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LMDC Announces $37 Million in Local Grants The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation announced more than $37 million in grants to Downtown non-profit groups that will fund a wide variety of Lower Manhattan projects, from construction mitigation around the World Trade Center site to a new carousel for Battery Park. “The diversity of entities receiving funding reveals the breadth of life in Downtown,” said Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who was joined by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other officials on Nov. 8 to announce the grants. “What I’m most proud about is that some of CB1’s top priorities have been funded,” Community Board 1 chair Julie Menin said. Among the priorities Menin pointed to is a $2 million grant to the Downtown Little League for the creation of a new baseball field, $4.5 million for Downtown’s public schools, and $5 million to the New York Downtown Hospital for an MRI machine and a new preventive care unit. Thirty-three groups were chosen to receive funds from among more than 200 organizations that submitted proposals. Nearly $8 million originally allocated for the one-time Community Enhancement grants remains unspent. A range of health care services, in addition to the New York Downtown Hospital award, will benefit from the grants, including $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. Local museums also received sizable grants from the LMDC, including: $1.75 million to the South Street Seaport Museum; $2 million and $1 million respectively to the Museum of Chinese in the Americas and the Museum of Jewish Heritage; $300,000 to the New Museum; $150,000 to the National Museum of the American Indian; and $250,000 to City Fire Museum. 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 earmark the $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 having a second home field after years of chronic space shortages. The likely site is Corlears Hook Park, a neglected space 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 play in the 2009 season. "There's been a lot of growth on the east side, and for a lot of those kids this will be closer," Costello said, adding that as a public park, it will be open for pickup games of all kinds, and serve kids and adults from many different neighborhoods. "It will benefit every sport in every community," he said. 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. “But much of our response,” he said, “is just doing more of what we would otherwise be doing: creating a community.” A full list of grant recipients can be seen at www.lowermanhattan.info.
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