March 14th - March 18th, 2011

130 Liberty Trial will be Decided by both Judge and Jury

March 14 – In an unusual move, the manslaughter trial against Mitchel Alvo and the John Galt Corp. and Salvatore DePaola and Jeffrey Melofchik will be heard by a judge and a jury. According to The Wall Street Journal, lawyers for an asbestos-cleanup director and his employer said they want to forgo a jury, while two other defendants would have one in the criminal case arising from the August 2007 blaze, which killed two firefighters. Jury selection is set to start March 21.

9-11 Memorial, 6 Months Before the 10th Anniversary

March 15 – Thousands of construction workers are concentrating their efforts on  "Reflecting Absence," the memorial that honors the victims of Sept. 11 - the two reflecting pools evoking the footprints of the fallen towers. It is set to open the day the nation marks the somber milestone. 9/11 Memorial President Joe Daniels told WNBC TV, the memorial will be a place “to just stop and reflect. Online reservations for the memorial are expected to be available starting this summer.  Chris Ward, Executive Director of the Port Authority, predicted One World Trade Center, which is now 58 stories high, will reach its finished height of 104 stories by September.

Lower Manhattan Will get a New School

March 16 – The Battery Park City Broadsheet Daily reported that Innovate Manhattan will occupy the six classrooms at the  Tweed courthouse for only a year and a new Lower Manhattan elementary school will take over the space in September, 2012. The paper said this site will most likely be the Peck Slip building, near the South Street Seaport, that currently houses a branch of the U.S. Post Office. The DOE has acknowledged for some time that it is negotiating to acquire the rights to build a school there.