Lower Manhattan is basically one big mass of crying, whining, and uncontrolled public defecation these days — and this is not a New York Post story about Occupy Wall Street. There were 12 percent more babies born in the neighborhood in 2010 than in 2009, giving it the highest birth rate in the borough, DNAInfo reports. The trend is expected to continue, if not accelerate. Below Chambers Street, a full 40 percent of childless households are planning to have kids in the next three years.
Of course, this will lead to insanely competitive preschool and kindergarten admissions in the neighborhood. The area’s kindergartens are already almost full, and that’s before the boomlet even started in earnest. But that means the trend could slow in a few years. “No school seats mean people leave,”Paul Hovitz, chairman of Community Board 1’s Youth and Education Committee, told DNA info. Or there’ll just be more schools opening, perhaps. One’s already slated to open next year, the Peck Slip school, and the demand makes it seem inevitable that others will follow. It seems unlikely that the bankers of Tribeca would embrace DIY preschool coops with quite the same fervor as Park Slope parents.
