By Julie Shapiro

Two days before Councilmember Alan Gerson’s term ended this week, he was still racing between his office and City Hall, attending transition meetings and approving press releases.

Amid packed boxes Tuesday morning, Gerson and his staff fielded phone calls from tenants worried about eviction and small business owners looking for help. Then Gerson headed for City Hall, where he sat in the councilmembers’ lounge finalizing an affordable housing agreement.

“Certain emergencies don’t follow the political calendar and cannot be put off,” Gerson said as his last 60 hours ticked down. “The people of the city of New York are paying me through the end of the year, so they deserve to have me earning my salary.”

Gerson then started to say, “One of the many distortions, one of the many untruths of the campaign — ” but then cut himself short and said, “No, I want to be positive.” Gerson lost his bid for a third term this fall, when Margaret Chin beat him in the Democratic primary. During the campaign, Gerson often found himself on the defensive as Chin and others criticized him, but Gerson did not want to talk about that this week.

Instead, in between saying goodbye to colleagues, Gerson spoke with nostalgia about his eight years in office. Packing up old papers reminded him of his accomplishments, from securing agreements for new schools to resolving noise complaints in his Lower Manhattan district, he said.

Gerson was generally in good spirits but appeared sad at some moments, as when he went to look for his nameplate in a cubbyhole in the Council Chamber.

“They haven’t gotten rid of it yet,” Gerson said with a slight smile as he found it and ran his fingers over his name and the title of the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Committee, which he chaired. Gerson said perhaps he would take the nameplate with him.

Gerson has no definite plans for the future, beyond taking his first vacation in eight years. He plans to stay involved in the public sector, and has recently hinted at running for office again, but he said that for now he is focusing on finishing up his term.

His Council work has been more than enough to keep Gerson busy this month, as several initiatives he was working on came to the Council floor for a vote. The most significant was legislation to protect the low-income tenants of the Grand Street Guild Houses, a 600-unit Section 8 complex on the Lower East Side.

Under an agreement negotiated by Gerson, the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, which owns the complex, promised last week to keep the apartments affordable for the next 40 years and also agreed to make long-awaited repairs to the complex’s three buildings.

“We literally went down to the wire on this,” Gerson said this week. “It’s a win for the owners, it’s a win for the residents and it’s a win for the cause of preserving affordable housing.”

After drawn-out negotiations, Gerson and the City Council agreed to award the archdiocese $62.5 million in property tax breaks over the next 40 years, which will allow the complex to get $60 million in federal funds for facade work and other repairs. In return, the archdiocese agreed to keep the complex affordable for the same time period, even if the federal government cuts the Section 8 program, which now subsidizes most of the residents’ rents. Section 8 generally caps tenants’ rents at 30 percent of their income.

“We’re hoping they keep their word,” said Dashia Lopez, president of the Grand Street Guild Houses’ tenant association. “The whole property has been left unattended. It’s been like this for a long time.”

Mo Collarusso, 69, a Section 8 tenant, said her apartment flooded twice in the past few weeks, and she slipped on the water and injured her foot.

“Living conditions are deplorable in some of the apartments,” Collarusso said. “It bothers me. Nobody should have to live like that.”

Many of the apartments have mold and asbestos, and tenants have to contend with broken elevators, old appliances and windows that don’t keep out the wind. The planned improvements will fix all of those problems and may also add new amenities, like fitness rooms, according to the agreement.

The tenants and owner have a long history of clashing over maintenance and other issues, and Gerson said one of his main tasks was to build trust between the two sides. Michael Comerford, a lawyer representing the archdiocese, said Gerson was helpful in bridging the gap.

Gerson also got another piece of legislation passed by the Council this month: a bill requiring the city to notify the community about major transportation projects. Chinatown residents and business owners were outraged when the city announced plans to reconfigure Chatham Square last year, because the city gave little information and said the project was a fait accompli.

Gerson’s bill, which Mayor Mike Bloomberg signed into law this week, requires the city to notify the Council and local community board whenever a transportation project will change four blocks, or 1,000 feet, of a street. The city is also required to present the plans upon request and respond to the community’s suggestions.

The law does not give the community as much advance notice as they would like, but it is better than nothing, said Ed Ma, co-chairperson of Community Board 2’s Chinatown Committee. Ma said he originally wanted the city to give four months’ notice before starting projects. Gerson’s law gives the community only two weeks to respond, though the community can buy more time by requesting a presentation from the city.

As Gerson walked around City Hall on Tuesday, he said the transportation bill was an example of his ability to bring both sides of a dispute to the table and forge a compromise.

Gerson’s train of thought was interrupted by a cell-phone call from his office, about a small business owner who needed help navigating the city’s bureaucracy, and then Gerson stopped to say hello to Leticia Remauro, a vice president at the Battery Park City Authority.

“You never know what’s around the bend,” Remauro told Gerson as they hugged goodbye.

Gerson nodded. Then it was time for him to get back to work, but first he wanted to show a reporter one more thing.

“This is the place I’m going to miss the most,” he said, leading the way to the Governor’s Room, an aqua-painted reception space on the second floor of City Hall. An American flag lay folded on a table, ready to be hung from the room’s balcony at the mayor’s inauguration ceremony Jan. 1.

Walking slowly through the space, Gerson narrated the room’s history and pointed out historical relics, including desks once used by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and George Washington. Gerson joked that he could return to City Hall as a tour guide, and then said seriously that he would miss spending time there.

“Where else do you have George Washington’s desk and La Guardia’s desk in the same room?” he said.

The proposed St. Vincent’s Hospital/Rudin residential redevelopment project drew a step closer to reality last month when the hospital submitted a blueprint for an environmental review to the Department of City Planning.

To The Editor:
Re “Musical Mezuzah Gate, or The Orrin Hatchberg Story” (talking point, Daniel Meltzer, Dec. 23):
Thanks, Daniel Meltzer, for a wonderful piece! I actually heard the terrible song sent to me by someone who is pitifully naive. It is truly the dumbest knockoff song of the dumbest song in the Yiddish repertoire (“Dreidl, Dreidl, Dreidl”) ever written and it is beyond the possibility of parody.
Lucille Krasne

To The Editor:
Re “Musical Mezuzah Gate, or The Orrin Hatchberg Story” (talking point, Daniel Meltzer, Dec. 23):
If you really want a laugh, here it is. He even pulls out his mezuzah. Obviously, some of Hatch’s best friends are Jewish. Check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XND3Naa6N5o
Fran Stern

To The Editor:
Re “Silent night and Frank won’t be calling this year” (notebook, by Alphie McCourt, Dec. 23):
Alphie McCourt is a wonderful writer himself. He writes with the same ease as Brendan Behan. And I hope he keeps on writing for us.
Pat Fenton

To The Editor:
Re “Silent night and Frank won’t be calling this year” (notebook, by Alphie McCourt, Dec. 23):
Alphie McCourt reminds me of what good writing really is — personal, vulnerable sometimes, ringing with truth. I loved this line: “It would take me many years to realize that the ideal, or the idealized Christmas, is all too often framed in someone else’s window.”

Thanks, Alphie.
Marta Szabo

To The Editor:
Commenting on Lincoln Anderson’s piece “Art squat reviews its history, finds more in backyard” in The Villager’s Dec. 16 issue, Lincoln should have credited the backyard excavation installation as being a collaboration project with Austin Shull. He also forgot to mention that Austin Shull is directing the video documentation.

I realize journalists have to simplify to concentrate and focus their story. But it is important to give this artist his full credit, as he worked so hard on this archaeological dig.

Regarding the police visit after a complaint of a suspicious dig in the backyard: The police realized right away we weren’t involved in a criminal deed and stayed for an hour, enjoying and commenting on the artifacts. They also enjoyed seeing for the first time Bimbo Rivas’s “Loisaida” poem; the younger officers were educated about the famous poet and how Avenue C was named after his famous poem.

There was also the fascination of the young officers seeing for the first time photos of the 1988 Tompkins Square riots, the tank on E. 13th St. and the evictions of 1996.

It was a beautiful, absurd interaction with police officers, young and old, 21 years after the Tompkins Square Park riots.
Thank you, Lincoln, for an enlightening article.
Andrew Castrucci
Castrucci is co-founder, Bullet Space

To The Editor:
Re “Nature is its own art” (letter, by Sharon Woolums, Dec. 23):
I read Sharon Woolums’s letter concerning art in the parks with some astonishment. I understand where Ms. Woolums is coming from, but I wonder if she has any idea where she is headed.

If we accept Ms. Woolums’s thesis that art in the parks is a form of disruptive clutter detracting from our enjoyment of nature, then surely we must respond by removing José de Creeft’s fabulous “Alice in Wonderland” bronze sculpture from Central Park. This spectacular, inspiring, but totally distracting piece would be a number one offender. The park’s statue of Balto, the heroic canine, would be a close second. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to place these magnificent sculptures next to a highway entrance or in a shopping mall atrium where they would not clash with the trees.

I also understand where Ms. Woolums is coming from as far as commercialization of the parks — but why pick on artists? Fine artists have been a big part of the revitalization of the parks for decades. Yet, at the same time, we are not able to name the small park on Broome St. and West Broadway in honor of Bob Bolles, the sculptor who popularized the area with his large, playful, metal pieces in the 1950s and ’60s.

The problem is not too much art in New York City, Ms. Woolums; the problem is that there is not enough of it. Therefore, it would be far more helpful if a sensitive, trained collage artist, such as Ms. Woolums, would advocate for fine artists instead of lumping us in with the clutter.
Lawrence White

To The Editor:
Re “Nature is its own art” (letter, by Sharon Woolums, Dec. 23):

Sharon Woolums verbalizes so well what many of us have been thinking during the back-and-forth issue of selling art on the High Line. While I am in favor of amendment rights, and artists being free to sell their artwork, I do agree that we need some places in this busy, hustling city where we can be free from all this commercialization around us.

The High Line has been a place to get away from the busy, hectic streets below. It would be a shame to lose that and see the High Line become just one more crowded, commercial, selling venue.
Linda Lusskin

To The Editor:
Re “Nature is its own art” (letter, by Sharon Woolums, Dec. 23):
I share Sharon Woolums’s appreciation of nature and her sentiment that New York City parks should be places of calm. Unfortunately, the Parks Department has a different viewpoint. It is the Parks Department, not street artists, that is at the forefront of commercializing New York City parks. One has only to experience the parks at the holiday season to see what their real “vision” is for our newly privatized public parks.

Thousands of park vending concessions selling T- shirts, souvenirs and junk food are auctioned off to the highest bidder. One corporation is chosen to own all the vending concessions in each park; the “vendors” operating these profitable stands are minimum-wage employees. Huge “Holiday Markets” take over entire parks for a month at a time so that hundreds of non-First Amendment-protected vendors — who would otherwise be considered by the New York Police Department to be illegally vending — can sell a variety of items available in nearby stores.

Corporations rent out entire parks to launch new product lines, to hold fashion shows or to host private parties for the city’s wealthiest residents. There are even bars and fast-food restaurants in some New York City parks. For 30 days at a time, 24 hours a day, Christmas tree vendors set up gigantic, block-long displays on Parks property with the department’s full approval — with displays that are literally 100 times the legal size of an artist’s display.

Unlike other New York City parks, the High Line was conceived to benefit the local real estate and commercial interests of the Meatpacking and Chelsea districts, not the general public. It was designed to attract wealthy residents and tourists to the area’s more than 200 art galleries, as well as its newly constructed luxury hotels, designer stores and expensive restaurants.

Much of the wood used in its construction is from endangered species cut from ancient, primary forests, including the Amazon. Since the park’s opening, the Parks Department has had vending concessions up there — as well as a three-day, pop-up Target Store right under the High Line at Gansevoort St. And, according to both the Parks commissioner and the Friends of the High Line, they plan more vending concessions for this park.

Despite all that, should the artistic speech of First Amendment-protected street artists have a place in our parks, or are parks just for contemplating nature? Here’s what the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on free speech in parks:

“Wherever the title of streets and parks may rest, they have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions. Such use of the streets and public places has, from ancient times, been a part of the privileges, immunities, rights, and liberties of citizens.” (Hague v C.I.O., 1939.)
Robert Lederman
Lederman is president, ARTIST (Artists’ Response to Illegal State Tactics)