Whose Downtown Is It Anyway?

A proposal to replace a public plaza with an office building in Lower Manhattan brings up the question: does the downtown belong to residents or to businesses?

1 minute read

February 28, 2001, 10:00 AM PST

By Abhijeet Chavan @http://twitter.com/legalaidtech

Apartment dwellers need open space. Investment banks need trading space. And in Lower Manhattan, where every inch isprecious, the two needs are colliding over an elevated one-acre public plaza.The Goldman Sachs Group proposes to eliminate the 28-year-old plaza...and replace it with a 240-foot-high building...Which invites a question as the fight over 55 Water Street goes before the City Planning Commission today: just whose downtown is it, anyway? By community, does one mean the residential pioneers who came to settle an embryonic neighborhood, or a business that can trace its history in Lower Manhattan to 1869, when Marcus Goldman set up shop on Pine Street?

Thanks to Abhijeet Chavan

Read the full story: Goldman Sachs Seeks to Turn Open Space Into Trading Space

Wednesday, February 28, 2001 in The New York Times

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