Byline: By richard siklos section: Section C; Column 5; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1 Length
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PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1222 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Correction Appended Late Edition - Final
Next weekend that site will open as the Olympic Sculpture Park, a lush panoramic space for public art designed by Weiss/Manfredi Architects that connects downtown Seattle to the water's edge in a series of shifting, subtly choreographed vistas. Founded by the Seattle Art Museum, it features 21 sculptures by renowned artists, most of them recently acquired for the park. Entering from the street through a sleek pavilion, visitors can walk toward an amphitheater with grassy terraces and the valley beyond, where ''Wake'' (2002-3), 10 wavelike steel plates by Richard Serra, evokes the ripples of Puget Sound in the distance. People can roam among the massive plates, which will be incorporated into future dance and theater performances. From there, visitors might stroll across Elliott Avenue on a bridge crowned with Alexander Calder's ''Eagle,'' a 39-foot-tall sculpture from 1974 in bright red painted steel that echoes the industrial cranes on the water. This $85 million park and another much-heralded project -- an $86 million expansion of the Seattle Art Museum that is to open in May -- are byproducts of a local explosion of wealth that has seeded major private collections and a growing passion for the arts. Virginia Wright, who with her husband, the financier Bagley Wright, has been at the forefront of collecting contemporary art in Seattle and has served on the museum's board since 1959, credits the change in the art climate to locally based entrepreneurial companies. ''There wasn't much going on until the 1980s and 1990s,'' she said. ''It's companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks in such a big way -- not just for the people directly involved but all the others who invested in them. That made us all have more money to spend on art.'' Jon Shirley, chairman of the museum's board, came to Seattle in 1983 and worked at Microsoft for seven years as president and chief operating officer. After he retired in 1990, he and his wife, Mary, became museum patrons and aggressive collectors of postwar art. As the Wrights and the Shirleys acquired substantial holdings in outdoor sculpture, they lamented the lack of a site where they might be displayed if bequeathed to the city. In 1996 they met with Mimi Gardner Gates, the director of the Seattle Art Museum, to raise the possibility of a sculpture park. (Ms. Gates, formerly the director of the Yale University Art Gallery, has led the museum since 1994 and is married to William H. Gates Sr., father of Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft.) Ms. Gates was already considering strategies for keeping important collections in the city by raising her museum's profile and expanding its exhibition space. ''People aren't going to give art to a museum if they think it's going to remain in the basement,'' she said. On a fly-fishing trip in Mongolia in late 1996, she ended up chatting with Martha Wyckoff, a board member of the Trust for Public Land in Seattle. Ms. Wyckoff talked of her desire for more parks in the city, and Ms. Gates expressed her regret that there was little space for outdoor sculpture in Seattle. After returning home, Ms. Gates said, Ms. Wyckoff asked Chris Rogers, a trust official, to help the museum scout for available land. When the waterfront site came to their attention, negotiations between the fuel company and developers who hoped to build condos there were well under way. ''We stepped in and said we've got a better idea for this,'' said Mr. Rogers, who was later named project manager for the Olympic Sculpture Park. Turning a brownfield into a green space appealed to many constituencies in this environmentally conscious city, so the company gave the museum six months to raise $17 million to buy the property. The Shirleys stepped forward with $5 million toward the purchase and said they would endow the park's operations with $20 million if the museum could raise the rest of the money for the land. ''That meant it would be free to the public and not have a negative impact'' on the museum, Ms. Gates said, given that maintenance would not be a financial burden. ''It was a huge carrot, and we just started running.'' While the bulk of the money was raised through major gifts from board members, including the Wrights, the museum was still short of its total as the six-month deadline neared. It widened the net by canvassing apartment buildings near the proposed park and supporters of environmental causes. Ultimately the board folded fund-raising for the park and the museum addition into one $180 million capital campaign. To date $173 million has been raised, a record for a Northwest cultural institution. Of the 6,500 donors, nearly half had never contributed to the museum before. After buying the site in 1999, the museum held an international design competition in which 52 architectural teams took part before Weiss/Manfredi's design was selected. With its zigzagging path, the park frames shifting views of the port in one direction and of the skyline and Olympic mountains in another. ''There was an insanity to this brownfield site,'' said the architect Marion Weiss, noting that the environmental cleanup was incomplete at the outset, and that the property was divided by the highway and the train line. ''But the dynamics of crossing the highway and the train tracks make it spectacular too,'' she said. ''So we started to think of how you could slow down this city. The Z-shaped path brings into focus the radically different views and amazing environment.'' Her partner, Michael Manfredi, recalls standing by the train tracks during the construction process with Mr. Shirley, who bought Calder's ''Eagle'' for the park. (The Wrights also donated sculptures by Mark di Suvero, Tony Smith, Ellsworth Kelly, Roxy Paine and Anthony Caro.) ''The train rolled by, and it was the exact color of the Calder,'' Mr. Manfredi said. ''We knew the trains would be part of the park, but we could not have asked for better serendipity.'' Past the bridge on which the ''Eagle'' is perched, visitors can stroll alongside the meadows with monumental works by Claes Oldenburg and Mr. di Suvero and an aspen grove enclosing ''Stinger,'' a fortresslike black steel piece by Tony Smith, and five of his ''Wandering Rocks.'' Then it's over the railroad via a bridge with a laminated glass overhang by Teresita Fernandez that filters the skyline through a design of colored Benday dots. The path ends at the beach, near a fountain with figures of a father and son commissioned from Louise Bourgeois. In time the sculpture acquisitions will be supplemented by temporary installations. The park's potential effect on surrounding Belltown, the city's fastest-growing residential section, was palpable even before ground was broken. ''If you stand in the park and look around the perimeter, it's all new housing that wasn't there when we bought that property,'' Ms. Wright said. Peter Steinbrueck, chairman of the Seattle City Council's urban development and planning committee, secured passage last summer of a so-called livability plan for the downtown area that promotes residential growth with a campaign to contain urban sprawl and cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. The sculpture park ''will contribute to our goals not just for the cultural life but also the livability of our urban core,'' Mr. Steinbrueck said. The juvenile salmon population could also benefit. A 2001 earthquake caused damage to the seawall along the future park's edge. The damage was one of several delays in the park's completion, including a strike by concrete workers last summer. The museum recruited engineers and aquatic scientists to buttress it with stepped terraces that also restored the habitat for migrating salmon on the shoreline. The price tag was $5.5 million, financed largely by the federal Fish and Wildlife Service and Washington State's Department of Transportation. The Seattle Art Museum's expansion, designed by Allied Works Architecture, also involved collaborative thinking. In 2001, two years into the sculpture park project, the financial services company Washington Mutual, whose headquarters was across the street from the museum, approached Ms. Gates about building a new headquarters on the block owned by the museum and developing an additional building that could be used by both. ''It was an opportunity that presented itself, and we seized it,'' Ms. Gates said. She knew from a master plan the museum had commissioned that its existing 1991 building, designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, would need an additional 300,000 square feet within the next 20 years. But she would not have considered embarking on an expansion for at least another decade, she said, if not for the bank's proposal. By selling part of the block to Washington Mutual for $18 million, the museum was able to raise cash for its expansion. The new, jointly developed building, designed by Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture, rises 12 stories, abutting both the museum and Washington Mutual's new headquarters. The first four floors are gallery spaces that connect seamlessly to the Venturi museum building; the top eight floors are temporary offices leased by the bank that will open into the Washington Mutual headquarters, already completed. In 10 years the museum will have the option to take over four more floors. (All are equipped with climate-control systems.) In 25 years it will take control of the entire building. ''We worked out a way that the museum could afford it and grow incrementally,'' Ms. Gates said. Capitalizing on the new space, she plans an acquisition drive timed to the museum's 75th anniversary next year. She said she likes the idea of keeping Washington Mutual, the largest employer in downtown Seattle, close by rather than see it leave for a suburban mall. John Walsh, a former director of the J. Paul Getty Museum who lectures at Yale on the architectural history of art museums, said that few museums have a building history quite as interesting as Seattle's. The museum opened in 1933 in Volunteer Park in a building now housing the Seattle Asian Art Museum, which is also under Ms. Gates's directorship. ''It was the classic American model of a pavilion in a park, up and away from the commercial metropolis and the bars'' of downtown Seattle at that time, Mr. Walsh said. The museum's move downtown in 1991 was considered controversial because of the area's seediness. Today Lusty Lady, a bar just across the street from the museum, is one of the few remaining relics amid all the Starbucks and art galleries. ''The museum had to wait a while for the city to really build up around it,'' Mr. Walsh said. The Seattle Symphony built Benaroya Hall a block away in 2002, and in 2004, Rem Koolhaas's much-lauded public library opened nearby. For some, it's hard to imagine that this bustling area was a ghost town by night 15 years ago. ''The significance for the city of these projects exceeds anything I thought of at the outset,'' Ms. Gates said. She credited the museum's collaboration with environmentalists including the Cascade Land Conservancy, whose goals include fostering Northwestern cities that are compact, densely populated and, Ms. Gates said, ''are places where people want to live.'' In a city whose entrepreneurs profess that the survival of salmon is as important as economic revitalization or the arts, it seems natural that the park, the museum and downtown development are so closely intertwined.
The credits on Jan. 14 for two pictures with an article about the new Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle were reversed. A photograph of the park at night was by Benjamin Benschneider, and a photograph of Alexander Calder's ''Eagle'' was by Paul Macapia. GRAPHIC: Photos: Richard Serra's ''Wake,'' a series of 10 steel plates that stretch to 125 feet, are the biggest permanent installations in the park. (Photo by Nic Lehoux) The 8.5-acre park was a former industrial site, sliced by a major street artery and an active railroad. (Photo by Dan Crowell/Soundview Aerial) The pavilion, an entrance point for visitors. (Photo by Benjamin Benschneider)(pg. 24) The new Olympic Sculpture Park in downtown Seattle is a showcase for outdoor art and provides the visitor a series of choreographed vistas: the skyline in one direction and the waterfront in another. (Photo by Paul Warchol) Above, the Olympic Sculpture Park at night at left, Alexander Calder's 39-foot-tall ''Eagle'' is perch on a bridge. (Photo by Benjamin Benschneider) (Photo by Paul Macapia)(pg. 25) PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1223 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final Manhattan Wildcatters BYLINE: By DAVID SHAFTEL SECTION: Section 14; Column 1; The City Weekly Desk; NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: NEW YORK UP CLOSE; Pg. 10 LENGTH: 712 words ON an early January morning at the loading dock behind the Whole Foods Market in Union Square, a pristine vacuum truck with a shiny 2,000-gallon tank was double-parked near some weathered delivery trucks. But despite the truck's sparkle, it was engaged in some dirty work. The vehicle is the first in a planned fleet of pump trucks owned by Tri-State Biodiesel, a nascent city-based company that describes itself as the first to conduct large-scale collections of restaurant grease and other waste oils for making cleaner-burning biodiesel fuel. The truck driver inserted a long green hose into the two waiting 55-gallon drums and proceeded to make short work of their contents -- a viscous fluid, the color of a nut brown ale with the tang of Asian spices -- sucking it all up in under a minute. Tri-State Biodiesel is the brainchild of Brent Baker, an environmental activist and entrepreneur. With biodiesel catching on in other parts of the country -- there are soybean fields in Iowa dedicated to its production, and even biodiesel truck stops in Texas -- Mr. Baker began to wonder how he could bring the trend home to New York. Mr. Baker, 36, who sports a soul patch and a T-shirt emblazoned with a box of French fries and the word ''fuel,'' runs Tri-State Biodiesel out of an East Village walk-up apartment, his office wall decorated with the kind of hippie-style tapestry favored in some dorm rooms. Before setting up Tri-State Biodiesel, Mr. Baker toured the country in a grease-powered school bus, educating people on alternative energy sources. With more than 20,000 restaurants in the city, Mr. Baker's business model is simple: collect used fryer grease for free, and take it to a rendering plant where it is converted to biodiesel, to be sold back to consumers. The idea, said Mr. Baker, is to make things as easy as possible for the restaurant owners. ''A lot of them genuinely want to do the right thing for the environment,'' he said. ''So we give them the option of making that choice in a way that doesn't hurt them economically.'' Businesses are enthusiastic about the idea; Mr. Baker said he is collecting from about 100 restaurants and other establishments so far, all of them in the city. Used fryer grease is considered a nuisance product and restaurants typically must pay a carting service to remove it. They are often tempted to dispose of it in cheaper ways that may have detrimental effects on the environment. Some dump the grease down the drain, where it can clog pipes or burst them when it freezes. Some leave canisters of used oil in sidewalk trash cans, for city dump trucks to pick up, and some pay homeless people or odd-job men to dispose of it, no questions asked. Biodiesel is made from refining vegetable oils or animal fats, and is usually mixed with petroleum diesel to form a cleaner-burning fuel that can be used in most diesel engines. With New York's many diesel-powered delivery and construction vehicles, there is a big market for the fuel, as well as the chance to improve the city's environment and its inhabitants' health, Mr. Baker says. With support from the city and private investors, two-year-old Tri-State made its first grease pickup just before Christmas. Aaron Hoffman, owner of Wogies, a West Village sanctuary for expatriate Philadelphia sports fans, is one of the places that have signed on with Tri-State, and none too soon: He expects to deep-fry nearly 5,000 chicken wings on Super Bowl Sunday. ''The oil has to go somewhere,'' Mr. Hoffman said, pointing to 35-pound canisters of used soybean oil. ''And if everyone did this, it would be great for the environment.'' Another Tri-State client, Whole Foods, has proved a coup for Mr. Baker, who collects the waste oils from the food preparation operations for the chain's three New York outlets. Jennifer McDonnell, Whole Foods's environmental specialist for the region, who signed the deal with Tri-State, said she had an environmentalist colleague in Northern California -- the epicenter of environmental activism -- who was constantly teasing her for lagging behind in spreading the green message. ''I'm always like, 'Buddy, this is New York,' '' Ms. McDonnell said. ''The culture out here is so different. This was a huge win for me.'' URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: BIOFUELS (95%); ALTERNATIVE FUEL VEHICLES (90%); AUTOMOTIVE FUELS (89%); RESTAURANTS (89%); MOTOR VEHICLES (78%); ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT (76%); BIOMASS (75%); AGRICULTURAL WASTES (75%); ENVIRONMENTALISM (74%); OILS & FATS (70%); ANIMAL SLAUGHTERING & PROCESSING (70%); ENVIRONMENT & NATURAL RESOURCES (72%); SCHOOL TRANSPORTATION (71%) Waste Materials and Disposal; Recycling of Waste Materials; Oils and Fats; Biofuels COMPANY: WHOLE FOODS MARKET INC (58%) ORGANIZATION: Tri-State Biodiesel (Co) TICKER: WFMI (NASDAQ) (58%); WFMI (LSE) (58%) INDUSTRY: NAICS445110 SUPERMARKETS AND OTHER GROCERY (EXCEPT CONVENIENCE) STORES (58%); SIC5411 GROCERY STORES (58%); NAICS445110 SUPERMARKETS & OTHER GROCERY (EXCEPT CONVENIENCE) STORES (58%) PERSON: Brent Baker; David Shaftel GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (93%) NEW YORK, USA (93%) UNITED STATES (93%) New York City LOAD-DATE: January 14, 2007 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: Photo: A worker collected restaurant grease for making ''green'' fuel. (Photo by Ruth Fremson/The New York Times) PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1224 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final Anytown, Online BYLINE: By BOB TEDESCHI SECTION: Section 14NJ; Column 1; New Jersey Weekly Desk; Pg. 3 LENGTH: 1074 words BEFORE the days of the printing press, town squares served as the main forum for exchanging community news and gossip. Now comes the virtual town square. Across the United States, citizen bloggers and deep-pocketed entrepreneurs are creating town-specific, and even neighborhood-specific, Web sites where the public can read and contribute items too small or too fleeting for weekly newspapers. Suburban towns across the greater New York area are joining in, giving residents a new way to avoid traffic snags, find a lost dog or just vent about a local hot-button issue. ''It replaces the guy from 200 years ago who rang the bell in town,'' said Chris Marengo, a lawyer in Pleasantville, N.Y., who visits www.Pleasantville.AmericanTowns.com every few days to stay abreast of local events. ''It's as provincial as it gets.'' Mr. Marengo lost his girlfriend's miniature schnauzer, Chip, in a September rainstorm, and posted news about it on the Pleasantville site. Within 24 hours, he had heard from two people who had seen the dog. Ultimately Chip was corralled by someone who had seen a ''missing dog'' flier on a telephone pole. ''But the site definitely got the word around,'' Mr. Marengo said. Pleasantville is one of thousands of municipalities on the AmericanTowns service, which is based in Fairfield, Conn. Like other community-oriented sites, AmericanTowns offers users the chance to post information free, to bolster postings by site editors. Jim Maglione, the company's co-president, said the Pleasantville site is like those of Huntington, N.Y., and Wilton, Conn., in that the information on the site is almost entirely from users. In addition to listing information about lost pets, users post scheduled meetings of religious and community organizations, suggestions for family activities and links to news from local papers, among other things. Community organizations can also create their own Web pages on the site for free. In December, Mr. Maglione said, AmericanTowns vastly expanded the number of communities it serves, to cover about half of the country's municipalities, and next month he expects to begin allowing users to post photos. With that feature, Mr. Maglione said, he expects more users to post breaking news items along the lines of those featured on WestportNow.com, which has gained national attention in the emerging realm of so-called citizen journalism. That site, founded in 2003 by Gordon F. Joseloff, a veteran journalist who is now Westport's first selectman, is more concerned with covering town events than with offering a community calendar or service postings. Mr. Joseloff, who stepped back from his duties as chief writer for the Web site when he was elected to his post in Westport in 2005, said he created the site ''because the town wasn't being covered in real time.'' ''We'd like people to hear sirens or see traffic jams and go to WestportNow to see what happened,'' Mr. Joseloff said. ''Before this, there was a lot that happened in Westport that didn't see the light of day.'' The site is a more of a news organization than most town-specific sites in that it employs a full-time professional journalist, Jennifer Connic, who used to cover Westport as a newspaper reporter for The Hour of Norwalk. In addition to writing for the Web site and taking photographs, she edits articles and photos contributed by readers. Alongside features about the best trick-or-treating neighborhoods, the site offers breaking news about accidents, power failures and police reports shortly after they happen, and items about home and building teardowns before they happen. Such a hard-news bent puts Mr. Joseloff in a tricky ethical position, since he signs Ms. Connic's paychecks, and she covers his actions as town leader. ''By the Society of Professional Journalists' rules am I in conflict of interest?'' Mr. Joseloff asked. ''I plead guilty, but it's a service to the town, and I'll let the readers judge whether it's objective.'' Readership is growing, he said, with between 5,000 and 7,000 visitors clicking on the site daily. Advertising revenues are also increasing, he said. Although the site still loses money, Mr. Joseloff said he hoped to develop similar sites elsewhere in Fairfield County. Another high-profile regional entry in what is also called the hyperlocal journalism movement is Baristanet (www.baristanetnj.com), which focuses mostly on Montclair, N.J. The site, which has operated since early 2004, is unlike WestportNow in that roughly 75 percent of its contributions come from readers. According to Liz George, a co-owner of the site, Baristanet can attract more than 10,000 visitors on peak days, like the day when the site posted pictures and breaking news of a high-speed police chase through Montclair, Glen Ridge and Bloomfield in November. ''There's a hunger for people wanting to know what's going on, and that's not being met by the local paper,'' Ms. George said. ''The paper has a site, but it's not updated as frequently, and it's not as interactive. We publish stories, and all the readers can comment.'' Indeed, Ms. George said some of the more compelling information on the site can come from the running dialogue that often accompanies controversial articles. At times those comments are sprinkled with profanity, she said. ''Some people are annoyed by that, but there are a lot of people who come to the site because it can get nasty at times,'' she said. ''It's like reality TV.'' Like reality TV, the site sometimes shines an uncomfortably close spotlight on its subjects -- in this case, issues that may not make the local newspaper. For instance, Ms. George said the site wrote last fall about referees ''being abused by soccer parents.'' ''Normally you'd talk about it with a girlfriend at the coffee shop, but someone sent it to us because they knew we'd publish it,'' Ms. George added. ''It makes people a little wary, I think. It keeps people honest.'' For Martta Rose, a public relations executive from Verona, N.J., who has read Baristanet since 2004, the site is both an outlet for her own conservative commentary and a source of important community information. Last fall, Ms. Rose was at work in Manhattan when she clicked to Baristanet and found news about a traffic jam in northern New Jersey. ''I took a later bus, and the problem was cleared up by that time,'' Ms. Rose said. ''And I got to work a little longer.'' Directory: ~hesterj -> Entrepreneur Entrepreneur -> Byline: By armand limnande section: Section mm; Column 0; T: Men's Fashion Magazine; Pg. 76 Length Download 4.36 Mb. Share with your friends:
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