R.I.P. | Mae Doris Corrigan (1928-2015)

Doris Corrigan (lower left) with then-Speaker Quinn (R),
 turning out for Hillary Clinton. Assemblyman Dick
Gottfried and Tom Duane, upper left, were at Doris'
memorial service last weekend.

There are people in New York City who make things work and are insufficiently recognized.

You sometimes don't find out the full extent of their contributions after they die and a memorial service is held for them.

Jane Wood in Chelsea was one of those people, saving so many from evictions from their homes.

Little-known fact: Doris attended
Hogwart's, which explains a LOT.
Here she is graduating from the
junior school at Hogwart's.

Another was Mae Doris Corrigan, who was at the forefront of every Chelsea humanitarian and anti-discrimination cause for one-third of a century.

A memorial for Doris Corrigan was held last weekend from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Hudson Guild in Chelsea. It was opened by Ken Jockers of Hudson Guild.

Laura Morrison. Photo
JTM.

Doris was 87 when she died July 23, 2015 in the Amsterdam Nursing Home, where she had been a patient for several months. Doris was a major presence in Chelsea, as was indicated by the large turnout in her memory.

State Sen. Brad
Hoylman. Photo JTM.

Doris was widely known in New York City for her advocacy of progressive neighborhood causes within the Reform Democratic Party organization over the past 40 years. She was at the founding of the Chelsea Waterside Park Association. She was president of the Chelsea Reform Democratic Club, and fought to promote affordable housing and to defeat the plan for a football stadium on the West Side.

Her health began to deteriorate in 2011 when she was hospitalized after a fall, said Laura Morrison, a community liaison officer for state Senator Brad Hoylman and a long-time friend of Doris’s.

Five generations of Chelsea district leaders turn out to honor Doris Corrigan.
L to R: Steven Skyles-Mulligan, Sylvia Di Pietro, Tom Schuler, Tim Gay,
Paul Groncki, Kathy Kinsella, former State Senator Tom Duane. Photo JTM.

State Senator Brad Hoylman said : "They say in Albany there are two kinds of people - workhorses and show bunnies. Doris was a workhorse."

Morrison and Tom Schuler, a former Democratic district leader for Chelsea, helped Doris in her W. 20th St. apartment at the end of her life.  They and Steven Skyles-Mulligan, current Democratic district leader for Chelsea, made it possible for Doris to remain in her Chelsea apartment for as long as possible, and found her a nursing home on W. 112th St.

Born Mae Doris Clark, she was raised in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and went to Wayne University in Detroit. She moved to New York and married journalist Frank Corrigan. Years later, Doris became his full-time caregiver when he became seriously ill. He died in 1982.

Robert Trentlyon (L with Yale cap) at the Harvard-Yale
game, 2011. Bob and Betty are away in Holland. He
is researching storm surge barriers for NYC. Bob doesn't
like this photo (Harvard won big). Selfie by JTM.

Robert Trentlyon, a member of Community Board 4, former publisher of the Chelsea-Clinton News and founder of both the Chelsea Reform Democratic Club and the Waterside Park Association, said to Al Amateau that Doris worked for his office and then just appeared on the political scene in the early 1980s:

She was always dependable and then indispensable. She came to the Chelsea-Clinton News office on 24th St. in the late 1970s after she lost an advertising job somewhere. [...] She took care of the details in everything she did.

State Senator Duane, District Leader Corrigan and
Governor (Mario) Cuomo.

Doris Corrigan joined Trentlyon in his community work and when it came to planning for the Hudson River Park - which now covers the entire west side from Battery Park to 59th Street - she came aboard for that as well.  The nine-acre Chelsea Cove now includes a skate park, lawn and carousel.

The Proclamation by then-City Council  Speaker Christine Quinn expresses "gratitude" of the City of New York to Trentlyon and Corrigan for “breaking down the wall that kept Chelsea removed from its waterfront."Speaker Christine Quinn called them “living legends of the West side.”

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (L) and former District Leader Kathy Kinsella, with
Steven Skyles-Mulligan behind at right. Photo by JT Marlin.

Trentlyon was not at the the memorial service because he is in Holland investigating the potential for barriers to prevent catastrophic storm surges of the kind that occurred during the Katrina storm. Trentlyon is now working on storm-surge barriers and is away in Holland doing research on them.

Councilman Corey
Johnson

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, whose district now takes in much of Chelsea, said: "Doris held every position she could within Chelsea. You always knew that her petitions would come back looking beautiful. And, by the way, she was a great cook as well."

Rep. Jerry Nadler praised Doris' work on parks and on the fight against the West Side Stadium as proposed sequentially by Mayors Giuliani (baseball) and Bloomberg (football).

Kathy Kinsella, former president of the Chelsea reform club said of Corrigan:

NYC Comptroller Scott
Stringer

She was famous for her short stature [just under 5 feet] and a short temper that went with it. She was impatient at times, yet a very thorough teacher. She was our go-to person who knew everything and got it all done. Fierce and forceful, kind and generous, Doris will always be with me. 

Corey Johnson, the District 3 city council member, noted that Doris remembered the trees she had planted. She was at work so many years that some of the trees she planted on the blocks have grown to their full glory. He said: "Doris was Chelsea. She was involved in every community win and every battle over the last generation."

Comptroller Scott Stringer, who spoke first, said: "In so many cases, Doris was the one who got it done."

Assemblyman Richard Gottfried said of her: "I knew and worked with Doris for over 30 years. In everything she did, whether service on Community Board 4, or as president of the Chelsea Reform Democratic Club, and later as Chelsea’s Democratic district leader and then Democratic State Committee member, Doris Corrigan was always forceful and energetic and fought for what she believed."

Sources: Some quotes above are excerpted from the reporting of Al Amateau of Chelsea Now and Tara Kyle of DNA Chelsea.

NYC | Urban Flooding Wake-Up Call (Guest Post)

Robert Trentlyon, Boolavardier
(Photo by JT Marlin)

The following post was sent to me by Bob Trentlyon, a Yale man (Monsieur Boolavardier, I call him) and former publisher of the Chelsea-Clinton News and other fine newspapers. Bob has asked me to post his comments on my blog in the hopes of being read by people he hasn't reached before. Here's what Bob wants you to know:

Justin Gillis of the New York Times performed an important public service when he wrote a major piece in the January 14 "Science" section entitled “The Flood Next Time”.  He wrote about the inexorable rise of the Atlantic Ocean and its impact upon the east coast of the United States.  Not only is the sea level rising, but the land mass in many places is sinking. Not only is the sea level rising, but it is rising faster.  That means that flooding and hurricanes will create even more damage.  This means that we have to do something about it very soon.   

There are three options - moving to higher ground, resilience, or sustainability.  Moving to higher ground is the most logical, but I am not sure or able that millions of New Yorkers are ready or able to do that.  Resilience means living with the higher water, raising your building, and making continual repairs.  Sustainability means protecting yourself from storms and flooding by building storm surge barriers (SSBs). 

Restoring marshes, and building berms will be done using either  resilience or sustainability. In England there is a 50 year plan for London and for all the neighboring towns.  The London Environment Committee tells the towns what they must do to fit in with the 50 year plan.  The latest North Sea storms had no impact on London, because of storm surge barriers on the Thames that had been in place for many years.

Two cities that have lived with resilience and have chosen storm surge barriers are St. Petersburg, Russia and Venice, Italy.  Both of them had been plagued by flooding for hundreds of years.  St. Petersburg is situated at the mouth of the Neva River. The Neva River Estuary that leads into the North Sea closely resembles the Hudson River estuary. This past year the storm surge barriers were finally completed, and this past fall St. Petersburg was not flooded for the first time in 307 years. The British company Halroyd was the major adviser on the project. The St. Petersburg extensive series of gates and barriers is much longer than what is proposed for the five mile stretch between Sandy Hook and the Rockaways. In Venice, the Venetians were tired of their first floors being flooded every year. The Venetians, with a big assist from the Italian government, are presently testing their new SSBs.

In smaller residential buildings resilience means making do with what we have and modifying existing structures.  It means moving machinery to a higher floor or even the roof. It means vacating living space on the ground floor and eventually the second floor.  There would be some governmental money to assist the owner in making these changes, but not enough. The streets would still be flooded every year in the flood zone.  The flood zone will expand as time goes on.  Most housing modifications in the future will be paid by the owner of the building and passed on to the tenants.  Flood insurance will not exist or be limited, and government aid will be either minimal or non-existent.

If storm surges and flooding can be controlled by building barriers at two or three strategic locations that would be more effective and much cheaper than fortifying hundreds of miles of NYC shoreline and tens of thousands of buildings.  Why are some people afraid of having SSBs studied?

NYC | Protecting against Future Hurricanes

NYC from POV of a Hurricane Heading North.

My Chelsea friend Bob Trentlyon, former publisher of our neighborhood newspaper, this week sent me his latest thoughts on the New York Bight.

The Bight is the large area of water encompassed within the two arms of Long Island and the New Jersey Coast, which make an angle slightly more obtuse than 90 degrees (see map at right).

As Trentlyon says:

These two arms ... have helped guide major storms to New York City, whether Northeasters or hurricanes, that have traveled north on the gulf stream from the Caribbean. Storms have descended on NYC since the last ice age. They have become fiercer and more frequent. NYC, located between Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean is practically defenseless. 

Trentlyon passes along a long list (prepared by John Rentoff) of serious hurricanes that have swept down on New York since the year before the founding of Harvard College:

August 1635, August 1638, October 1723, August 1788, September 1815, September 1821, November 1861, September 1869, September 1874, August 1879, September 1882, August 1893, October 1894, September 1904, September 1938 Long Island Express, September 1944 Great Atlantic Hurricane, August 1954 Carol, September 1960 Donna, August 1976 Belle, September 1985 Gloria, 28 August 1991 Bob, 16 September 1999 Floyd, 27-28 August 2011 Irene, 28-29 October 2012 Sandy. 

What lessons does Trentlyon have for us?

• Don't build on the flood plain. Build on higher ground away from the shoreline. Much of NYC is high enough above the water level not to be affected for a very long time, possibly forever. However, he says, the waterfront is extremely vulnerable.
• Protect Manhattan. Trentlyon thinks "it would be smart to protect much of Manhattan, Brooklyn and parts of Queens by building a five-mile storm surge barrier from the Rockaways to Sandy Hook." He also favors a smaller surge barrier at Throgs Neck to protect from flooding and storm surges in the East River.
• He thinks that closing off the entryways when storm surges or flooding threaten makes a lot more sense than building endless miles of walls.

Earlier reports by Trentlyon are here and here.

I hope that Bill de Blasio, once he is elected Mayor, will obtain the advice of the Army Corps of Engineers and local environmental experts to build on the hurricane planning of the Mayor Bloomberg to consider carefully the most cost-effective way of  reducing the risks to NYC of future hurricanes.

FLOOD ZONES | Do 30-Year Mortgages Still Make Sense?

Bob Trentlyon at
Yale Football Game.

The following was sent to me via email by my friend Yale Alumnus Robert Trentlyon, who gave me permission a few weeks ago to post any of his missives that appear intended for public dissemination. I post without editing, other than a minor tweak to the headline.

THIRTY-YEAR MORTGAGES IN FLOOD ZONES?

August 19, 2013

The real estate business has survived for years on 30 year mortgages.  Will the banks continue to issue 30 year mortgages if a building is in the flood zone?  In the past a bank could lend money with the assurance that the building would be there for 30 years, and if the owner did not pay his monthly interest, the bank could foreclose.  But what if the building is washed away or under water, then what recourse has the bank? 

This is no longer a hypothetical question.  That is why NYC government should not encourage building in the flood zones of NYC. Locating new construction in a flood plain will just increase the problems NYC has for trying to rescue people whose lives and property are threatened by the next hurricane.  Present plans are dependent on a government bailout when hurricanes or high water do damage to buildings.

The developers are willing to take the risk of flooding, because there is actually no risk to them.  Developers never use any of their own money in developing a new project.  The developer borrows the money and sells the residence to an eager buyer who either pays cash or takes out a long term mortgage.  There is no question new condo owners want a river or ocean view.

    

More than 50% of the land of NYC is safe from flooding.  It is there that new buildings should be located. City government should insist that developers build on higher ground and the Mayor’s grandiose plans that are at sea level should be scrapped or built where damage or destruction from flooding is unlikely to happen.    

The present proposed patchwork plan of defenses will not be sufficient to prevent flooding from the rising ocean or from storm surges. There must be a proven plan that can be used to create barriers high enough and strong enough to keep out the ocean and that can be built higher as the sea level rises.  Even such barriers may only give us another hundred years.