TEXT BY SCOTT STIFFLER, PHOTOS BY PAMELA WOLFF | July 28 was a date of notable firsts for Manhattan Community Board 4 (CB4), whose full board meeting—normally held on the first Wednesday of the month—observed its annual summertime ritual of bundling the July/August meetings. So expansive was the 53-Item agenda, CB4 gladly accepted the gracious bowing out of reports from local electeds and their representatives, a regular feature of full board meetings unobserved this time around, to help trim the evening’s length (which, all told, clocked in at just over 2 1/2 hours–a robust runtime, as these things go).

The meeting was the first face-to-face gathering of the full board since March 2020, when COVID-19 compelled them to cancel all brick and mortar events, and take their proceedings to Zoom. Out of that necessity came this write-up’s first chance to use our favorite phrase, click here. Doing so takes you to CB4’s YouTube channel, where you can access archived full board and committee meetings that have taken place since the pivot to Zoom. To view the July 28 full board meeting, click here.. July 26 was a live stream broadcast, via their YouTube channel. CB4 is currently working to make all of their meetings accessible on the web. (Click here to find out about upcoming committee meetings).

One final item of note from Wednesday night: It was the first CB4 meeting to be held at Hudson Guild’s freshly renovated Fulton Center (119 Ninth Ave., btw. W. 17th & 18th Sts.), whose Fulton Center Auditorium, now significantly spiffied up, was the setting for many, many CB4 gatherings in the pre-pandemic world.

Renovation work has been going on for years, as noted in the photo and caption above, culled from a Sept. 19, 2017 entry on the Hudson Guild website. To access that entry, click here.  All below photos, taken at the July 28 meeting come to us courtesy of CB4 public member Pamela Wolff—and if you think we’ve got another “click here” left in us this late in the game, you’re absolutely… correct! Click here.

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