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A Lengthy Process For LMDC Grant Panel How do you give away $37 million? For the five-member panel charged with distributing the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s Community Enhancement Funds to worthy Downtown non-profit groups, that was no simple task. The selection of 33 recipients, announced with great fanfare last month in a ceremony attended by the mayor and governor, came after more than 100 hours of deliberations over seven months. The mind-numbing job included reading nearly 200 applications (each four to 60 pages in length, plus attachments) and finally reaching a consensus on each award. “Certainly, there were hard choices to make,” said Julie Menin, chairwoman of Community Board 1 and the Downtown resident representative on the panel. Menin spoke to the Trib recently about the lengthy process that led to decisions that will have wide-ranging impacts—from health care and construction mitigation to a new carousel ride for Battery Park—in neighborhoods south of Houston Street. First, she said, there were criteria to establish: How many people would be helped? Would these include low- and moderate-income populations? Could the organization in question deal with the reams of paperwork demanded by the Federal government? How did the group stack up against others offering similar services in the same area? “I viewed my role as being the community person, making sure that the community’s needs are represented,” Menin said. “Making sure that we’re not funding sort of esoteric proposals that aren’t going to have a true impact.” Menin said it was especially important to help established organizations get the funds for projects in the works: the Museum of Chinese in America, for example, which is building a museum of Chinese American history on Centre Street, and Mercy Corp, an organization that fights global hunger and poverty, that is establishing a new home in Battery Park City. Some groups, she said, could be quickly eliminated from the fray. “I hate to say this, but for the first time [some organizations] were trying to say that they were very strongly affiliated with 9/11, that they had done a lot to help people recover from 9/11, and that simply was not the case.” Among the worthies: $5 million to the New York Downtown Hospital for an MRI machine and a new preventive care unit; $1.5 million to Gouverneur Healthcare Services on the Lower East Side for its health care center for women and children; $1 million to Chinatown’s Charles B. Wang Community Health Center to train bilingual and bicultural health care workers; and $280,000 to the Betances Health Center on the Lower East Side for visiting health services to home-bound elderly. Menin said the panel tried to “think outside the box and really come up with creative ways to use the funding.” Menin is particularly proud of the $2 million awarded to the Downtown Little League for a new baseball field. “That’s an example of something that the community has been asking for for a long time,” she said. “To be able to make that happen is really a great use for the fund.” Local museums also received sizable grants, including: $1 million to the Museum of Jewish Heritage; $1.75 million to the South Street Seaport Museum; $300,000 to the New Museum; $250,000 to the City Fire Museum; and $150,000 to the National Museum of the American Indian. Several public schools had applied for money from the Community Enhancement Fund, but others—including P.S. 234, P.S./I.S. 89 and P.S. 150—did not. Menin said the selection panel decided it would be more fair to set aside $4.5 million for all 44 of Lower Manhattan’s public schools, allowing each of them to apply for up to $250,000 in a subsequent selection process. Downtown Little League president Mark Costello said his group is looking forward to a second field after years of chronic space shortages. The likely site is Corlears Hook Park, at Cherry and Jackson Streets one block below Grand Street. Costello said he expects to see two acres of the park, currently covered in asphalt, revamped with artificial turf and ready for the 2009 season. Bob Townley, the director of Manhattan Youth, said that part of the $1.5 million his organization received to operate its new community center on Warren Street will go towards mental health programming for young people. Nearly $8 million originally allocated for the one-time Community Enhancement grants remains unspent, and Menin said that a call for another round of applications is unlikely. In the wake of the Deutsche Bank fire, she said, it is wise to have money in reserve. “I think it’s really important that there is some funding available to meet community needs, whatever they may be, down the line.” A full list of grant recipients can be seen at www.renewnyc.com.
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