Why Not Ask CB 1 About Centre Street?*

Can somebody please help Jerry Orbach’s widow honor the man? Because apparently Community Board 5 is all, like, “principled” or something:

It is a tribute that has been paid to Peter Jennings, Humphrey Bogart, Joey Ramone, even Señor Wences. But getting a Manhattan street corner named for Jerry Orbach, former star of stage and screen and consummate New Yorker, will be no open-and-shut case.

Mr. Orbach may have been nominated three times for Tony Awards as a song-and-dance man on Broadway and he may have owned the role of the cynical New York City detective as Lennie Briscoe on “Law & Order.” But he still may not make the cut to have his name placed on a street sign in Midtown.

Mr. Orbach’s widow, Elaine, is learning that having a city block or a corner renamed for somebody is not as simple as the jumble of honorary signs might suggest. As in so many other matters of real estate, location may be the deciding factor.

Her target is 53rd Street and Eighth Avenue, where she and her late husband lived for 25 years before he died in December 2004 at age 69. “This was his neighborhood,” Mrs. Orbach said in an interview.

But that intersection is on the western edge of the territory overseen by Community Board 5, a group that routinely rejects such requests on principle. The board members generally prefer not to clutter up their district, which includes Times Square, with additional signs, said Gary Parker, the district manager.

Alternative: Doesn’t the Manhattan Detention Complex need a name now that Kerik’s is gone?

*Or go around the block and ask CB 3 about Baxter Street!