![]() ![]() “They need to be taken out completely,” Tanez said. She said that desperate junkies were still trying to use seats that were tied up - as I saw for myself on a twilight stroll. Jessica Tanez, a manager at Starbucks at 1411 Broadway, said, “We had a lot of homeless and mentally disturbed people living on the chairs. The cops would take them out, and they came back two hours later.” “They sat outside eating, and they’d come right back in. “The shoplifting was crazy, too,” Paul told us. The bums are not here and there’s less crime.” Kartic Paul, an assistant manager at Duane Reade at 1430 Broadway, said, “When the chairs were there I saw people putting needles in themselves. He said the plaza seating made life hell for clients who came to his offices and his employees. Overjoyed shop and office employees shared their delight with The Post.Ī wholesale/retail executive with offices on Broadway who didn’t wish to be named said, “Ninety-eight percent of people here are happy without the seats.”Įric Adams needs a spine of steel to stop NYC Council lunacy scuttling Garment District plan ![]() The plazas looked bare - but they were rid of the menace and depravity. Stores and small restaurants were besieged by shoplifters and their customers intimidated.īut two weeks ago, somebody with authority to do so (it’s not clear exactly who), yielded to merchants’ complaints - and to common sense.Īs an “experiment,” the tables and chairs were yanked from the floors and bundled up in yellow tape at the plazas’ edges. In an outcome that was obvious to all but ostriches, the plazas became an eastward extension of the squalor, addiction and menace in the West 30s around Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. The nonprofit Garment District Alliance, which manages them, crowed about goofy art it installed on them. ![]() No sooner were the blocks warped a few years ago to suit their designers’ fantasies of “open streets” (i.e., streets almost impassable to cars) than - guess what? - the tacky “furniture” was seized by drug dealers and addicts and psychos.Ĭity Hall, the DOT and its bike-loving peanut gallery cheered the so-called “Broadway Boulevard Plazas” that ruined businesses and scared off normal, law-abiding shoppers and strollers. Like some other portions of Broadway, the Garment District blocks were chopped up by the Department of Transportation to reduce auto lanes from four to one or two to make room for bike lanes, Citi Bike racks and - worst of all - ugly, cheaply paved plazas filled with pretentious works of art such as last winter’s sea-urchin-like “Living Lantern.” The urban ideologues and bike zealots who think they know what’s best for our streets could learn something from the plaza fiasco, if they cared to listen to people whose lives were adversely affected by their hostile takeover of public property. The big question is: How long will the embrace of common sense, civic order and public safety last? NYC's best new restaurant is a 186-year-old steakhouseįitness brand Equinox becomes first signed lease at former Domino Sugar RefineryĬapital of the world? Why London is cleaning New York's clockĪpple Bank ditching old digs for contemporary, 14-story apartment tower in Chelseaīrooklyn is now home to the weirdest $150M workplace in the world - and it's totally enchantingįor what may have been only a fleeting interlude of sanity, Broadway in the Garment District enjoyed a respite this month from colonization by drug addicts and predatory vagrants.Īn “experiment” that cheered merchants, employees and shoppers alike cleared the so-called “pedestrian plazas” from West 36th Street to West 41st of addict- and “homeless”-magnet seats and tables for about 10 days. ![]()
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