••• The New York Times looks at the fight over the Department of Sanitation’s plans to build a garbage-truck garage at Spring Street and the West Side Highway. It’s a fairly straightforward recap, with an emphasis on the celebrity wattage fighting the garage (as if only celebrities benefit from the alternative Hudson Rise plan). If you live in Tribeca and haven’t been following this issue, you really should read this article. From top: The Hudson Rise rendering and the Department of Sanitation’s proposed building.

••• Also in the Times: Some landlords are banning smoking in their buildings. Two Related properties,  Tribeca Park and Tribeca Green (both in Battery Park City), are used as examples.

••• At Huffington Post there was an article about (restaurant) Duane Park‘s opera nights, on the first and third Thursdays of the month: “The fun night presents varied young opera singers honing their voice, belting selections from Puccini, Verdi and Mozart. Plucking dinners for a waltz, or sloshing a bit of vino as they capture the crowd of lite listeners who are enjoying a date or group of friends.”

••• Pet-supply store Canis Minor has moved from West Broadway to 106 Reade (Church/West Broadway).

••• “Winter Restaurant Week is from January 25 through February 7. Three-course prix fixe lunches and dinners will again be $24.07 and $35 pre-tax.” (Grub Street)

••• “Community Board 1’s Seaport/Civic Center Committee unanimously approved an advisory resolution on Tuesday night to add the name Frank Durkan Way to Elk St. [Elk runs between Chambers and Reade, east of Broadway.] Frank Durkan was a lawyer best known for defending Irish Americans who were entangled in the conflict in Northern Ireland. […] If approved by the City Council, the Frank Durkan Way sign will be located on the southwest corner of Reade and Elk Sts.” (Downtown Express)

••• “Rome-based Sorgente Group—which closed on more than half of the $190 million Flatiron Building in January, with plans to convert it for hotel use—is currently in talks to purchase a 51 percent stake in the [Woolworth Building], according to the New York Post.” (Downtown Express)