It wasn’t enough that the city gutted Times Square’s historic energy with “pedestrian pla zas” full of low-rent tourists — now it plans to cater to those tourists with alfresco food, alcohol and delivery service. Can things get any zanier in the Crossroads of the Backpackers?
Possibly: The Times Square Alliance, which is behind the proposal, says it’s really meant to keep New Yorkers, not tourists, from fleeing the “Bowtie” for lunch. We shall see if Morgan Stanley bankers, ABC producers and Conde Nast editors want to eat Virgil’s ribs alfresco amid tour-bus hawkers and the Naked Cowboy.
Maybe Danish meatballs would be more appropriate — Mayor Bloomberg’s ruinous redesign of Times Square, like the metastazing bike lanes around town, was inspired by sleepy Copenhagen, the capital city of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan’s imagination.
Of course, Times Square hasn’t been a “Bowtie” since the DOT hog-tied it two years ago, closing Broadway to vehicles to install asphalt loitering grounds. The scheme forced traffic onto clogged Ninth Avenue and extinguished the strangely beautiful confluence of auto lights between 47th and 42nd streets, an archetypal image of elegant, urban dynamism.
But perhaps worst was how it alienated New Yorkers from one of their city’s iconic places. It was in hopes of healing that wound that the Times Square Alliance, the area’s business-improvement district, last week put out two requests for proposals — one for portable but “nonmobile” (i.e., nothing on wheels) food kiosks, and one for operators who’d take orders from plaza-sitters on behalf of nearby eateries and then bring the food to customers.
Tim Tompkins, the Alliance’s president, told The Post’s Jeremy Olshan, “We want to make it appealing to the people who work for Morgan Stanley, Conde Nast or the tourists to sit here and have a light snack.” He added that many people who work there go to Bryant Park, a long block west, for lunch.
Now, why might that be? I asked Tompkins what was really behind the proposal. He said of the plazas, “We’ll be very generous and say they’re very plain, not beautiful” — a mild statement of the obvious that’s brave nonetheless, given the Times Square establishment’s aversion to publicly criticizing the DOT.
Tompkins said, “For a tourist to sit in a chair in Times Square for 30 minutes, they’re completely satisfied because they think Times Square is cool and wonderful,” but more is needed “for a New Yorker. The question is, how do we tip the scale so New Yorkers feel this is a place they want to be?”
Resourceful and tireless, Tompkins drove the creation of the popular Red Steps viewing pavilion in Duffy Square and improved Times Square in many other ways. But like Times Square’s landlords, hotel operators, retailers and restaurateurs, he has to go along to get along with ruthless Bloomberg pet Sadik-Khan.
But the desperate-sounding food-service scheme makes clear that — despite vapid polls purporting to show New Yorkers “support” the plazas — the full extent of the disaster has become too obvious to ignore.
They’re as ugly as sin, drenched in a primitive blue paint job that the DOT claims is “suggesting a river flowing” when “suggesting a river of blue vomit” is more like it.
The barren plazas with cheap chairs and tables offer nothing to locals — except smokers denied other places to indulge their habit and willing to put up with day-trippers gobbling junk food out of paper bags.
The city’s Department of Design and Construction is supposed to be working on a redesign of the plazas starting next year — the nominal reason for rerouting the Macy’s Thanskgiving parade to Sixth Avenue. Last July, the DOT announced that architectural firm Snohetta would be joined by “landscape professionals” and five other firms to “design world-class plazas.”
But don’t expect any meaningful beautification.
The DDC shunted my questions to the DOT, which responded that Snohetta is “leading the team of designers” — but noted the “vast majority” of the project’s $22 million budget is for infrastructure improvements “and then draining the entire area properly.” Translation: Anyone working or running a business in Times Square is in for two years of hell.
In fact, it sounds as if the main purpose of that $22 million is to reinforce the plazas so that the next mayor can’t easily remove them. But even if the plazas were gussied up as gardens of Eden, it would not undo the damage to the urban fabric.
The pretext that Times Square’s sidewalks were overcrowded was put in the service of Sadik-Khan’s zeal to make Manhattan — a walker’s paradise to anyone who loves real city life — more like Copenhagen. Roll out the frikadeller!