If we haven’t met yet, let’s do that here.

Hello. It’s me, Carl.

I don’t usually write things, because I don’t have arms. But I have been thinking a lot lately, and when you think for several years in the same spot, the thoughts start to pile up.

I like living in Tribeca. It is my favorite place I have ever lived, and I have lived in exactly one place, which makes this easy to say.

From up here, I can see everything. I see people rushing here and there. I see movies getting filmed on our streets. I see tourists taking pictures of our pretty parks and buildings.

Sometimes I feel like I am part of the neighborhood. Like a very quiet, extremely large pigeon.

Today I was looking at the courtyard at Independence Plaza.

It is mostly concrete, and it’s usually empty. People pass through, but nobody ever stays. It feels cold, even in the summer, like a place that was designed to be impressive from above but is not a very pleasant place to be.

I remember when there was supposed to be a water park there.

Not recently. A long time ago. When Independence Plaza was first being built, there was an advertisement with a picture of a bright, cheerful community water park in the middle of the complex. Fountains. Splashing. Families everywhere. It looked very fun and very wet.

I was not here yet, but I like to imagine it.

The water park never came.

The picture existed. The promise existed. The courtyard did not change.

That makes me sad. At least there used to be a school nearby, and I liked seeing the kids play in the courtyard. But the school is gone now, too. I heard the developer did not renew the lease, because there will be a new skyscraper instead.

I also learned that Independence Plaza used to be Mitchell-Lama affordable housing. That means it was built for working people. Now it is mostly market rate, except for some long-time tenants who were clever and organized and negotiated to keep their apartments affordable when everything changed.

From up here, I think that is very brave of them.

So I will keep watching the courtyard. I will keep imagining the water park that only ever existed in a picture. And I will keep hoping that, one day, more of the promises developers make to neighborhoods come true.