This week’s news from Lower Manhattan
The Rockefeller Foundation named the Downtown Alliance a grant winner in its 2009 New York City Cultural Innovation Fund competition. The grant is to develop a replicable development model for the creation of permanent workspace for artists.
Upper East Side community center Asphault Green has been chosen as the operator of a new community center in Battery Park City. With Downtown’s population growing rapidly, Downtown Alliance President Elizabeth Berger — a former Asphault Green representative — told the Downtown Express that she sees plenty of needs for Asphalt Green to fill.
“What I think we need is more,” Berger said, “more of everything.”
New York Times restaurant critic Sam Sifton wrote a dining brief on Cowgirl SeaHorse, a Lower Manhattan spin-off of Cowgirl, a West Village roadhouse. “It’s open and fun,” he says, “and a house margarita paired with warm, salty tortilla chips does much to recall the freak flagship’s mood of tolerance.”
The Rector Street Bridge, a key link between Battery Park City and the Financial District, has reopened after several months of construction.