June 5, 2008
Bryant Park to Get Even More Mobbed
Bryant Park is Manhattan’s most packed park, and there’s considerable hand-wringing going on about the new office buildings rising nearby, which will further glut the urban oasis with more than 10,000 new office workers.
Maxine Teitler of Community Board 5 says “the city” is to blame, telling the Times that Manhattan “doesn’t have a lot of green space, and the city keeps giving permits to build enormous buildings that are putting pressure on all of New York’s infrastructure, especially the parks.” But Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe says it’s just that the park is “a victim of its own success, since decades ago nobody went to Bryant Park unless you were looking to buy drugs.”
Now they’re looking to score free Wi-Fi, which had gotten so sluggish under the strain of an average 500 peak-time users that the Bryant Park Corporation [BPC] spent $10,000 to upgrade it. They’re also bracing for the influx by putting out at least 500 new chairs, 100 new tables, and possibly more bathrooms because the lines are getting long during peak hours.
BPC chairman Daniel Biederman contends that “no other public park in the world is as densely populated,” with Bryant Park packing in over 1,000 bodies per acre – and that’s not even close to how mobbed it gets when HBO screens movies in the summer (starting June 16th with Dr. No!) – and your knees are in your chest. And look out for an even crazier lunch hour mob scene today because Wachovia is in the park setting up one of those “Money Booths” where contestants try to grab as much cash as they can.
Photo courtesy hbomb1947.
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>so sluggish under the strain of 61,000 peak-time users
This is not possible.
MooCow
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here's an idea. Congestion pricing.
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Maxine Teitler of Community Board 5 says Manhattan “doesn’t have a lot of green space, and the city keeps giving permits to build enormous buildings that are putting pressure on all of New York’s infrastructure, especially the parks.”
Handing out permits, and collecting the fees is easy for city government. They don't even need to oversee if the rules and regulations that pertain to granting permits are even followed!
Providing adequate public park space to New Yorkers is hard - so politicians hem and haw and make excuses, and point fingers, and ultimately do nothing. But they've made good money on building permits and property taxes! And they're off to their weekend homes far away - and the rest of us are fighting for a seat on a bench or a small patch of grass.
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Harvey, if you're up there this afternoon, please get photos of people trying to grab money in the booth ^_^
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A victim of its own success?! What a dumbass thing to say.
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See all these curb cuts are affecting our parks now ;)
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This is why I like working around Central Park North. Its never crowded, its nicer up here than it is down there, and everyone assumes they'll get mugged/raped/etc above 86th street so they'll steer clear.
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Hey Kojak - I thought the Mason-Dixon line was 96th Street!
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Public access rooftop parks on all the buildings could really change things. But, yes, that's about as likely as regular Graf Zeppelin departures and arrivals on the Empire State Building.
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Its the only real park near business-midtown madhattan! And it puts on some pretty cool events and has a bar!
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I really want a couple of the Bryant Park chairs!!
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Yeah perhaps your right. 96th st is when it all goes ghetto. Depends where you are though.
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bring back the drug days. a lot more interesting and a hell of a lot less of the so call cool people.