By Cait Etherington, Tue, September 11, 2018 Image courtesy of Michael Vadon’s Flickr
In 2010, Lower Manhattan was still deeply scarred by the attacks of 9-11. With much of the neighborhood under construction, a high vacancy rate, and few full-time residents, walking around the area, especially outside business hours, often felt like walking through a ghost town. It was, in many respects, a neighborhood in waiting.
Since 2011, which marked the opening of the 9/11 Memorial—and the symbolic end of the neighborhood’s long period of recovery from the 9/11 attacks—Lower Manhattan has undergone a transformation that is difficult to ignore. New businesses have opened, new residential developments have launched, the vacancy rate has drastically declined, and in many respects, an entirely new neighborhood has taken shape.
The dawn of a new Downtown
By Michelle Cohen, Tue, October 11, 2016 A report released Monday by the Downtown Alliance shows that the area south of Chambers Street in lower Manhattan is chock full of young New Yorkers with plenty of disposable income; the development advocacy group hopes the news will result in the creation of more options for them to spend it. Crains reports on the survey, which found that 60 percent of apartments in a growing residential sector that includes the Financial District, Battery Park City and the South Street Seaport are home to single tenants and roommates with no children, one of the highest concentrations of young singles–defined as 18- to 44-year-olds, in the city. This spendy demo hits the town every other night on average, blowing about $1,000 a month, adding up to $356 million a year. But according to the report, half of that is spent in other neighborhoods due to a lack of “appealing options” in the area.
Tap a keg, stat
By Dana Schulz, Mon, July 13, 2015 We’ve all been that person who puts their Starbucks cup on top of an already heaping and overflowing garbage can, especially since it seems more often than not that this is the state of our city’s waste bins. But if you’ve looked for a trash receptacle downtown recently, you might have been pleasantly surprised with the Bigbelly. These solar-powered “smart” trash and recycling bins are “equipped with a chip that detects when the bin is full or too smelly, allowing trash collectors to make a pick-up where they’re needed most,” according to CityLab. And, as if that wasn’t enough, Bigbellies can double as Wi-Fi hotspots, providing enough bandwidth to power a small business.
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