Daily Archives: July 24, 2015

Hospitals weigh in on sanitation garage

By Sabina Mollot

While neighborhood residents have been quite vocal in their opposition to the city’s plan to build a sanitation garage on East 25th Street, the area’s other neighbors, the nearby hospitals, have noticeably stayed out of the debate. Residents, who have argued that the 180-truck garage could delay ambulances due to the increased traffic, have, since the plan’s becoming public, speculated that the hospitals’ silence on the issue is due to “political reasons.”

“One could question whether city employees have been asked not to comment,” said Janet Handal, president of the Waterside Tenants Association. Handal has been one of the most vocal opponents of the plan, last week announcing the formation of a coalition of tenant and cooperator groups who are opposed to a sanitation depot on First Avenue.

This week, Town & Village reached out to nearby hospitals, to ask if they had any concerns about the garage and also to note that their silence hasn’t gone unnoticed by the community. Those hospitals include Mount Sinai Beth Israel, VA Medical Center’s Manhattan campus, Bellevue and NYU Langone.

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Police on lookout for men on bikes swiping iPhones

Robbery suspects

Robbery suspects

Police are looking for two men on bikes who swiped two women’s iPhones in Gramercy and Murray Hill.

Both incidents took place in June, but police released the information, along with surveillance photos of the robbery suspects, on Thursday.

On Tuesday, June 16 at 9:15 p.m., a 28-year-old woman was walking in front of 459 Park Avenue between 31st and 32nd Streets, when the men rode up on their bicycles and snatched her iPhone 6 as she was using it. The suspects then pedaled away.

On Monday, June 22, at 5:05 a.m., a 24-year-old female was walking in the vicinity of Madison Avenue and East 23rd Street when the suspects rode over to her and stole the iPhone 6 from out of her hand. The men then fled the scene.

There were no reported injuries in either incident.

Anyone with information in regards to these incidents is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 800-577-TIPS or visit www.nypdcrimestoppers.com or text tips to 274637(CRIMES), then enter TIP577.

 

Even playgrounds with sprinklers nearly empty during scorcher

A few Stuy Town residents like Ryan, with son Tommy, braved the heat, heading out to the playground sprinklers to cool down. (Photos by Maria Rocha-Buschel)

A few Stuy Town residents like Ryan, with son Tommy, braved the heat, heading out to the playground sprinklers to cool down. (Photos by Maria Rocha-Buschel)

By Maria Rocha-Buschel

Can it be too hot to play in the sprinklers during a heat wave?

Town & Village found that it might be, in a recent visit to the water parks in Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in the midst of the oppressive heat on Monday.

Stuy Town residents Dennis Mulligan and Anne Marie, who were out sitting in the shade by the Oval on Monday afternoon, said they noticed a mysterious absence in the playgrounds that day.

“No one’s outside,” Mulligan said. “It’s too hot. Even the kids aren’t out.”

The National Weather Service recorded the highest temperature in Central Park as 94 degrees Fahrenheit around noon on Monday, but officials warned that the combination of the high heat and humidity made it feel like it was over 100, creating dangerous conditions, especially for seniors.

Most of the non-sprinklered playgrounds in Stuy Town were desolate when this reporter went by, and Oval staff members who were stationed at the basketball courts in Playground 11 said that even the parks with sprinklers that were usually packed with kids were almost empty that afternoon.

“The moms and nannies probably don’t want to take the kids out because then they just have to sit at the sprinklers, melting themselves,” one of the staff members theorized.

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