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History of Tribeca Buildings
In the News: Strolling Canal Street
STROLLING CANAL STREET
The Times covers the length of Canal Street from east to west to show you — if you don’t already know — what’s there in images, text and video. “Canal’s identity is tied up with timeless entropy, untidy humanness and disarranged beauty, reflecting the city around it. Over the centuries, it has gone through many iterations. As it’s once more on the brink of change, what can one street still show us?”
STOP THE CHOP AND THE WESTSIDE HELIPORT
The Broadsheet covers the continuing annoyance that is helicopters over Downtown via a CB1 meeting on the issue: “Stop the Chop board member Kenneth Lay contended that flights to and from the West 30th Street Heliport (located in Hudson River Park) that are not related to government, military, law enforcement, media, or lifesaving operations should be drastically curtailed. ‘We term non-essential helicopters those that are commuter, charter, and sightseeing flights.'”
FIGHTING THE ILLEGAL VENDORS ON CANAL
The Post did a story about the counterfeit vendors on Canal, quoting Wellington Chen, executive director of the Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation: “On certain streets you cannot even pass by,” he said. “You have to wait for people to squeeze by. It’s a game of cat and mouse. You put pressure on one corner and they move down to the other corner, and the next morning they’re back.”
BLAMING RENTS ON BROKERAGE
Gothamist has a story about two Tribeca tenants who have accused the rental giant Compass of monopolizing Manhattan rentals and hiding listings from public-facing platforms like StreetEasy.
COMMERCIAL SPACES FILLING UP DOWNTOWN
Curbed has a story on the “Return-to-Office Boom” with the following stats: “Downtown, most of the new World Trade Center buildings are 90 percent occupied, according to the Savills broker Azovtsev, driving rents up. “At 4 World Trade Center, asking rents were under $90 per square foot eight months ago. They’re now $120. At 7 World Trade Center, rents are $115–$130 per square foot. We haven’t seen rents like that ever.” One World Trade Center, which is 97 percent leased, has competing offers for the limited space that’s still available, according to a spokesperson for the Durst Organization.”
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The Canal Street article is behind the NY Times paywall, so I could not read it. But in the flash that came up before the payment demand, I saw the word “symphony”. This is no symphony I would want to hear. I happened to walk most of the length of Canal Street yesterday, since it was raining, which rain kept the junk sellers away so the sidewalks were relatively passable.
“Beauty” is the last word I’d use to describe Canal Street, though!
You’re better off reading about why the counterfeit vendors persist.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/canal-street-fake-counterfeit-bags-vendors
The Gothamist article about compass is very dumb. StreetEasy charges agents to post listings there, so it’s not as if it’s a free public service website. StreetEasy is owned by Zillow.
Walk Canal Street end to end, and celebrate it. Find me another street like it anywhere in the world: a crowded crossroads of every accent and appetite, never still.
The only way forward is to organize a petition and protest ( think France) to force the elected officials especially Mamdani to publicly acknowledge this ongoing problem. Complaints have gone unanswered and cat and mouse raids are a waste of resources. Our quality of life can’t wait any more. These vendors are trashing our streets with impunity. It’s a mystery why they can do this for by now six years.
Whoever tries to paint the picture of Canal Street always being a hub of ‘informal economy’ and therefore should keep this going is irresponsible and uninformed.
Lispenard St community did organize a petition recently. As far as I know it had no effect. https://tribecacitizen.com/2025/06/11/a-petition-to-address-the-counterfeit-vendors-on-broadway-lispenard/
People are apparently afraid to protest or even report the counterfeit bazaar for fear of being called elitist, racist, anti-immigrant, etc. Where obviously being against this rampant criminality and chaos does not entail any of those things. But that’s how it will be interpreted.
Even the galleries who have this filthy bazaar set up right in front of their doors — which surely must affect their business, no? — are afraid to admit reporting it, because they immediately get “criticism” because the vendors are “immigrants under threat”.
https://tribecacitizen.com/2026/05/19/in-the-news-chambers-among-the-100-best-restaurants/
What would happen is that a mass of protestors (assumed none of them live in this neighborhood) would go out and protest the gallery instead and vilify it on social media and try to “cancel” it.
Shocking fact: Someone can be pro-immigration, and yet believe immigrants are not above the law.