••• “After grabbing Governors Island and Brooklyn Bridge Park from the state, Mayor Bloomberg has now set his sights on a new acquisition: Battery Park City. Bloomberg’s office asked Comptroller John Liu earlier this year to study the feasibility of taking over Battery Park City, which is now under the state’s jurisdiction, Liu told reporters at his office Thursday morning. ‘The mayor has sought to regain control of Battery Park City,’ Liu said.” (Downtown Express)

••• The New York Times takes several looks at the Tribeca Film Festival: Critic Stephen Holden on the films that caught his eye; Mike Hale on the Tribeca/ESPN sports-film series; and service info on buying tickets.

••• Also in the New York Times: Ken Johnson reviews a show of work by Freddie Brice at K S Art: “Using wide brushes and mostly black and white house paint on thin pieces of plywood, Freddie Brice made paintings notable for their spontaneity, economy of means and comical, enigmatic imagery. Born in South Carolina in 1920, he moved to Harlem at 9, and he began painting in his early 60s at an art workshop after years of incarceration and psychiatric institutionalization. There is a childlike immediacy and simplicity about his self-taught style, a directness that appeals to eyes trained by Modernist painting. One magical picture is nothing but a white-spotted black snake about to bite its own tail. It seems unlikely that Mr. Brice would have known that this image—the uroboros—is frequently encountered in antique, mystical tomes.”

••• CB1 chair “Julie Menin is pushing the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. to use a recently revealed pot of money to build the performing arts center at the World Trade Center site.” (Downtown Express)

••• “The city may grant at least a partial reprieve to the Brooklyn Banks skate park, which was supposed to close soon for the four-year renovation of the Brooklyn Bridge. ‘We’re working very hard not to have a full closure of the Banks,’ Joannene Kidder, with the city Dept. of Transportation’s division of bridges, told UnderCover this week.” (Downtown Express)

••• The Wall Street Journal‘s Lettie Teague likes Terroir Tribeca; Grub Street has a slideshow.

••• Noreen Doyle, a vice president at the Hudson River Park Trust, wrote a piece for the Villager about how things are shaping up.