Members of the community have given a strong stamp of approval to the Flatiron Partnership's programs, rating them as major successes.

That is one of the key findings gleaned from the BID's first community survey, in which respondents were asked to comment on various Flatiron Partnership projects launched or contemplated during its first year of operation. The survey was conducted last October and November. Some 495 people responded, ranging from commercial property owners to business owners to residents.

Some of the highlights:

• Of the respondents familiar with the BID's marketing campaign, which includes the online newsletter, Web site, walking tours and map/guide, almost 90 percent rated it "good" or "excellent." A strong interest was voiced in networking events and speaker series.
• Almost 80 percent of respondents knew about the Clean Streets program, with some 72 percent calling it "good" or "excellent."
• Of all the services provided by the BID, street and sidewalk sweeping rated highest in importance, followed by graffiti removal.
• Although fewer respondents knew about the Public Safety program, which was relatively new, the majority of those who were familiar with it rated it "good" or "excellent."
• Hanging planters, landscaping and beautification rated highest among potential neighborhood improvement projects.

Please click here to download the complete survey results.

Businesses looking to create new or enhance existing employee training programs may apply for up to $400,000 in training costs for their workers, providing certain criteria are met. The money is provided by NYC Business Solutions Training Funds, part of the city's Department of Small Business Services, and is designed to develop skills, advance careers and result in greater profitability and productivity.

Pre-applications will be posted online on March 17. Two public information sessions are scheduled for March 31 at 110 William Street, 7th floor. One is from 9:30AM to 11:00AM, the other from 1:30PM to 3:00PM. Pre-applications are due on April 15 and final applications are due May 15.

Funding is available not only for occupational skills, but for training in English, adult literacy and math. To qualify, businesses must be in one of the following sectors: financial services, health care, information and professional services, transportation, food services/accommodation, industrial/manufacturing, retail or construction.

(New York is a vertical city and its stories literally reach to the sky. The Flatiron district is no exception. Hence, the launch of a new series about neighborhood businesses and activities that take place just above ground level. We call them Second Stories. Here's the first.)

It's predawn in the Flatiron district and from an otherwise nondescript building comes the sound of agony: groans and moans and cries and whimpers. Its source is the second floor of 38 West 21st Street, a 6,500-square-foot loft of camouflage netting, hurdles, tires, monkey bars, ropes, ladders and climbing walls. This is Pure Power Boot Camp, a fitness center where the trainers, or "drill instructors," are all former Marines.

Lauren Brenner, the 34-year-old owner, is a former Wall Street trader and Syracuse University tennis star who says her passions in life are "sports, entertainment and business." Four years ago, she put all three together and opened Pure Power, which might be the country's only indoor obstacle course.

"We like to take people out of their comfort zone," Brenner says.

Clients, or "recruits," range from the 20s to the 60s and are grouped into classes, or "platoons," of no more than 16. Hour-long sessions begin at 5:30AM. Men and women have separate changing tents and everyone wears military-type fatigues and T-shirts. Brenner also offers separate "team building" programs to corporations. Pure Power has been so successful that a second facility opened in February in Jericho, Long Island.

"I am," says Brenner, ever the businesswoman, "thinking franchise."

Yoqua Bar, a tiny shop specializing in a large number of items made with frozen yogurt, has opened at 111 East 23rd Street, between Park Avenue South and Lexington Avenue.

Run by Esther Park and her husband, Sang, the shop offers only plain yogurt but dresses it up with an array of fresh fruits and other toppings such as honey and ginger. The yogurt is organic and non-fat. In addition, Yoqua has smoothies, waffles, crepes, parfaits, its own version of tiramisu, edible flower salads with yogurt dressing, soups made with yogurt instead of cream, assorted teas, some from South Korea, and various natural sodas and waters. Yoqua is open seven days a week.

Esther Park says she loves the location because of all the foot traffic on 23rd Street, and the proximity to schools such as her husband's alma mater, Baruch College. She says she's currently scouting for additional sites in Manhattan.

24 Hour Fitness, a health club chain with more than 400 locations, has picked the Flatiron district for its New York debut - and it's partnering in the venture with New York Yankee captain Derek Jeter. The facility, which will be called a 24 Hour Fitness-Derek Jeter gym, is expected to open in late June at 225 Fifth Avenue, at East 26th Street. It will be a full-service, 28,000-square-foot facility. Jeter, an equity partner, will participate in various promotions.

The Yankee shortstop is the latest in a lineup of sports and fitness stars involved with 24 Hour Fitness, including Andre Agassi, Lance Armstrong, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Yao Ming, Shaquille O'Neal and Jackie Chan.

The chain, based in San Ramon, Calif., expects to open two more Jeter-branded clubs in Manhattan this year, one in SoHo and one in the Citicorp building at Lexington Avenue and East 53rd Street. Jeter, now in spring training with the Yankees in Florida, is currently getting in shape on 24 Hour Fitness equipment. He said the chain has outfitted Yankee workout facilities "at spring training, Legends Field, Yankee Stadium, and they're doing the new Yankee Stadium, so I'm familiar with all their equipment."

(This is the first in a series to appear here from time to time, in which we will examine matters of historic or cultural import that have their roots in the Flatiron district.)

The origins of baseball are shrouded in mist, with some historians citing even ancient civilizations as the true birthplace, but this much seems clear: the modern game owes much to a native New Yorker named Alexander Joy Cartwright Jr. who played it within the Flatiron district, on a field just north of the area that became Madison Square Park, and whose refinements shaped it into the version we know today.

Cartwright, cited in 1953 by the U.S. Congress as the founder of the modern game, was born in 1820. He was a bank clerk who became a bookseller when the bank folded. A strapping young fellow, Cartwright was also a volunteer fireman at the Knickerbocker Engine Co. No. 12, at Pearl and Cherry Streets. On late summer afternoons, he and his firehouse buddies would gather in a park at 27th Street and Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue South) when the area was known as the Parade Ground, where they would play a rude version of baseball.

Cartwright formed a team and called it the Knickerbockers - no relation to the basketball team whose home is Madison Square Garden. The Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, the first organized team in baseball history, played against other New York squads, but urbanization forced Cartwright to seek new venues. In 1845, baseball moved across the Hudson to an old cricket grounds in Hoboken, N.J., known as Elysian Fields. There, on Sept. 23, Cartwright composed a list of rules. They included foul lines; three strikes to an out; three outs to an inning; and a square infield with bases at each corner, approximately 90 feet apart. In addition, baserunners could be called out either by being tagged or forced, rather than being hit by a thrown ball.

On June 19, 1846, what is regarded as the first officially recorded baseball game went into the books. Cartwright was the umpire and he enforced a fine of six cents against any player who used foul language. The Knickerbockers met the New York Nine and lost, 23-1. On March 1, 1849, Cartwright did something two of New York's major league baseball teams would do more than a century later. He left for California in search of gold.

The Hugh O'Neill Building, home to one of the great New York City dry goods emporiums more than a century ago, is a story of domes, disappearance and durability.

The massive building, designed by architect Mortimer Merritt, takes up the entire block on Sixth Avenue between 20th and 21st Streets - part of the Ladies' Mile Historic District. When it was completed in 1887, it was distinguished by a pair of gold-colored beehive domes atop circular rooms at its north and south corners. A four-story structure that expanded to five in 1895, the building was made of cast iron, but no one alive today can say precisely what the domes were made of. They were removed not long after World War I and no blueprints or other architectural plans were ever found.

When Elad Properties, the current owners, asked permission to build five duplex penthouses atop the roof as part of a conversion to condominiums, the Landmarks Preservation Commission agreed, providing the domes were reinstalled. Working from old photographs, the architectural firm Cetra/Ruddy constructed modern-day versions of fiberglass-reinforced plastic. The 17-foot-high domes, each weighing about two tons and capped by six-foot finials, were installed in late 2006 and the first residents moved in shortly after.

The restored domes aren't the only clues to the O'Neill Building's history. Corinthian columns on the façade are echoed in the cast-iron columns in the lobby as well as throughout the apartments. The windows are unusually large, for at least two reasons. The original store had no electric lights, making sunlight especially welcome. In addition, O'Neill wanted passengers on the Sixth Avenue El, just outside, to be able to see inside the store as their trains went roaring by.

Hugh O'Neill, whose name remains prominent on the triangular pediment in the center of his building, was born in Belfast in 1843 and arrived in New York when he was 14. He and his brother Henry founded the store on its present site in 1867, gradually buying adjoining lots until the present structure was built 20 years later. He was one of New York's great merchants and when he died in 1902, his funeral was attended by other nearby entrepreneurial legends: Benjamin Altman, Isidor and Nathan Straus of Macy's, the Stern brothers, James McCreery, and Henry Siegel and W.H. Cooper.

The O'Neill store closed in 1907. For the next hundred years, the building's former glory faded, as it housed a succession of light industry and warehouse operations - but it eventually managed to survive and to take part in the rebirth of Sixth Avenue and the Ladies' Mile.

For additional Discover Flatiron stories, visit flatironbid.org/discover.

The Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership sponsors free walking tours every Sunday.

Join our experienced guides on a 90-minute journey through this vibrant neighborhood, viewing some of the City's most notable landmarks, including the New York Life Insurance building, the MetLife Tower, the Appellate Courthouse and the famous Flatiron Building.

Time:
Every Sunday at 11:00AM.

Meeting Place:
The southwest corner of Madison Square Park, at 23rd Street and Broadway, in front of the statue of William Seward.

Recent News Coverage

• Group Confronts Abusers of Area Methadone Clinics
• Brrrsk Winter Walks Through Neighborhood
• BID Launches Homeless Outreach Program
• Making Downtown Friendlier
• Buyers Go Mad.
• Methadone Clients Will Be Told to Dose and Dash
• Methadone Clinics to Keep Closer Watch on Patients
• Drug Clinics to Dismiss Clients Who Get Busted
• Flatiron BID Launches Tree Planting Program
• BID Holds First Annual Meeting
• BID Launches Neighborhood Safety Program
• Annual Meeting Scheduled
• BID Giving Free Walking Tours Through Flatiron District
• BID to Hold Concert to Benefit Homeless
• Local Businesses Head to BID Forums
• BID Unveils New Litter Receptacles
• Clean Team Takes on Snow Removal
• BID Welcomes Citibank to Neighborhood
• BID Makes a Clean Sweep
• Officer Who Cleaned Up Kenmore Named BID's Operations Director
• Long Live the BID
• Jennifer Brown Appointed Executive Director of Flatiron BID
• Manhattan's First New BID in Over Four Years Launched
• New Improvement District Around Madison Square Park
• BID Aims to Clean Up Community
• Flatiron BID Uses Hi-Tech to Track Problem Areas
• Flatiron BID Plans Neighborhood Makeover
• New BID Is Milestone in Flatiron District Revitalization

Press Releases

• Homeless Outreach Program Launched
• BID Conducts First Annual Meeting
• Flatiron BID Launches Public Safety Program
• Discover Flatiron: Free Walking Tours
• Hero Officer Returns to His Beat
• BID Launches Sanitation Program
• Jennifer Brown Appointed Executive Director
• Flatiron Partnership BID Launched

Newsletters

• February 2008
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• December 2007
• November 2007
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• June 2007
• May 2007
• April 2007
• March 2007
• February 2007
• January 2007
• December 2006

Announcements

• Restaurant Week Winter 2008
• Tree Lighting 2007
• Flatiron Holiday 2007
• Flatiron Eats - Fall 2007
• Flatiron Eats - Summer 2007