dollars in 28 years ago when he was just starting out. $1,250,000 surprised to find Ratner so charges of less than $75 that A little history: My first job was as a re- high on the list last year. do not need to be itemized. porter for The Brooklyn Paper. One day, my $1,000,000 “Some companies and associa- Behind those numbers are hu- editor, Beverly Cheuvront, came to me with tions always appear on the list — man beings doing the work of lob- a big smile and said, “I have a great story for $750,000 the teachers union, healthcare com- bying elected officials, experts said. you to do. There is this guy who does a John panies, civil service employees “Here is how the game is played,” Travolta act. He works in the next building, $500,000 union — but when it comes to a said one state-registered lobbyist, one for his dad, who has a process serving busi- development project, we tend to of the few who was actually not on ness. His name is Andy Clay Silverstein.” $250,000 see spikes in the year that the proj- Ratner’s payroll last year. At the time, in 1979, Andy Clay Silver- ect is going through the approval “They have to hire all these dif- stein was an unknown — except by every- process,” said David Grandeau, ex- 2003 2004 2005 2006 ferent lobbyists to lobby different one on Court Street, and at comedy clubs ecutive director of New York’s players. If you want to talk to like Pips, in Sheepshead Bay, where he was Source: Forest City Ratner disclosure forms Commission on Lobbying, which constantly refining his act. See BRUCE on page 13 He had a big dream and I somehow be- came the first journalist to share it with the world. My article (below) went like this: “Court Street’s Andy Clay Silverstein is a Jewish John Travolta with a striking resem- blance to the star. Looking like Grease’s Dan- ny Zuko and sounding like Kotter’s Vinny Barbarino, he proceeded to dance like Satur- day Night Fever’s Tony Manero during a re- The art cent photo shoot. … Andy wants to be a star and his Travoltarized talents — and looks — are his temporary claim to fame, he says.” I was a fan from day one. After I wrote my first article on him — published March Former Brooklyn Paper editor Laurie Sue Brockway with Andrew 6, 1979 — I would go on to do a couple of feminism “Dice” Clay when he first hit it big in the late 1980s. more. And we became friends, me meeting my deadlines, he filing court papers and dealing with his Dad’s clients. came to expect him to do crazy name as his stage name. There was New Museum wing opens He would often stop by The Brooklyn Pa- stuff on the streets and in elevators. no “Dice” yet. per office and try to get me out of work so I I spent much of 1979 red-faced at He’d always single out one of us By Ariella Cohen and Rachel Syme all the ways he embarrassed me in in the audience to be his target. Af- could walk with him down to the courts The Brooklyn Paper where he had to drop off papers. Our pub- front of strangers. But I loved ter the show, we would go back- lisher, Ed Weintrob, would it! My girlfriends did, too! stage (if there was one) and meet What is feminist art? get annoyed, His act back then con- his dad, mom, sister, aunt, and the Is it a photo of a Hasidic man fondling his very real — and very naked — but I would sisted of coming out on whole family. female breast? wiggle out of stage as a sniveling, nerdy They would tirelessly trek with How about a photo of a two sil- the office when- character, then, lights him to club after small club, and as ver-haired women dancing on an ever I could to would dim and he would the clubs got bigger, they were still ice-covered lake? accompany him transform into John Tra- there. Much of the Silverstein fam- Is it a studio-apartment-sized, 48-foot-long dinner table laid with down to Jay volta and do “Greased ily life was centered around An- Greenhood / Aaron Street.