AVE. NOTS: A plan to shrink the Met museum’s pedestrian plaza, a redesign backed by billionaire David Koch (on next slide, with wife Julia), would stem crowds on tony Fifth Avenue. (Bloomberg)
It’s the people’s piazza no more.
The upper crust in nine Fifth Avenue buildings signed a secret deal with the Metropolitan Museum of Art to scale down big plans for the institution’s iconic plaza, the Post has learned.
Under the agreement, the Met will reduce its design from 100 tables and 400 chairs to 30 tables and 120 chairs and do away with a proposed food kiosk — as long as the tony co-ops don’t publicly criticize the $60 million rehab or file lawsuits against it for a year.
But factions within the co-ops — which are home to Daphne Guinness and George Soros — still aren’t satisfied. Some are privately agitating to remove all chairs to keep crowds down.
“This isn’t some sort of sidewalk cafe or food court,” said one angry resident at a meeting at the Met on Thursday. “What museum has tables and chairs in front of it?”
As part of its revamp, paid for by billionaire David Koch, the plaza’s giant twin fountains will be replaced with smaller pools and trees. There will be portable benches, tree-lined walkways and retractable parasols.
Construction will begin next month and last two years.
Community advocates are outraged that changes to the ballyhooed plaza plan were made behind closed doors. The plaza is owned by the city, and the museum gets millions in taxpayer money.
“This was a museum of the people,” fumed Theodore Grunewald. “Now it’s the people versus this self-appointed group of elite people.”
Teri Slater, a preservationist and community-board member, was shocked to learn of the backroom deal, inked in July — especially because it requires residents to praise the new design.
“This undermines the public process,” she said. “Private individuals were deciding what goes into public space.”
Grunewald heads a band of preservationists who want to save the fountains, which Koch and the museum’s director Thomas Campbell have deemed “ugly.”
Pritzker Prize-winning architect Kevin Roche designed the fountains in 1968 for the museum’s centennial. They’re 110 feet long and the second-largest in New York after the one surrounding the Unisphere in Queens.
The agreement states that the co-ops cannot file suit against the museum or assist anyone else in challenging the plaza.
If others sue the Met, the Fifth Avenue socialites must provide an affidavit stating that “the museum’s plans for the fountains, trees and plantings will significantly improve the plaza’s visual appearance,” the legal document says.
Spokesman Harold Holzer said the museum wasn’t trying to sidestep the public but wanted to move the project forward without a lawsuit.
“We don’t regard it as a crucial design element of the plaza, and it didn’t seem worth [notifying people] over an issue like a portable kiosk,” he said.
“It’s not a matter of secrecy at all,” Holzer added. “It’s just getting the project to move forward without anybody being unhappy.”