SPONSORSHIP OPENINGS continue to be available from the Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership.

Funds raised by corporations, property owners, local businesses and universal brands that participate in the BID's 2009 Sponsorship Program will help implement neighborhood improvement programs and marketing projects.

The program provides sponsors with the opportunity to prominently place corporate logos on a variety of items that will provide high visibility throughout the district: streetlamp banners, trash receptacles, ash urns (new this year), Flatiron maps and shopping guides, and, for the first time, co-sponsorship of a new beautification project along the Park Avenue South malls.

In so doing, sponsors will strengthen brand recognition where it will do the most good, but there's more to the story than that. By helping to raise the funds necessary to improve the quality of life for everyone who lives, works and visits here, sponsors will also display their commitment to the Flatiron district and their pride in being part of it. Funds raised through sponsorship programs help keep the neighborhood cleaner, safer and more attractive for everyone.

As in the past, special sponsorship packages are available, with a couple of changes this year. Sponsorship of a trash receptacle is now available for a new low price of $400 for the life of the litter basket, normally five to seven years.

Prices of the special packages remain the same, but now sponsors get more for their money.

"Silver" packages now include sponsorship of two litter receptacles and three banners; "Gold" packages now include a medium-size ad on the Discover Flatiron map and four banners and a one-year co-sponsorship of a Park Avenue South mall beautification project; "Platinum" packages now include eight banners, a large ad on the map and a full-year co-sponsorship of the Park Avenue South mall project.

For additional information, including pricing of all sponsorship items, please see our 2009 Sponsorship Program Catalog. You may also contact Eric Zaretsky, Director of Marketing, at (212) 741-2323 or via e-mail at ezaretsky@flatironbid.org.

IF YOU HAVE A DEAL FOR US, WE have a deal for you. And it won't cost you a dime.

The Flatiron BID has added a new page to its Web site. It is called "District Deals" and provides an opportunity -- at no cost -- for all neighborhood businesses, organizations and Friends of the Flatiron Partnership Marketing Affiliate Program participants to publicize any special sales or services currently being offered.

The page will be updated twice a month.

For more information and to submit a deal, click here.

Flatiron Joins Facebook

The Flatiron BID is now a member of the Facebook community with the creation of its own organization page.

The Facebook page does not replace the BID's extensive and informative Web site, but it does provide a forum for Facebookers to quickly view neighborhood news, events and photos.

To join the Flatiron BID Facebook page, click here. If you are not a Facebook member and would like to register to join, click here.

Clean Team Profile: Pedro Nieto

Pedro Nieto, a veteran member of the Flatiron Partnership's Clean Team, might look like a very serious fellow, but beneath his sometimes somber façade there is a sly sense of humor and a barely concealed twinkle in the eye.

Ask him what he considers the biggest difference between New York City and his native Guayaquil, the coastal city in Ecuador where he was born and raised, and he answers with the timing of a seasoned stand-up comedian.

"It's too hot down there and it's too cold up here," he says. "Mainly, it's too cold up here."

That's why Nieto prefers to take his vacations in the winter: so he can return to Ecuador and warm up. That isn't the only reason. His wife and eight of his nine children are in Ecuador (one daughter lives in Chicago, where she works for UPS), so there's a family reunion whenever he returns.

Nieto, who will be 66 in May, came to the U.S. in 1998, arriving in New York, where other relatives had already settled. He moved in with his mother, now 88, and a younger sister, and lived with them until recently, when he moved from their Manhattan home to the College Point section of Queens to share an apartment with an older sister. A third sister also lives in Queens.

Almost as soon as Nieto arrived in the States, he was hired by Atlantic Maintenance Corp. and went to work sprucing up the streets on the Lower East Side and then around Union Square, where he became friendly with Adel (Benny) Ben-Brika, the crew supervisor of the Clean Team. After Ben-Brika joined the Flatiron BID at its inception, Nieto was soon to follow.

"He's a hard worker and he's a gentleman," said Scott Kimmins, the BID's Director of Operations, who oversees the Clean Team's activities. "He's also very strong and he's just as dignified."

Nieto is a great fan of the new pedestrian plazas near the Flatiron Building. Not only do they improve the look of the area and make for safer street crossings, he said, but he also enjoys taking his break there, amid the dozens of other workers taking a midday respite from their jobs.

"It makes me feel at home," he said.

Especially when the weather isn't too cold.

Free Walking Tours Hit 100

The Flatiron Partnership's Sunday-morning walking tours, launched back on April 29, 2007, reached a milestone last month, when for the 100th consecutive week visitors were treated to the BID's weekly trip through time.

At precisely 11 a.m. on March 22, guide Frederick Cookinham greeted 27 visitors, including a contingent of students from Wales who were studying geography, and led them on an exploration of Madison Square and environs, touching on the buildings, the characters and the legends that make the district special.

By the time he concluded his talk 90 minutes later, Cookinham had introduced his audience to subjects as diverse as the battle for street-lighting supremacy in New York between Charles F. Brush's arc lights and Thomas Alva Edison's incandescent lights (Edison's was more flattering to ladies) and why the statue of David Glasgow Farragut in Madison Square Park depicts him with an eccentrically buttoned coat (to show that he dressed in haste during the battle of Mobile Bay before issuing his command to "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"). Cookinham also reminded his listeners that during the Civil War, torpedoes referred to tethered mines and not to underwater projectiles.

The tours, which are free and require no reservations, have been one of the district's most popular attractions. All that is asked of visitors is to show up at 11 a.m. at the corner of 23rd Street and Broadway, in front of the statue of a seated William Seward. The first 100 tours have drawn a total of 1,530 visitors from 179 U.S. and Canadian cities, 34 states and 32 nations.

They are conducted by a rotating trio of guides, each of whom is an expert on New York City lore. In addition to Cookinham, who has also conducted tours for the New-York Historical Society and other institutions, the guides are Miriam Berman, the author of "Madison Square: the Park and Its Celebrated Landmarks," and Mike Kaback, a native New Yorker who has guided visitors throughout the city for almost 10 years.

Gracious Home Opens an Annex

Gracious Home, which put down roots in the Flatiron district last October with a 25,000-square-foot home furnishings and housewares store on Sixth Avenue, has opened a hardware and plumbing annex right around the corner, at 45 West 25th Street. The annex has 8,500 square feet of selling space at street level and a similar amount of storage space on a basement level. It opened on Monday, March 23.

Robert Battista, Gracious Homes' Vice President of Operations, said the annex will offer decorative door hardware; a variety of window treatments, including blinds, shades and shutters, plus drapery hardware; decorative plumbing such as sinks, faucets and toilets; and an expanded selection of freestanding bathroom accessories, including cabinets, racks and shelving.

The annex is open from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., Mondays through Saturdays, and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sundays.

Vitamin Shoppe Opens on Sixth Avenue

The Vitamin Shoppe has opened its 27th location in Manhattan at 655 Sixth Avenue, at 21st Street.

The store offers nutritional products ranging from vitamins and minerals to nutritional supplements, herbs, sports nutrition formulas, homeopathic remedies, and health and beauty aids.

The Vitamin Shoppe is open Mondays through Fridays from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. For more information, call (212) 647-7093, or click here.

Tax Assistance at Baruch: Act Now!

With the April 15 deadline for filing income tax returns growing irrepressibly closer, here's a reminder that help is at hand -- if you act quickly.

More than 320 students at Baruch College are standing by to help file your federal and New York State returns at no cost. All have been tested and certified by the Internal Revenue Service as tax preparers and all are qualified to complete federal forms 1040, 1040A and 1040EZ and New York City and State forms IT 150 and IT 201 as well as all accompanying schedules.

No appointments are needed. Tax preparers are handling people on a first-come, first-served basis. They'll be available four days a week through Wednesday, April 15, on the first floor of 151 East 25th Street, the home of Baruch's Library and Technology Building. The hours of operation are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and noon to 7 p.m. on Fridays.

For additional information, call the Tax Help Line at (646) 312-4600 or click here.

City Year New York Deadline: April 15

Young men and women interested in participating in a 10-month City Year New York program in which they function as tutor and mentor to youngsters in underserved schools and communities have until April 15 to submit their applications.

The program is open to applicants from 17 to 24. Those selected will begin their service in September and must be either high school graduates or GED recipients, or agree to work toward high school equivalency while serving. They will work with children in public schools, plan and run after-school programs and coordinate and lead community-service projects. By their example, they will demonstrate the value of community service. A stipend and education award will be provided.

City Year New York was founded in 2003 to tap the spirit of volunteerism in New York's young people. Its headquarters are at 20 West 22nd Street and it is part of the network of City Year, Inc., which originated in Boston in 1988 and was built around the concept of national service by young Americans. Working with schools, corporations and communities, corps members seek to create innovative solutions for some of today's most pressing issues.

For more information and to begin an application online, click here.

'The Park' Debuts in the Park

The Madison Square Park Conservancy has begun its 2009 season of Mad. Sq. Art with Shannon Plumb's "The Park," a series of 12 short films being shown daily from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on four video screens next to the Shake Shack. The installation will be on view through April 23.

Video artist Shannon Plumb herself appears in all the films. Her concept was to spend a year in the park, observing its diverse cast of characters and situations and filming in each season. In her studio in Brooklyn, she then inserted herself into those scenes by donning different "costumes," playing different roles and, in some cases, interacting with herself. She depicts such familiar situations as dealing with other people's incessant cell phone calls to the plight of the urban dog and its walker. From a groundskeeper battling both nature and technology to a hapless production assistant of a nearby movie set, Plumb's characters are immediately recognizable. The films, with sound and music but no dialog, run for about 2 minutes each.

For more information about the Madison Square Park Conservancy, click here.

NYC Capital Access Program Widens

New York City's Capital Access Loan program has been expanded to include more businesses. This program works with selected banks and lenders to provide loans ranging from $5,000 to $250,000 to businesses, with the city guaranteeing up to 40 percent of the loans.

The program is targeted to small businesses with up to 100 employees. A $5 million funding increase now enables the program to help a greater number of businesses, including retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers and even non-profit organizations.

If interested in applying for a small business loan through this newly expanded program, contact the New York City Economic Development Corporation at (212) 619-5000, or click here.

WHEN THE STAFF OF THE NATURAL GOURMET INSTITUTE, A Flatiron district cooking school that emphasizes healthful eating, learned that Michelle Obama was planting a vegetable garden at the White House, they were as pleased as punch. Organic punch, of course.

"I think Mrs. Obama is a very smart woman," said Annemarie Colbin, Chief Executive Officer of the Institute. "She wants to make sure that people eat healthy and nutritious food."

As the first lady's initiative suggests, this is now a time when public interest in cooking is not focused only on celebrity chefs, but also on finding solutions to the problems of heart disease, cancer and the ballooning rates of obesity.

That's precisely what the Natural Gourmet Institute addresses.

Based on the principle that what people eat has a significant effect on their physical, mental and spiritual welfare, the Institute was founded in 1977 by Dr. Colbin, an internationally recognized health educator, author, consultant and speaker. Eight years later, it moved from the Upper West Side to its current home at 48 West 21st Street, where it occupies 4,800 square feet on two floors, a space that includes two teaching kitchens, one professional kitchen and two lecture rooms. All kitchens are outfitted with restaurant-quality appliances. The teaching kitchens include high-tech video systems that provide students with a close-up of whatever technique is being demonstrated.

The formal name of the organization is the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts, and its focus is on what Merle A. Brown, Vice President and Director of Admissions, calls "health-supportive" cuisine. It is a plant-based curriculum with an emphasis on fresh, natural, unprocessed food, organic and local when possible. The program includes fish and organic chicken, but no red meat. It is geared, of course, to demonstrate that healthful food does not have to be bland or boring, but can be mouth-watering and beautifully presented.

A corps of 15 to 20 full-time and part-time faculty members teach at the professional and recreational divisions that make up the school. The professional division, or Chef's Training Program, each year turns out from 160 to 180 men and women who fill all sorts of roles in the food and health industry, becoming chefs, teachers, cookbook writers, caterers, restaurateurs, health spa operators and entrepreneurs. The Chef's Training Program offers full-time and part-time schedules that can last from five months to a year. There are a maximum of 16 students in each class.

At the Institute's recreational division, which is aimed at the general public and the home cook, classes cover subjects that range from Basic Knife Skills and Vegan Chocolate Decadence to Unique Vegetarian Pancakes and The Tantalizing Tomato. The recreational division also offers lectures on health-related topics such as hormone balance, dieting, genetics and the treatment and prevention of cancer and diabetes, as well as talks on more commercial subjects: how to become a successful food writer, for example, or how to write a business plan for a food-related company.

On Friday nights, the school becomes one of the Flatiron district's more unusual dining destinations, when it transforms its kitchens and classrooms into candlelit dining rooms and serves a four-course vegetarian dinner planned and prepared by faculty and students in the Chef's Training Program. The price is $40 and it's BYOB. For reservations, which NGI says should be made at least three weeks in advance, call (212) 645-5170, ext. 0. For additional information about the Institute, click here.

ON THE MORNING THAT HENRI LAMOTHE TURNED 50, HE
decided to observe the occasion by visiting the Flatiron Building. He took with him a magnesium ladder that could stretch 40 feet in the air and a collapsible plastic pool that could hold perhaps two feet of water. He set up his equipment just in front of the Flatiron's "cowcatcher" on 23rd Street, filled the pool, climbed the ladder and, to the astonishment of a crowd of gaping onlookers, launched himself into space like a human cannonball, or what one observer called "a flying squirrel." He arched his back, raised his chin, extended his arms and executed a perfect belly flop into the shallow puddle almost four stories below. Splat! When he got to his feet, his back was still dry.

That stunt took place on April 2, 1954 -- exactly 55 years ago this month -- and LaMothe repeated it at the Flatiron Building every year for the next 20 years. Most stunt divers keep increasing the height of their jumps as they go along, but LaMothe was, as one might suspect, different. He didn't raise the bridge, he lowered the water. As the years rolled by, the level of liquid that received Henri's plummeting body behaved as though it were evaporating. In 1974, when LaMothe was 70, he was diving into a pool just a smidgen more than 12 inches deep.

That was good enough to earn him a place in the Guinness Book of Records, plus a life-size wax mannequin at the Guinness Museum on Hollywood Boulevard, alongside such other oddities as Robert Wadlow (the world's tallest man, 8 feet 11 1/4 inches), Lucia Zarate (the world's smallest woman, 26 inches high and 13 pounds, soaking wet) and Michael Jackson.

Before LaMothe began his birthday splashdowns at the Flatiron Building, he had been a cab driver in his native Chicago, a dancer in Charleston contests, a commercial artist in New York, and a diving clown in water shows around the country, including one run by his boyhood friend Johnny Weissmuller. (Yes, that Johnny Weissmuller.) He appeared on "What's My Line?" in 1958 and was profiled in Sports Illustrated in 1975.

LaMothe's specialty act contributed to more than show business lore. In 1976, when he was 72, he volunteered for testing at General Motors, which, as part of its development of safety features on cars, was trying to determine how much stress the human body could take. Until then, according to The New York Times, an impact of up to 48 G's had been registered on a test subject (48 times that person's body weight). LaMothe executed one of his dives with measuring instruments attached to his body. When GM scientists read the results, they could scarcely believe them. LaMothe had withstood a force on his chest of close to 70 G's.

Henri LaMothe kept his feet on the ground for most of the next 11 years. He died in 1987 at the age of 83. He had suffered only one high-diving injury in his life, reported his wife, Birgit. Once, she said, he hurt his nose.

• The Transformation of NYC's Madison Square (video by Streetfilms)
• amNew York: Flatiron's Fanciful Flight
• Flatiron BID Promotes Neighborhood for Holidays
• Mayor Officially Opens the Plaza
• Mayor Bloomberg and DOT Commissioner Sadik-Khan Unveil New Public Space at Madison Square
• Pedestrian Plazas Already an Attraction
• Time Out New York: Flatiron Walking Tour
• Gotham Gazette: The Flatiron District
• 'Strengthening Communities' Panel Held
• BID Tells Businesses: Yes You 'Can'
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The Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership Business Improvement District, formed in 2006, is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to enhance the area's reputation as one of New York's most vital and exciting neighborhoods. This is undertaken by maintaining a clean and safe environment for those who live, work and visit the area; by spearheading area improvement projects; and by marketing the diverse business and retail options in this vibrant and historic neighborhood.

For more information go to our Web site at www.discoverflatiron.org or e-mail us at info@flatironbid.org.

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