Bryant Park Current Site Plan

The screen between showings opening up the view corridor.

In my last post, I discussed some problems that arose during the early years of the restoration of Bryant Park in order to illustrate that there was nothing inevitable about the project’s success, the importance of close observation in noticing how public space users actually behave in the space and the need to admit that a strategy isn’t working and figure out and implement an alternative. Of course, these are also cautionary tales, from which others can learn in improving existing downtowns and public spaces and creating new ones. In this post, I will set out a few more.

Inadequate Power

As initially designed by the restoration architects, the Park had exactly two outlets, with four plugs and household current. This created a number of problems. First, the two outlets were located on either side of the stairs leading to the Bryant Monument, which turned out not to be a place where they were very much-needed (I’ll talk about why below). Initially we bought a gasoline generator to power the small amplification system we required for public events. But as the events grew larger – so did the generators. The generators required for the fashion shows came on flatbed trailers that needed to be parked on 40^th Street. They generated sufficient noise as to be annoying to the folks who lived in the residential coop apartments on 40^th. With the generators also came cabling that snaked around the park and added to the expense. These workarounds made every large event more complicated, more expensive, more intrusive on and more damaging to the park.

Eventually (more than ten years after the re-opening of the Park), the Park’s operations had generated enough income that it was able to pay for upgraded service from the local utility, making the generators unnecessary – that was important to providing adequate power for the skating rink and the holiday market; as well as for other large-scale events. This, I understand was an expensive proposition. The lesson here it to think through what the electricity needs for a space will be at the design phase, place them at a number of locations around the space in order to provide flexibility and, in a medium to large space, provide a level of service that can support the larger events you hope to host. This is an expensive item to retrofit.

No Place for a Stage

After we created the first year of five-day-a-week lunchtime programming, we then had to figure out where to hold the performances. The design seemed to provide a “natural stage” at the foot of the Bryant Monument, at the top of a steep set of stairs. As noted above, in any event – that’s where the power outlets were. But as we tried it out, we found that the because of the change in height from the lawn area to the top flight of the terrace, the performers were too high and too set back to make for a viable concert experience. As a result, we decided to move the stage to other side of the Park, on the Fountain Terrace.

That created its own set of problems. The Fountain Terrace wasn’t high enough to enable the audience to see the performers from a short distance away. The power outlets were on the other side of the park. And the noise from Sixth Avenue traffic, which was not a problem on the east side of the lawn, was a problem here. We bought a mobile stage and an acoustic shell (that we used for years). – The acoustic shell created a new problem – it blocked the view of the Lowell Fountain from the lawn.

When we started the movie series in 2005, the visual problem became even more pronounced as the screen completely blocked the view of the Fountain during the entire summer that the screen was in place (and it wasn’t practical to break it down every week). Ultimately the screen was made up of panels the swung on an axis, and were set perpendicularly when the screen wasn’t in use, opening up the 41^st Street view corridor and providing a less obstructed view of the Fountain. Not an ideal solution, but a workable one.

This should have been thought through at the time the space was re-designed; providing a performance area that worked for performers, had adequate power, included storage space for chairs, stands and sound equipment (something that we also needed to find a solution to) and that visually didn’t interfere with the Park’s aesthetics. This is especially true, since all were aware that public events were a key part of the restoration strategy. Obviously the compromises and workarounds have been effective – if sub-optimal. But they took time, money and ingenuity to implement.

Concrete Footings

Perhaps the weirdest thing we discovered that the Park didn’t have was concrete footings. When tents were required for Park events, the tent companies were required to bring in concrete blocks to serve as ballast to provide something to tie down the ropes and wires that held up the structures. A great deal of damage was done to the Park every time tents were erected by forklifts ferrying the huge concrete blocks around the Park. And we were surprised to discover how often people wanted to put up tents for events in the Park. When the fashion show tents became behemoths, the concrete block requirements became equally huge. Before and after each show, it took weeks to place the blocks at strategic locations around the Park. Eventually, empty plastic 30 gallon barrels, which were then filled with water, replaced most, if not all of the blocks. But moving them, filling them and emptying them still created some (lesser) problems.

This could have been prevented by including a grid of concrete footings set into the lawn and other park surfaces with small rings set into the concrete. These could have provided a flexible set of anchors for a range of tents. Tents and other tensile structures are tremendously useful in many ways in public spaces and not just for events. In spaces with broad hardscape – where shade trees aren’t possible – tensile structures can provide a relatively low-cost, temporary/seasonal means to provide shade. In the south and west of the United States this can be particularly important to making public spaces welcoming – providing shelter from fierce sun (and the occasional shower). For example, I’m convinced that fabric shade could go a long way to improving the appeal of Pershing Square in Los Angeles – in the spirit of Project for Public Spaces’ lighter, quicker and cheaper agenda. And, providing built-in anchors at the design phase makes this even lighter, faster and less expensive!

Plant Alarm System

One final example arises out of the many things that “they” told us we wouldn’t be able to do (in addition to put out movable chairs, show movies at night on 42^nd Street, have a restaurant in a park, etc.) is to have high quality planting beds a block from Times Square. We were advised to secure the plants – so we installed an elaborate and expensive system that ran trip wires through the root balls of the larger plants, that would trigger a wireless transmitter, that would set off an alarm in the BIDs security office if plants were removed from the beds. The thing never worked – and plant theft was never much of a problem. We didn’t try to make the system work, as it quickly proved itself to be unnecessary. For all I know the wires and transmitters are still buried in the beds. And by the way, we discovered that perennial beds in Midtown Manhattan have a huge advantage over those in most people’s backyards – we had no deer eating the plants.

***

There were many other retoolings that took place over the years in the Park – and these are just illustrative examples of how even at one of the most successful public space revitalization management had to be attentive all the time to how the space was being used and operated – and adapt as required. This is equally true of Downtown projects, and at some point I will write about the $1 million planter mistake I made at Grand Central and 34^th Street Partnership (yeah, it was nice to be in a position to recover from such an expensive misjudgment). In my next posting (or two), I am hoping to write about the remarkable economic transformation taking place right now in Jamaica, Queens, a disinvested community of color, fifteen miles from New York City hall – what’s happening and why now.