Bust the boobs!
Street plazas with stone barriers that distinctly resemble breasts have become the laughingstock of the trendy Meatpacking District, and businesses are poised to give them the heave-ho, The Post has learned.
A neighborhood business group plans to do a boob job on the bollards this fall, sweeping away the random rocks and other “art” pieces rotting away at six Ninth Avenue plazas.
The boob barricades were a bust almost since they were erected in 2008, but the strange streetscapes have become especially embarrassing since the hot High Line opened overhead last year.
“They’re the breasts. They just sit out there and do nothing,” said Matt DeMatt, owner of the Gaslight Lounge on Ninth Avenue, of the round mounds capped by nippled-shaped white cones.
The city Department of Transportation installed the odd open areas between Gansevoort and West 14th streets in one of its first experiments with public plazas. The promenades have since become a DOT obsession, spreading all over the city.
“The plazas look neglected, dirty and unkempt. No one is taking care of them,” said Lauren Danziger, executive director of the Meatpacking District Improvement Association, a nonprofit spearheading the $500,000 overhaul. The tab is being split between the city and the business group.
The Meatpacking District Initiative, another local group that pledged to maintain the areas when they were first built, claimed the city stiffed them out of $40,000 and their funds dried up in 2009.
Clubgoers have taken to loitering in the plazas in between bar-hopping, and filling them with trash.
“They are ugly,” said Bob Gormley, district manager of the area’s Community Board 2, who noted the booby bollards were supposed to be temporary.
Fed up, Danziger’s group pitched the city a new plaza plan designed by Ken Smith, a renowned architect who landscaped MoMA’s rooftop garden and the Vietnam Veterans Plaza in lower Manhattan. The city has agreed to remove all the old plaza artifacts to make way for the remake of all six plazas, and to build a seventh one at West 13th Street. It showcased the design to the community board during a meeting in May.
The tasteful design features galvanized steel planters with evergreens, lavender and natural grasses that will echo the nearby High Line’s landscaping. The boobs will be banished to make way for simple white cones, flanked by tables with umbrellas and chairs.
Frank Bulfamante & Sons, a large landscaping company that installs gardens around Lincoln Center, will do the makeover and maintain the spaces, Danziger said. Once transformed, the group hopes to stage events there, like live feeds from Fashion Week.
Work should get underway in September, Danziger said. The city will also reopen West 13th Street to traffic as part of the renovation.
“It won’t look anything like it does now. This will beautify the public area and make it engaging,” she added.
The work will wrap up in the fall, DOT spokesman Montgomery Dean said.
Hhaddon@nypost.com