In the News: BPCA Board Member Has Lived in New Jersey Since 2011

courtesy owenkeatsbell••• I don’t have an image for any of these items, so here’s a photo of the freezing Hudson River, courtesy @owenkeatsbell.

••• “BPCA board member [Frank Branchini], also appointed by governor to revamp Medicaid in New York, has lived in New Jersey since 2011.” —Broadsheet

••• Diane Harris Brown wrote a letter to Downtown Post NYC detailing the plans for the roof of the new Pier 17, and how they went from a “large public lawn” to something much less public: “the premier boutique entertainment venue in the world.”

••• Anthony Bourdain’s street-food market “will officially be known as the Bourdain Market, WSJ. Magazine reports, and Xi’an Famous Foods will be among its ‘hundreds of options.’ The Bourdain Market, which now also has a Facebook page [the only one I could find—with Facebook’s truly awful search function—is for Anthony Bourdain World Market] and a placeholder website [er, that’s not what I’d call a placeholder site], is still angling for a 2015 opening. A rep for the Parts Unknown host tells Grub Street its site has not yet been chosen.” So maybe not in 3 World Trade Center?

••• The folks at the World Trade Center performing arts center presented to a Community Board 1 committee: There will be “three theaters—150, 350 and 550 seats—that could be combined in different ways to accommodate audiences of up to 1,000.” No architect has been announced yet, and they’re saying the earliest it could open is late 2018. —Tribeca Trib

••• Also: The “project is now known as ‘PAC WTC,’ with PAC pronounced like ‘pack.’ This is less wordy (and less stuff) than ‘The World Center for the Performing Arts,’ but it’s still kind of terrible.” Kind of? “However, they are open to offers to buy the naming rights, so it will probably just get worse from here.” —Curbed

••• In case you missed it: Today’s Seen & Heard mention about a Worth Street reconstruction presentation at tonight’s CB1 Tribeca meeting has been updated—the presentation has been delayed till February.

••• Our soon-to-be neighbor Saks Fifth Avenue is showing everyone how not to handle a bias claim. A transgender employee at a Saks store in Houston says she was harassed and then dismissed; the company’s lawyers initially responded that “that ‘transsexuals are not a protected class’ under the Civil Rights Act.” So that wasn’t great. Now, “in a follow-up statement, the company said that it believed the act protected all people from sexual discrimination—but that the ex-employee was not asserting that in this case. […] The plaintiff had based her case not on sex discrimination but on the issue of gender identity and transgender status, which it said some courts have ruled fall outside Title VII’s mandate. Saks will follow that precedent, the retailer said, ‘unless or until it is modified by the courts or the legislature.'” Here’s an idea: Do what’s morally right, rather than wait for our political system. —New York Times

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