So true jeenymayla. Anyone caught wearing baggy leather pants and a XXXL leather trench to a city job should be fired for that alone.

Fulop is right one the mark as well. They both have zero morals and it just prolongs the sordid JC governments history of back dealings, scams and corruption. What a grand city we live in.

jennymayla wrote:
He should be arrested by the Fashion Police. THAT's the real shame. Shame Shame Shame.[/quote]

OK, here is the video: Fulop is hilarious.

Read the resolution in order to make an INFORMED opinion. It can't be used in litigation.

Absolutely unconscionable. the pervasive abuse of position. her son needs some tough love rather than enabling him.

He should be arrested by the Fashion Police. THAT's the real shame. Shame Shame Shame.

It snowed in Baghdad last week, and I agree with FAB.

Five more signs of the apocalypse to come.

Stay tuned.

No wonder our cops, courts and legal process of crime and punishment is so fucced up in JC, when people like Flood II are given a slap on the wrist (with no felony conviction against his name) for his crimes and set a precedent for other ass-holes and their attorneys to follow.

'Shame' on Willie Flood airs tonight
by Ken Thorbourne
Wednesday January 16, 2008, 11:22 AM

Television reporter Arnold Diaz's "Shame, Shame, Shame" segment on Jersey City Councilwoman Willie Flood airs tonight at 10 p.m. on WNYWFox 5.

Diaz showed up at City Hall on Dec. 19 to ask Flood, who is also the Hudson County Register, why she hired her son, 29-year-old Phillip Flood II, to work for her in both government offices, especially in light of Flood II's brushes with the law.

Flood II has since resigned his post as aide to the councilwoman but still works for her in her capacity as couty register.

In February 2007, Flood was arrested for selling marijuana out of his mother's Mercedes Benz and in 2006, he had to pay the state back nearly $13,000 in unemployment insurance money he collected even though he was a full-time employee at the Hudson County Schools of Technology when he collected the money.

The drug charge was downgraded to a misdemeanor and Flood II entered pre-trial intervention program to deal with the fraud charge in regard to the insurance money, thereby avoiding a plea.

Link

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This will not only set a precedent of threats against all historic districts in Jersey City but this classic example of facadism and destruction of the cobblestones will erase a major part of the history of downtown Jersey City's industrial beginning.

Your next chance to speak out against this travesty will be before the City Council and we will post here when it is scheduled for 1st reading. During the meantime contact all the council persons and the Mayor about how you want them to deny the Toll Brothers 30 story megaliths and it's facadism!

Stay tuned.

The PAD is home to over 500 residents with more than $200 million invested in the neighborhood. PADNA has over 150 active members, supports the current Powerhouse Arts District Redevelopment Plan, and strives for a transparent city government that supports its residents.
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July 15, 1985

'FACADISM' ON THE RISE: PRESERVATION OR ILLUSION?

By PAUL GOLDBERGER

If the Landmarks Preservation Commission agrees, before long there will be a 19-story apartment tower squeezed behind the facades of a trio of old brownstones on East 79th Street just off Park Avenue. The brownstone fronts will remain, essentially as false fronts behind which the new tower will rise.

If this unusual hybrid building goes ahead, however, it may not be the only such structure in New York: the commission has already given its nod to a much larger, but essentially similar, building, a 57-story tower designed to slip behind the facades of the landmark Rizzoli and Coty buildings on Fifth Avenue between 55th and 56th Streets.

The two buildings were both planned by distinguished architectural firms -Conklin Rossant at 79th Street and Kohn Pederson Fox at Fifth Avenue. Though neither is ideal, both designs follow the current fashion of integrating distinct historical elements into a larger whole, and they are both among the more sophisticated essays in this eclectic style.

Used in Other Cities

But the quality of the proposed towers is beside the point. They raise a larger issue, the whole matter of ''facadism,'' as the business of saving the fronts but scooping out the backs of landmark buildings has come to be called.

It is a way of building that is new to New York, but which already is relatively common in other cities, especially Washington, where it has served as a frequent means of detente between preservationists and developers.

For facadism holds out a great temptation - it seems, on the surface, to give both sides what they want. The small, older buildings valued by preservationists appear to be saved, while the large new ones developers seek can still be built.

But while facadism pretends to a certain earnestness, it is at bottom rather pernicious. For the compromise it represents is not really preservation at all. To save only the facade of a building is not to save its essence; it is to turn the building into a stage set, into a cute toy intended to make a skyscraper more palatable. And the street becomes a kind of Disneyland of false fronts.

A Case in Point

The Fifth Avenue project is a good case in point. The proposed tower is to be built behind one of Fifth Avenue's great blocks, a superb row of early 20th-century commercial buildings that includes the structure at No. 714 with three floors of windows by Rene Lalique, the great French artisan in glass, and the 712 Fifth Avenue building that until recently housed the offices and bookshop of Rizzoli, the Italian publisher.

These buildings, along with the pleasant, small building that once housed the Custom Shirt Shop, the marble-faced structure of Harry Winston, the jeweler, and the brownstone Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, together form one of the only completely intact, older blocks of Fifth Avenue, a street that has always had a remarkable combination of grandeur and modest scale.

For years, this block has been as important to Fifth Avenue's ambiance as Rockefeller Center - and it is all the more so now, in the years since the avenue's scale has been so brutally shattered by insensitive, larger buildings like Olympic Tower at 51st Street.

The developers - a partnership of Solomon Equities, G. Ware Travelstead and First Boston Corporation -originally proposed razing the Rizzoli, Coty and Custom Shop buildings and erecting in their place a skyscraper essentially like the one now proposed. But when the city, over the developers' objections, declared the buildings landmarks, the developers sent the architect William Pederson back to his drawing board to come up with a compromise in which they could save the landmarks and still get their tower.

That is the current plan, which calls for the tower to be shoved 50 feet back from Fifth Avenue and for the Lalique glass in the facade of the Coty Building to become the front wall of an atrium that would serve as the tower's entry. The old buildings would become, literally, a doormat for the tower, a small stoop cowering before a ponderous skyscraper of entirely different scale.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission, perhaps eager to appear flexible, has approved the plan. But some civic groups, led by the Municipal Art Society, have continued to object to the project as a violation of the spirit of the city's landmarks law. The building still has one political hurdle to clear, for zoning variances it requires will need the approval of the city's Board of Standards and Appeals.

Plans for 18-Story Tower

The situation has become more complex still by the announcement by Harry Winston, the jeweler, of a further instance of facadism - a plan to erect an 18-story tower on top of its building on the corner of 56th Street. That tower is being planned only because Winston's owners and the developers of the larger tower could not agree on a price for the air rights over the Winston building, which the developers had hoped to use to make the big tower bigger still.

Some observers of the real-estate industry speculate that the Winston project may be only a bluff, intended to intensify the negotiations for Winston's air rights - but the fact that it could be planned at all surely proves the extent to which the smaller buildings on Fifth Avenue have become pawns in the game of large-scale real estate.

And that is the problem - small buildings like the ones on this Fifth Avenue block are pawns, not active players. No matter how good they are as works of architecture, they do not have the economic strength to be treated as essential parts of the cityscape, and as a result they are valued mainly as sentimental objects.

This attitude may be better than treating small, older buildings with total indifference, but it is still not enough to make a civilized city. For the whole point is that buildings such as the ones on this Fifth Avenue block, or the brownstone facades on East 79th Street, are not sentimental objects; they are real buildings.

Distant Relationships

For the city is not a place of make-believe, a place of illusion where little buildings exist to be pinned, like brooches, on the front of bigger structures to which they bear only the most distant of relationships. To turn an older building of distinction into a fancy front door for a new tower is to respect neither the integrity of the new or that of the old, but to render both buildings, in a sense, ridiculous.

For in these cases both the new and the old are trapped in something that neither building was really intended to be part of. At its most extreme, this approach yields such absurdities as the block of Pennsylvania Avenue between 20th and 21st Streets in Washington, where a row of Victorian houses has been tacked, like wallpaper, onto the front of a sleek glass office block, a juxtaposition that manages the neat trick of making both the old and the new sections seem equally out of place.

This is not to say that there are not cases in which old and new construction cannot be combined successfully. Also in Washington, there is a complex on M Street in which new office wings have been discreetly inserted behind old brick houses. But this works because it is not really facadism as such - the old houses here remain as buildings, partners with the new wings.

That is not what is planned for Fifth Avenue in New York, where it really is little more than the facades that will remain. The setback of 50 feet that has been planned for the Fifth Avenue tower may be sufficient to create a modest atrium, but it is hardly enough to keep the skyscraper from bearing down on the older buildings.

And on East 79th Street, the setback of the tower would be only 15 feet. So this tower, though far smaller than the one proposed for midtown, will also overwhelm the old facades at its front.

It is true, however, that in this particular case the architects had no option of complete preservation, for the major portion of these brownstones was demolished some time ago, and now only the facades remain. But that still does not make idea of tucking a 19-story tower just behind the facades a comfortable one, or a wise precedent.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

My husband and I were stalkers for months - waiting and waiting for Brickhaus to open. While it was frustrating, it was worth the wait! I use the treadmill or elliptical once or twice a week but primarily take classes. I've taken sculpt classes, cardio kickboxing, ab class, pilates, spinning, and yoga. Out of 4-6 classes a week for several months, there was only teacher who I didn't like (and I'm pretty sure she's not there anymore). I take Romula's classes all of the time, and she's fantastic! I can see a lot of change in my body in a fairly short period of time. Everyone at Brickhaus has been friendly, welcoming, and helpful. It's very clean and the steam room is a dream! I recommend it highly and enthusiastically! My husband is too lazy to write his own review, but he wants me to write that he loves karate with Dr. Ernest (he's seriously obsessed with the classes).

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This sounds like a clear admission to me that the "apology" is meant as a path to reparations, affirmative action, or other racist government policies.

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I feel a council aide has the right to be involved in projects that they feel passionate about. I certainly did, and I made it a point that there was a clear separation between my personal community causes and my council job. If my former boss felt passionate about my cause he helped, but never used it as political leverage. From what I know of Althea, her fight for better schools will continue long after her council job. She is a mother of three kids, if I was her I'd be worried about their future too.

I have not followed everything that JCFI stands for and not sure what your concerns are, but as a constituent, you have every right to voice your concerns, not being in the loop on the JCFI, I'm not sure where the red flags are.

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+1
Sammy's a great guy and his store was a stop on my weekend routine. Still will be, fingers crossed. Here's an article in NY Times about him: NY Times article

Toll Increases or Not, Corzine Will Freeze Spending

Gov. Jon Corzine said today that he will freeze spending in next year?s state budget whether or not the Legislature passes his plan to raise tolls and restructure the state?s battered finances. Since there is a $3 billion deficit anticipated for next year?s budget, the governor would likely have to find billions in cuts to balance a $33.5 billon budget.


?It won?t be easy,? Corzine told a gathering of mayors at the Statehouse annex this morning. But he suggested the process of making cuts would help prove his plan to raise tolls?or raise taxes?is necessary to fix the state?s finances. ?Freezing spending will help people understand how much we need to restructure,? Corzine said.


The governor is tentatively scheduled to introduce a budget on Feb. 26. He also said that he would push a plan to require voter approval for all future state borrowing and a measure requiring all future expenditures to have dedicated revenue sources.


?If I don?t do it through the Legislature, I will do it through executive order,? Corzine said. Under his restructuring plan, tolls would rise 50 percent every four years between 2010 and 2022. A new public corporation would manage the roads and sell bonds that the toll increases would retire. The state would then use the nearly $40 billion of new revenue from the bonds to cut in half the state?s $32 billion debt burden and fund transportation projects for 75 years. - Scott Goldstein

New Jersey legislature expresses regret for slavery

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - New Jersey became the fifth U.S. state to apologize for its role in slavery when lawmakers voted on Monday for a resolution expressing "profound regret" for the enslavement of up to 12,000 blacks before the Civil War.

The resolution, which does not have to be signed by Gov. Jon Corzine, was approved by the state Assembly by a vote of 59 to 8, with eight abstentions. The Senate voted for it by a margin of 21 to 9.

Expressing its "deepest sympathies and solemn regrets" to slaves and their descendants, the resolution urged citizens to teach their children about slavery "to ensure that these tragedies will neither be forgotten nor repeated."

Assemblyman Bill Payne, a Democrat who sponsored the measure, said it would help to address modern problems such as unequal access to housing and education that he said were the remnants of slavery.

"Many of the social problems we have in this country are directly related to the fact that this country was involved in slavery," he said.

Four Southern states have so far offered official apologies for slavery: Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama and Maryland. New Jersey is the first Northern state to do so.

(Editing by Eric Beech)


? Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

There was a very pretty dilute tortoiseshell (blue-gray, cream, orange) cat who lived there for years (although he would deny the presence of a cat when she strayed outside due to Health Code restrictions.)

I hope that in addition to surviving the fire, she made it out with him and is not wandering around.

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Seriously: does JCFI have any official views other maybe than that schools should be good?

Even unofficially, the platform seems to be that the schools should be good, the city should be careful about giving out tax abatements, and the annual Stir Crazy festival is really fun. What's so terrible about all of that?

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WTF?

4bailey, what exactly do you mean about "...lock-step agreement with the Jersey City Family Initiative agenda." ? What is the agenda you're making reference to and what exactly do you disagree with?

I know Althea and she is an intelligent, activist mother who is well-informed and a doer, not someone who just whines on JCList. I think this is a great choice by Fulop and will benefit us all.

I don't have kids and support the Jersey City Family Initiative as well.

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I'm so sorry this happened to him. This has just been a terrible year or two for fires.

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You go, girl!

More smart, well-informed women playing in a role in the official life of this city can only be a good thing.

..... well she is not related to the councilman, nor does she have a county job.....

.... did not know there was opposition out there to a group that advocates making JC more family friendly....

..... and she is a dog owner......


4bailey wrote:
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And what part of the Jersey City Family Initiative do you have a problem with or are you just taking a cheap shot? Please provide examples....

Sam, the owner of the bagel shop, is an all-around good guy who brings a lot to Central Avenue. He is a true advocate for literacy - his free bookshelves were very popular. Great bagles, too! I wish him well and I hope he builds his new store very soon!

no.

you first need to look at what percentage of these births actually stay in the state they were born in. people go to cities for work, that will never change.

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?Nice to hear? of this staff change if you?re in lock-step agreement with the Jersey City Family Initiative agenda.

But for the rest of us??.. Sorry, Steve,... I?m not entirely convinced.

'Heavy' fire damages bagel shop

by Michaelangelo Conte
Tuesday January 15, 2008, 7:52 PM

A Jersey City Heights bagel store suffered heavy damage in a fire caused by a coffee maker that apparently ignited some nearby paper cups this evening, officials said.

Firefighters responding to the 5:18 p.m. alarm found heavy fire in Central Avenue Bagels at Central Avenue and Hutton Street, located on the ground floor of a five-story building, Fire Director Armando Roman said.

By the time the flames were under control a half hour later the bagel story had suffered extensive damage, Roman said, adding that the floors above suffered minor damage as firefighters searched for hidden flames in the structure.

The fire is thought to have been accidental, the director said.

Those living in the apartments above the bagel store were allowed to return home after the flames were doused, Roman said, adding that firefighters left the scene at 7:21 p.m.

The bagel store is known for its free book exchange program, through which the owner has made thousands of books available to anyone who wants to take them from boxes and shelves in the shop.

Obama Conjures the Kennedys in Jersey City
Three points short in New Hampshire, Barack is still coming strong

Village Voice
by Tom Robbins
January 15th, 2008

Every pundit and pollster was still insisting that something must have gone badly wrong for Barack Obama the night before in the snows of New Hampshire as the line down John F. Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City kept growing last Wednesday. The line went down the street and around the corner at St. Peter's College, and it was clear by 3 p.m. that at least a third of those waiting patiently for the rally with the Democratic senator from Illinois weren't even going to make it into the gym at the school's Yanitelli Center, which had a capacity 2,000 people.

But there wasn't much griping or a whole lot of second thoughts about New Hampshire to be heard either.

"This is history for me," said self-declared senior citizen Louise Gay, who walked to the school from her home a couple of blocks away.

Brandon Kelly, 31, took a half-day off from her job as a marketer in Manhattan to catch Obama. "I only get two and a half weeks off all year," she said. "So that makes this a big deal for me."

Behind her, a couple from the Jersey suburbs said they couldn't resist. "He's saying what people have been waiting to hear for the last seven terrible years," said Judy Goldstein.

Then there was Charlie Hannon, 80, who wore a peaked VFW cap with gold piping and planted himself at the gym's entrance with a picket sign reading "Veterans for Obama." Hannon was the only vet in sight, but he swore there were others inside. Born and raised in Jersey City, Hannon said he served with the Navy in the South Pacific in World War II. "I enlisted when I was 17," he said.

According to the thinking of those trying to read the New Hampshire exit polls, Hannon is the rarest of birds: a working-class white guy who wants to see Obama in the White House. His type apparently went in droves for Hillary Clinton in the Granite State's southern tier, where the old manufacturing towns are located. So did women, whose ballots were the biggest reason Obama came up some 7,500 votes short.

But his 3 percent miss merited only shrugs from those waiting in line, Hannon among them. One reason he likes Obama so much, he said, is because he's against the Iraq War. "You know, anyone who's been in a war doesn't want to see another one," he said. "And he's young, he's not corrupt. I don't see what Hillary's done that's so great."

Did he really believe a black man could pull it off in America? "Oh yeah," he said. "We can't think like that anymore. Those days are gone. He did pretty well already in those white states, didn't he?"

Actually, he did better than well. The primary-night chatterers obsessed over how the polls?which had Obama up by an average of eight points?could have been so universally wrong. The pundits took that mistake personally, as though their own screwup was somehow more important than the fact that someone was out there making history, as in "Black candidate nearly takes two white states." No one got around to mentioning that only 12 weeks before, Obama had been down by some 20 points. Back then, reporters were busy typing the words "Hillary" and "presumptive winner" in the same sentence over and over.

By the time Obama got to St. Peter's, there were still 1,000 people outside who couldn't get in. The candidate made those inside the gym wait while he spoke to the crowd on the street. When he was finally spotted making his way into the gym, the throngs in the bleachers erupted. Instead of bounding to the stage as he did last summer at a packed Brooklyn hotel ballroom, and last fall when some 25,000 turned out for him in Washington Square Park, he walked slowly to the mic. He bought himself sympathy with his opening lines: "My voice is a little hoarse. My eyes are a little bleary. My back is sore. But my spirit is strong."

He then went on to give what to those working hacks who must listen to him over and over is logged in this way: standard stump speech?except that there is nothing standard about it other than the fact that almost each time he gives it, he lifts the crowd on wings they'd forgotten they had.

He tells these crowds how "we are at a defining moment in our nation, a period when we see our dreams slipping away." He reminds them of how they were cheated by the current administration: "People were promised a compassionate conservatism; instead they got Katrina and wiretapping." And he tells them that this time, Democrats can only win by taking a chance: "We can't win this race if we live in fear of losing it," he says.

In earlier versions of this speech, he answered critics who say he is too young and inexperienced by citing the extensive r?sum?s of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Since late November, he has substituted this resonating touch: "I am running because of what Dr. King called 'the fierce urgency of now,' " he said slowly, adding: "Because there is such a thing as being too late."

As he said this in Jersey City, there were squeals, shouts, and whistles. Most of the crowd was young, but there was plenty of gray hair in sight as well.

He has his list of promises: that he will win universal health care by the end of his first term, close Guant?namo, end the war in Iraq, take back tax breaks from corporations that ship jobs overseas, make trade agreements subject to fair-labor and environmental standards. He wants, he said, "to go before the General Assembly at the U.N. and say, 'America is back.' "

He pledges to make college affordable to all, in exchange for a promise in return from young Americans to give some form of community service to their country.

This is similar to the deal that John F. Kennedy offered to young Americans. That offer caught the attention of a generation and inspired hundreds of thousands to go off to work in slums and Third World countries. It is the kind of talk no one has been able to give in a long time without being mocked.

When Obama was done, hundreds of supporters lingered in the basketball arena, as though they were still soaking up these new vibes he'd brought to the room. Leaning against a railing used to hold back the crowd was a woman who fits the prime Clinton-voter profile. "He's just what we need," said Margaret Schulhoff, 62, of Providence, New Jersey. "We need to be inspired. It's been a long time. I didn't think I'd live this long."

It is something people say a lot about the Obama insurgency. It is as if the politics of recent years had so pounded them down that they didn't expect, much less dare to hope, that someone might actually inspire them again.

Part of the knock on Obama is that his backers are supposedly betting on a blank slate, "a leader who has never led," as the Los Angeles Times tabbed him when he first started talking about a presidential run in 2006.

The spin from Camp Clinton and other doubters is that the cheering hordes at every Obama rally are being hoodwinked by a clever marketing operation.

If so, the true believers have some impressive company. One of Obama's stalwarts is Ted Sorensen, who will be 80 years old in a few weeks. Sorensen was President John F. Kennedy's chief speechwriter, and he is one of the few remaining links to that era. He helped write Kennedy's 1961 inaugural address, the one that summoned a generation to service and pledged to "begin anew."

Sorensen suffers from failing eyesight, but he has traveled to Iowa and New Hampshire for the candidate, as well as Chicago and Kansas City. He sees Obama as the only Democrat with "a serious chance of defeating McCain or any other Republican." The bonus, Sorensen believes, will be that the young candidate will draw young and new voters. "All of those who have been disillusioned and uninterested," said Sorensen. "They will be the margin of victory for him, and it will help elect Democrats to the House and Senate to give Obama a working majority. He will be able to get things done that nobody has been able to do for 30 years."

Plus, said Sorensen, Obama has the same thing going for him that Kennedy did when it came to making his pitch: "He is clearly the best campaign speaker on the Democratic side since John F. Kennedy."

The two men faced similar stumbling blocks: youth, experience level, and minority status. "Kennedy was a first-term U.S. senator, just as Obama is," said Sorensen. He recalled one time when Kennedy took the Senate floor to call for independence for Algeria, thereby greatly offending the French government and the State Department. "There were senior Democrats," recalls Sorensen, "who said he was too young and naive and needed more experience and seasoning."

After the Cuban missile crisis was over, most people stopped talking that way. "Kennedy's willingness to negotiate," said Sorensen, "and talk to Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis is why you and I are talking here today."

Obama has already had one sharp run-in with the old-guard foreign-relations establishment and its media guardians, when he said last year that he'd be willing to negotiate with Iran and Syria. Clinton and others dubbed his comments a rookie misstep ("irresponsible and frankly naive," she said), but Obama has stuck by his pledge, incorporating it into his regular speeches. When he does, he quotes Kennedy's lines from the inaugural, where he said, "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate."

Obama's approach "is so clearly reminiscent of Kennedy's," said Sorensen.

Then there's the question about whether a black man can win. "Forty-seven years ago," said Sorensen, "everyone was saying the country wasn't ready for a Roman Catholic, and therefore John F. Kennedy was ineligible for the presidency on the day he was baptized. I don't think, in times as critical as these, the American public is going to be so foolish on the basis of race. Obama transcends those considerations and transcends party lines as well."

If that's wishful thinking, Sorensen is not alone among Democratic veterans. Ronnie Eldridge, the former city councilwoman from Manhattan's West Side, said Obama also reminds her of a Kennedy?in her case, it's Robert Kennedy, for whom she was an early supporter. "I have the same instinctive feeling about him that I had about Bobby Kennedy," said Eldridge. "They are people who shake up the political establishment?people you trust."

The story is mostly lost in pages of flaking newsprint, but more than 40 years ago, most respectable liberals in New York wanted nothing to do with Bobby Kennedy, preferring the plodding but unquestionably liberal Republican incumbent, Kenneth Keating. The leap of faith by Kennedy supporters back then was premised on the notion that his actions would match his soaring rhetoric. That was something no one ever really got a chance to find out, since he was assassinated in the midst of his 1968 presidential run (a scenario that haunts some Obama backers as well).

Another veteran buying into the Obama gambit is Richard Ravitch, 64, the housing developer and former chief of the MTA, who is credited with rescuing the city's subways in the 1980s. Ravitch, who was a mayoral candidate in 1989, is running this year as an Obama delegate in Manhattan. "I read his autobiography, and I read his second book, and I was immensely impressed," said Ravitch. "I asked to meet [him], and when I met him, I decided I wanted to support him. My generation screwed things up pretty bad," Ravitch added. "The next generation deserves a shot."

ACTION ALERT: Planning Board Mtg Weds Jan 16th 530p @ School #4

Embankment Preservation Coalition

Dear Coalition Supporter:

Below is a call-out from PADNA for attendance at tomorrow's Planning Board Meeting. Please note the meeting is NOT at City Hall, but rather at school #4 on Bright Street. The Powerhouse Arts District is related to our concerns because (a) the warehouses are connected with the history of the Embankment (b) the developer bought the property knowing what the zoning was and is seeking to radically change the zoning. We support PADNA's efforts to preserve their historic warehouses and we oppose the proposed amendments to the PAD Redevelopment Plan.

If you can come out to support PADNA on Wednesday, please do!

PLANNING BOARD MEETING THIS WEDNESDAY
Please note address correction:
Frank R. Conwell Middle School #4
107 Bright Street
Between Jersey Ave & Varick Street

After 5 1/2 hrs. of testimony on November 27, 2007, the Planning Board is meeting THIS Wednesday, January 16, to make a ruling on Toll Brothers proposed amendments to the Powerhouse Arts District Redevelopment Plan.

The extent of Toll's amendments are such that they obliterate the PAD Redevelopment Plan, one that is the result of over 10 years of community and Planning Department research and work (and tax payer dollars). We are against the Toll proposed amendments, not only for the destruction that will be brought upon the Powerhouse Arts District, but also because of the implications to the planning process and to Jersey City as a whole.

As part of the Downtown community, we must show up in force at Wednesday's meeting to impress upon the planning board and the politicians that will soon be voting on this that we care about this issue, we are watching them and their actions have implications.

Again, the meeting is

Wednesday, January 16th, 5:30pm
Middle School #4 Auditorium
107 Bright Street
Enter through iron gate on left side then straight through main glass doors. Auditorium/Theater is on the left as you enter

For video highlights from the 11/27/07 planning board meeting, go to www.padnajc.org

Sincerely,

PADNA


Embankment Preservation Coalition | 495 Monmouth Street | Jersey City | NJ | 07302

Click Here to Join the Jersey City for Kucinich DFA Click Here to Please contribute now. We need volunteers The Nevada caucuses are this Saturday, January 19, and we need your help to get the vote out for Dennis! If you can make phone calls, wherever you are, we need volunteers to phone Nevada voters to get supporters out to caucus. No experience is necessary - email dennis4presidentNV@mac.com for information on how to get set up and how to make calls. If you are in Nevada, or can come to Nevada, we need volunteers for any and all of the following: going door to door and making phone calls to get people out to caucus, visibility (helping to get Kucinich's name out there by putting up signs, etc), attend events, and provide food for and/or host volunteers who are coming from out of state. We can use your help any time from now through January 19, the day of the caucus. If you are able to help out in Nevada, email dennis4presidentNV@mac.com and let us know how you?d like to help. Your help will get the truth out to voters, so that they will know that there is a real Democrat running for nomination - a candidate who is serious about guaranteeing healthcare for all, about ending the war in Iraq, and about restoring our Constitution. Thank you for your support, and we look forward to hearing from you soon! Strength through Peace, The Kucinich for President Campaign 877-41-DENNIS (877-413-3664) Paid for and authorized by Kucinich for President 2008, Inc. P.O. Box 110180, Cleveland, OH 44111 | (877) 41-DENNIS. Strength through Peace, The Kucinich for President Campaign Kucinich for President denniskucinichmessages@kucinich.us Click Here to Join the Jersey City for Kucinich DFA 877-41-DENNIS (877-413-3664)

I happened to be in Baltimore this weekend by the Power Plant development that now has the B&N/ESPN Zone - the one done by the same developer that's going to redevelop the Powerhouse here. I don't know if this was an anomaly, but it was pretty empty.