It’s good news for opponents of the mammoth Citi Bike station in front of the historic Plaza hotel.
A Manhattan judge who’s already tossed two lawsuits by groups challenging the placement of the clunky bike-sharing kiosks hinted Tuesday that she would take a different view of the huge rack in front of The Plaza.
“This one actually has different arguments — a different approach from the other two,” Justice Cynthia Kern said before a proceeding in the Plaza’s 2013 suit against the city and Citi Bike.
“Clearly I’ve been going a certain way in the last two,” Kern said.
Kern had first dismissed a case by a neighborhood group claiming that a kiosk was improperly placed in a sliver of Soho green space, ruling that the siting was a proper park use.
In the second case, brought by a Greenwich Village co-op, Kern found that the city Department of Transportation did not violate rules that prevent bike-share racks from being located in parking lanes that turn into driving lanes during rush hour.
The Plaza’s argument is focusing on the 147-foot-long rack as an eyesore.
“You’ve got this banner advertising and this row of blue bicycles right on the border of this place where … there is the juncture of two of the city’s most noted architects,” Plaza lawyer Steven Orel said, referring to Thomas Hastings’ 22-foot fountain in Grand Army Plaza and Whitney Warren’s stained-glass and marble facade of the Fifth Avenue hotel.
“I’m not aware of anything like this,” Orel said.
Orel added that the city violated the law by not performing a mandatory environmental review to determine the aesthetic impact of the rack, which stretches between West 58th and 59th streets.
He noted a recent New York Post article about officials at Manhattan’s Appellate Division courthouse who waged a behind-the-scenes battle to block a bike kiosk near that landmarked building’s East 25th Street entrance.
“Just out of curiosity, did the city move the bikes?” Kern asked.
“They didn’t even put them there,” Orel’s co-counsel, Steven Sladkus, responded.
City attorney Sarah Kogel-Smucker countered that before The Plaza station was placed in a traffic lane across from the hotel, idling chauffeured cars disrupted the views.
“I would submit that the black cars are far more aesthetically jarring than the bikes,” Kogel-Smucker sniffed.
Even though embattled bike-share sponsor Citi Bank is a defendant in the case, the financial giant’s lawyers did not show for oral arguments.
Earlier this month, the company that designed the system, Alta Bicycle Share, announced that it needs another $14 million to expand the program after Citi plunked down $41 million for the first round of 6,000 bikes and 332 stations.