Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll find out about the fence that some local officials say interferes with the view of the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park. We’ll also get details on new delays in Luigi Mangione’s state and federal trials.
Paula Recart said it was like looking at the Statue of Liberty from the wrong side of a jail fence.
Recart, the president of the Battery Conservancy, the nonprofit group that manages the 25-acre park facing New York Harbor, was talking about fencing that stands between parkgoers and passengers boarding the ferry to the Statue of Liberty.
She said the fencing was too tall. People taking photographs of the statue have to focus through the fencing, or hold their phones or cameras above it — if they can reach that high.
The fencing is also too long, stretching across more of the waterfront promenade than it needs to, she said.
Recart said the fencing went up last month, dampening what she had hoped would be a moment to celebrate, the completion of the first phase of a two-year project to rebuild the deteriorating wharf and protect the Battery against rising water levels and storm surges. From 2023 until a few months ago, construction crews worked on a section of the dock and the promenade close to the Castle Clinton National Monument, and Statue of Liberty-bound passengers went through a screening facility closer to the carousel in the park. For the second phase, the screening and boarding operation traded places with the construction crews.
The fencing came as a surprise to Recart and other local officials. “There was never any discussion or any indication or hint of that,” said Tammy Meltzer, the chair of Community Board 1, whose territory includes Battery Park.
“No one’s saying they shouldn’t have security,” she added. She said she had gone on a walk-through in which officials said the fencing created a buffer zone to prevent someone in the park from handing something to a ferry passenger who had already been screened. But she took issue with fencing off so much space when the ferries use only one or two slips on most days.
She also said that the fencing was “not equitable.” “If you didn’t pay to go out to the Statue of Liberty, you cannot see it from here,” she said. “Tourists pay a lot of money to come to New York. If they want to see the statue, they should be able to see the statue from the island of Manhattan. They shouldn’t be looking through fences.”
A spokesman for the United States Park Police called the fencing “a critical security element protecting the monument and the millions who visit it each year.”
“Removing the fencing would expose ferry operations to unnecessary risk for the sake of a better view,” he added. “Safety is our expertise and our only priority.”
The city’s Parks Department says it is continuing discussions with the agencies involved to find an approach that accommodates security needs and preserves public access to the waterfront.
Recart and her staff have drawn up an alternative plan that would involving removing some of the fencing from about 100 feet of the park and taking another section down after the last ferry of the day departs — at this time of the year, around 3:30 p.m. Representative Dan Goldman, a Democrat whose district includes Lower Manhattan, said by email that he had met with officials from the National Park Service and the Park Police last week and was “pushing” them to use “an alternative solution that I have shared with them.”
The Park Police spokesman said that a portion of the fencing is “opened to allow park visitors direct access to the waterfront.” Statue City Cruises, which operates the ferries, said that the fencing remains in place at the end of the day at the direction of the Park Service and the Park Police.
Recart said that she had been planning a community party celebrating the end of the first phase of the construction project. She even had a theme in mind: “The view is back.” But, she said, “We could not call it that, because the view is not back.”
She said on Wednesday that she had just gone on a walk-through with Parks Department officials who wanted to plan a ribbon cutting to mark the end of the first phase.
“There’s no point in a ribbon cutting,” she said with a sigh. “There’s nothing to celebrate until we solve the fencing issue.”
Weather
Expect cloudy skies, possible showers and a drop in temperature to near 49. Cloudy conditions will continue tonight with a low around 44 and a chance of rain.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
Suspended (Holy Thursday, Passover).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We obviously still have a lot of work to do.” — Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the Democratic majority leader of the State Senate, about the state budget, which is now overdue. (The official deadline was yesterday.)
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Opposing aid to Israel: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that she would oppose all U.S. military aid to Israel, including funding for defensive systems, a shift that underscores how opposition to the Israeli government has grown among some wings of the Democratic Party since the start of the war in Gaza.
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Health care fraud charges: Federal prosecutors charged Zhan Petrosyants, a longtime associate of Eric Adams, in a complex fraud and money-laundering scheme related to phony health care claims stemming from car crashes.
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An ingenious ruse by detectives: A diner meet-up — and used straws — helped detectives identify the person who, in 1999, murdered Minerliz Soria, a 13-year-old girl from the Bronx.
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Mangione’s trials are delayed
Luigi Mangione’s murder trial won’t begin until September, a state judge decided, announcing the delay several hours after a federal judge had decided that Mangione’s federal trial would begin in October, a month later than originally scheduled — but three months earlier than Mangione’s lawyers had wanted.
The back-to-back announcements were the latest episode highlighting what Mangione’s lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, has called “a tug of war between two different prosecution offices.”
On Wednesday the judge overseeing the state trial, Justice Gregory Carro of State Supreme Court, said that the murder trial would no longer start in June. Judge Margaret Garrett had moved the trial date in the federal proceeding to January even as she left open the possibility of additional changes in timing.
The challenges in bringing Mangione’s case to trial were present almost from the beginning. The police spent nearly five days searching for the person who shot and killed Brian Thompson, a health care executive, outside a hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Officers arrested Mangione as he sat eating breakfast and browsing on a laptop in Altoona, Pa.
Mangione was charged by the Manhattan district attorney’s office with 11 counts, including murder and terrorism. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged him on four counts, including one that carried a potential death penalty if the government decided to seek it.
The judge in the state case later dismissed the terrorism charge, calling the evidence behind the two terrorism counts “legally insufficient.” As for the federal case, Judge Garrett has dismissed two of the charges against Mangione, including the death-penalty count. He now faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Murder cases are typically prosecuted in state courts. But federal prosecutors said that Mangione had crossed state lines to stalk and ultimately kill Thompson, giving the federal government jurisdiction to prosecute him. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to the charges in both proceedings.
METROPOLITAN diary
Clanging away
Dear Diary:
I was the super of a building on West 25th Street that had a huge rooftop patio where I placed the kinetic noise sculptures I was beginning to create. They clanged away whenever the wind blew hard enough to make them spin.
Across the street were some lofts whose owners I did not know but whom I occasionally saw through their windows. I wondered if they could hear my noise machines.
When I was moving out of the city a few years later, I happened to meet one of the loft occupants on the street. I asked whether they had ever heard any racket coming from across the street.
Yes, this person replied, lots of it. Was that you?
— Anthony Howe
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
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