CLEVELAND, CITY OF LIGHT, CITY OF MAGIC*

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Terminal Tower

When I returned to Cleveland this past week, after a five-year absence, I was optimistic that Public Square and its environs drawing on our recently acquired national collective knowledge of what works in downtown revitalization would have improved. Often when I visit a city, I feel a bit like a colonialist, parachuting into town for a few hours, and making judgements about how the downtown is doing and thinking and writing about it based on admittedly limited information. Cleveland for me is different. I first visited Northeastern Ohio in 1973, and spent four years near there attending college. I’ve been a regular visitor (several times a year) since. However, I haven’t visited since November 2016 when I served as a poll watcher in Lakewood, a close-in Cleveland suburb. I haven’t been able to get myself to return to where I spent a miserable evening at a bar in a Mexican restaurant watching the returns come in on the television.

In fact, my first blog posts were about Cleveland after a one week stay during the summer of 2016. (http://www.theplacemaster.com/2016/07/09/photos-from-clevelands-public-square/ http://www.theplacemaster.com/2016/07/08/when-will-we-ever-learn/). I was distinctly unimpressed with the city’s then recent $50 million redesign of Public Square, the city’s most high profile public space. And since that time, the situation in Public Square has gotten … worse! My recent visit included downtown Cleveland, an orchestra concert, and the Mid-town area, where Euclid Avenue was once the site of magnificent homes (https://www.abebooks.com/Showplace-America-Clevelands-Euclid-Avenue-1850-1910/30406229480/bd), and had over the decades become an environment of empty lots, liquor stores and derelict structures.

Public Square Ice Rink
Jersey barriers in Public Square
Metal ramp to deal with access problems created by barriers

 Public Square was nearly deserted on the day of my visit, which was sunny and cold. The space was minimally maintained, with the only visible activity being the hanging of some decorative lights on trees. A cheesy ice rink was being installed – surrounded by unsightly shipping containers. The food kiosk was reasonably busy, but the picnic tables outside of it were completely unused. Most appalling was that the space was littered with concrete – planters and jersey barriers – placed in the space for “security reasons.” Why in the world would you spend $50 million to “improve” a space and then install horrible, unsightly objects – even for the best of reasons? There were round green planters (with one scraggly tree planted in each) to keep cars from driving on the pathways, and huge white barriers blocking carefully designed curb cut ramps, intended to make the spaces more open and accessible. In fact, one of the dumbest public space “amenities” I’ve ever seen were the flimsy, poorly maintained metal ramps over the curbs, to make the spaces accessible, since the original ramps had been blocked off and were unusable to the mobility impaired. How can this have happened?


Unused tables in the shade outside of Public Square food kiosk

I also noticed, since this was a late autumn visit (as opposed to my earlier summer visit), that Terminal Tower, one of Cleveland’s iconic structures, blocked the winter sun from the space during much of the day. The food kiosk was placed directly in that shadow, and obscured the view of the tower from the Square. The Square was mostly dark and windy.

In order to improve the level of activity in the Square, as I argued five years ago, the Square needs to be more heavily programmed. It needs movable chairs, especially to enable users to catch whatever sunlight there is in pockets outside the shade. It needs more stuff for sale, particularly food, in order to generate activity. A market would be great. The existing kiosk needs to be more open. It’s single rest room looks like a war zone. Public Square needs a more visible maintenance and security presence. The horticulture needs to be better maintained and designed (it appears to have been designed for minimal maintenance – a bad idea, badly executed).

Rendering of planned Sherwin-Williams headquarters

There is clearly a bunch of old, discredited thinking going on in Cleveland regarding economic development and downtown revitalization. Cleveland’s civic leaders believe they have scored a win attracting plans for a newly constructed headquarters for Sherwin Williams on what are now parking lots adjacent to Public Square. This, in a city with almost three million square feet of available office space, much of which is in architecturally significant buildings. The planned development is a 36 story, one million square foot tower complex, with no ground level retail, set back from the street. While, yeah, this will bring some investment and jobs downtown, and it is better for the civic psyche than losing the company to somewhere else, the likely net improvement in the quality of the experience in downtown Cleveland is likely to be minimal. I thought architects and planners have learned not to do this kind of anti-urbanistic stuff. The building is likely to be surrounded by a dead plaza. And senior Sherwin-Williams executives are probably going to be driving from the suburbs into the complex’s garage, having lunch in the corporate dining room, and leaving for the suburbs at the end of the day. Having a development that activates the street level would be far preferable, especially at this key location adjacent to Public Square.

 Downtown Cleveland was relatively free of pedestrians on my Friday visit. I had a difficult time finding a place open to eat lunch. The major pre-covid economic trend in the downtown was the conversion of historic office structures into luxury housing. There is now a large amount of product apparently ready to come on line and flood the market, so the continuation of that trend is likely to slow post-pandemic – and isn’t going to be sufficient to sop up the tremendous amount of empty commercial space in the downtown. One unusual thing about the Cleveland downtown is that it has so much empty office space above active retail space. My experience is that downtown is livelier at night than during the day, particularly when there is a ball game.

Cleveland Gallaria

Downtown Cleveland has amazing historic social resources – including its fabulously beautiful commercial arcades. It is frustrating that developers and civic leaders have been unable to capitalize on Cleveland’s many strengths. This is particularly true because at the other end of Euclid Avenue is one of the most important health care complexes in the world, the Cleveland Clinic at University Circle. Also at University Circle are Case Western Reserve University, one of the country’s great art museums, and Severance Hall, home of what is arguably the finest American orchestra, and at the same time, perhaps the most acoustically congenial space for orchestral music in the country.

The Cleveland Orchestra is a remarkable institution. It’s existence in Cleveland, a city without the plutocratic wealth that has become a major factor in gateway cities across the country, is remarkable. Orchestra patrons probably dig deeper into their pockets to support the orchestra than any cultural institution in any other city in the United States. The philanthropists supporting the Orchestra are in large measure professionals (doctors and attorneys), rather than people in finance or real estate.  

The concert I attended was not what I had signed up for. Conductor, Semyon Bychkov, cancelled on relatively short notice, and was replaced by Thierry Fischer, music director of the São Paulo and Utah Symphonies. Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony and Dvorak’s “In Nature’s Realm,” were replaced with Messian’s “Les Offrandes oubliées” (The Forgotten Offerings) and the Mussorgsky/Ravel chestnut, “Pictures at an Exhibition.” The Ravel Piano Concerto with 21-year-old Israeli pianist, Tom Borrow, was the sole survivor. The loss of the Dvorak and Bychkov were regrettable, but the addition of the Messian piece, new to me, was a plus. While the orchestra sounded great, the concert was a disappointment.

Admission to the concert required proof of vaccination and ID and the hall was mostly full. The audience was wildly enthusiastic especially after the coloristic Mussorgsky. I was definitely the odd person out in my reaction. I was happy to hear the Messiaen, written in 1930 when he was 22. Messiaen is a favorite composer of mine, and his influence on composers in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, like Glass, Saariaho and Reich, is yet to be fully appreciated. Hearing an early work of this composer, revealed much about the development of Messiaen’s distinctive voice. The piece, unsurprisingly, draws much on Debussy, without the cragginess that later became part of Messiaen’s signature musical vocabulary. Drawing firmly on his deep Catholic spirituality, it made clear how the composer developed his unique world of sound. The orchestra’s performance, as it was throughout the evening, was warm and glowing – by contrast with the edgier, brighter sounds of the New York Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony I had heard earlier in the season.

Borrow’s rendition of the Ravel was showy, speedy and virtuosic in the worst sense of the word. It was essentially empty. The fast tempi he set in the first and third movements prevented Ravel’s humor and savior faire from being reflected in the orchestra. Borrow, clearly technically gifted, needs to step back and take a deep breath, less he end up a Western Laing Laing.

The “Pictures,” a Ravel transcription of a Mussorgsky piano suite, suffered similarly from an impulse to highlight its bright colors and distinctive effects. Having recently heard the Met perform the composer’s Boris Godunov in his original orchestration (rather than the usual souped-up Rimsky-Korsakoff edition), I was primed to understand the significance of the widely held, but perhaps mistaken view, that Mussorgsky was something of an unschooled musical savant, whose work needed the domestication of the musically more lettered in order to be accepted in polite company. While the Orchestra’s sound was nothing short of glorious, certainly avoiding the vulgarity that Ravel’s technicolor meddling encourages, the performance was ultimately crowd pleasing and unsatisfying; certainly more French than Russian in spirit.

I particularly admired the dark passion of the string playing during the entire evening. It appeared to me that the violin and viola players worked to produce a full, rounded, less tense effect. Similarly, the winds never blared, and in the French manner produced a characteristically complex timbre. Unfortunately, Maestro Fischer, in both the Ravel offerings, went for the easy wins, failing to capitalize on this orchestra’s particular virtues. The orchestra remains a wonder, and a treasure for Cleveland. I need to go back soon to enjoy a more substantive program (this, BTW, was my fourth orchestra to hear this season, including the two mentioned above, and the Philadelphia (whose Shostakovich’s entertaining, witty piano concerto with Juja Wang, was, in stark positive contrast to Borrow’s humorless Ravel) earlier in the season.

Euclid Avenue view

I had high hopes for the positive redevelopment of Euclid Avenue, the link between downtown and University Circle, which must be an essential element of a revived Cleveland. Bus rapid transit infrastructure, called the Health Line, was installed in the mid-teens along the length of the Avenue – and in 2016 appeared to be catalyzing mixed-use, mixed income development, particularly at corners where it had station stops.

Health Line stop

Significant progress has been made in removing much of the decay along the avenue, and grassy lots have replaced all of the derelict structures. There has been some scattered residential development, as well as a hotel approximately midway between downtown and the Clinic. However, the importance of density and critical mass to successful revitalization appears to have been lost on the developers and planners involved in Mid-town redevelopment.

The most glaring example of this is the construction of townhouses along a portion of Euclid, the most prominent features of which are driveway and garages off a service road set back from the Avenue. I get that Cleveland is a heartland city, where the car continues to dominate the market, but to build automobile-centric development along an expensive transit corridor investment seems like both backward thinking and a lost opportunity. Similarly, the mid-rise, multiple dwelling unit construction along Euclid lacked street level retail. As result, the development of Euclid so far will not produce a walkable neighborhood. Going to the newly built Aldi’s to pick up groceries will still require resort to a car (reflected in the store’s large parking lot). The door to the store faces the lot, and not the street. No one walks on Euclid, and I didn’t see anyone get on or off the Health Line during my couple of hours scouting around. Dense, mixed-use development at the transit nodes wasn’t happening. Development activity was spread out in non-adjacent lots along the Avenue, preventing the possibility of essential secondary, symbiotic effects. Critical mass is an absolute necessity for neighborhood revitalization. One or two transit stops should be selected for the focus of improvement activity in order to promote such effects. Nondescript, 66th Street has been selected for the focus of future investments, even though it did not appear to have any particular existing social, cultural or infrastructure assets.

One interesting problem facing Mid-town Cleveland is how small the number of historic residents raising the specter of “gentrification” is: fewer than a couple of thousand. Those two thousand people appear to have outsized political force in inhibiting the possibility of neighborhood revitalization for possibly tens of thousands of new residents, with concerns about changing neighborhood character and rising rents. Apparently, what those folks most need is improvements to their current sub-standard housing conditions, something that, given the small numbers involved, shouldn’t be all that expensive to provide an assist to. The value proposition for Cleveland as a place is its high-quality social infrastructure combined with low local housing costs. Attracting new, college educated residents looking for inexpensive space, while improving the existing housing stock for current residents – ought to be at the center of any redevelopment strategy for a city that once had a population of over 900,000 and now is less than 400,000.

My visit to the office of the Mid-town area’s local development corporation (one of dozens in Cleveland, all still supported by the declining Federal Community Development Block Grant funding), was delayed by my foolishly trying to access its office through the building’s locked front door on Euclid. The entrance to the building was through a huge, empty rear parking lot. To me this was a symbol of the old school thinking still governing urban policy in Cleveland. As one Cleveland leader cleverly told me, “we think in the IEDC rather than the IDA framework” (International Economic Development Council/International Downtown Association). That is, focusing on automobile-oriented, large scale subsidized development, rather than placemaking and transit-oriented, neighborhood walkability. Cleveland remains in the derriere garde of the revitalization of American cities. Leaders in cities across the country have drawn on Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte’s thinking about how urban social infrastructure works and made great strides in improving the quality of life for their residents. Another Ohio city, Cincinnati is a great example. Not in Cleveland.

 If I were running that LDC, I’d make sure that the ground floor of the building where my office was located had a coffee shop, restaurant or bookstore (which I would subsidize, if necessary), with chairs and tables on the sidewalk out front, and that the welcoming entrance was through the door on Euclid, to make the point about what is possible on what once was called “America’s Showplace.”

*Randy Newman, “Burn On”

THE BEST OF TIMES

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San Francisco/San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco is one of the most desirable places on the planet to live, both because of its climate and because of its amenities. As a result, many, many people want to live there. A good many of those people have substantial resources. A lot of those people are also highly skilled and/or unusually creative. That is why real estate in San Francisco is expensive. High demand. Step-function availability of supply. Basic economics: demand outstrips supply. Result: high prices. It is just not very complicated. And, more importantly it is a good, rather than a bad, thing.

            Admittedly, my recent visit was on spectacularly beautiful, cloudless days. The adjective “Mediterranean,” often used to describe the climate, could not have been more apt on this trip. We went to North Beach for a classic cioppino at Sotto Mare, we took the bus to the Pacific and sat on a park bench in the sun facing the ocean (with no sign of the generally ubiquitous “Carl the Fog”), reading the wonderful new, posthumous La Carré novel. We took in the Symphony and the Opera. We lingered at the new Salesforce Park. I was ready to start shopping for a new place to live. San Francisco, another city, like New York, is often described by the punditocracy as an astronomically priced hellscape; inhabited only by trustafarians, over-paid young techies and the wild-eyed, violent homeless. Sorry: not.

            We stayed at the wonderful Intercontinental in SOMA. The hotel has over thirty stores and floor to ceiling windows, with spectacular views of the City (many older San Francisco hotels are short and dark, with small rooms). However, the location, at Howard between Fourth and Fifth, exposes the walker to the epicenter of San Francisco’s un/under-housed population, which appears to be at 7th and Mission. The walk through the Civic Center on a Saturday night after a concert by the Symphony, while not dangerous, required passing through large groups of individuals sleeping on the sidewalks, selling things from blankets, with some acting out and appearing to be seriously mentally ill, surrounded by piles of stuff. Avoiding feces on the sidewalk was a non-trivial endeavor. There were pairs of men who appeared to be a private unarmed security force labeled “Urban Alchemy,” who appeared to be ineffectual. We also passed people sleeping in doorways in The Castro and other folks who pitched tents around highway ramps near the Embarcadero. My rough estimate is that the total number of individuals occupying public space we passed was more than 500 and less than 1500. Notably, in most other neighborhoods we visited, people visibly living in public spaces or behaving in obviously unpredictively ways were not present (Richmond, Sunset, North Beach, Glen Park).

            It’s worth observing that it is individuals visibly acting out who most contribute to a perception of physical danger. People yelling at passers-by or even to themselves, punching the air, kicking the sidewalk or zigzagging along the sidewalk appear unpredictable. They create for many pedestrians the possibility of unwanted physical contact. These, perhaps clinically psychotic folks, can also be the most difficult to engage and reach for professional outreach workers.

            While this sounds like a large population, it is by no means beyond addressing. Walking down Market Street, and particularly at 7th, it is apparent this is not a problem primarily about housing – there is social activity taking place among these San Franciscans that is part of what draws them to these locations, and their issues need to be addressed socially. At the same time, despite what I have been reading in the national media, there is new multiple dwelling unit residential construction happening all around the downtown, and lots of recently completed projects – even on Market Street itself. We spent an intrigued hour watching the process of the erection of an enormous construction crane across the street from our hotel.

We went for a walk in the expanding Mission Bay community, just south of the baseball stadium (the Giants lost the playoffs to the Dodgers our first night in town); a midrise, mixed-income, mixed-use neighborhood being built from the ground up. All the right moves seemed to have been made. While eating lunch in a parking space shed (kombucha soda, falafel sandwich — $45 dollars for two), I was reminded of our West End Avenue mid-rise neighborhood in New York, a highly desirable and successful product type. THIS is what Hudson Yards should have been. A vital, human scale place to live.

San Francisco needs to get past its politics and adopt a data driven, client centered approach to addressing the needs of its citizens living in public spaces. It should recognize that the issue ISN’T (just) housing and come to terms with that it’s never a rational life choice to sleep on the sidewalk. It needs Built for Zero and Community Solutions (https://community.solutions/built-for-zero/). It’s also important for the community to come to a consensus that people living in shared public space are monopolizing places that belong to everyone and should be available to be used in common. Someone playing loud music, engaging in commercial activity or even laying in a sleeping bag on the sidewalk, is EXCLUDING other folks from enjoying the experience of public space that, particularly post-COVID, we have learned is absolutely essential to urban living. No one should have the right to exclude others from quiet enjoyment of the limited resource of urban public space.

Creating a data base that includes a record for each client, working with them as individuals to get a medical and person history, building a trusting relationship with (potential) clients, and then linking them up with the benefits to which they are already entitled and the services they require. This is difficult, time-consuming work. But it can succeed, as Community Solutions is demonstrating across the country. In a city of 900,000, reaching a couple of thousand of people in distress, while important, is by no means a monumental task. It also doesn’t define the city.

Given the breadth of cultural offerings available in San Francisco, it is easy to forget that it a relatively small city. The depth of cultural and social resources is just remarkable. During our visit we took in an intellectually and visually overwhelming show of the paintings of Joan Mitchell at the SF Museum of Modern Art, a production of Fidelio at the Opera and a fascinating and engaging program at the Symphony. While I will leave to those more knowledgeable than myself to comment on the Mitchell show (Jed Perl has a long essay in the New York Review: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/11/04/joan-mitchell-painting-colors-conversation/) and to my spouse to review the Beethoven (staying in my conjugal lane), I would like to talk a bit about the Symphony concert. In fact, over the coming months, it is my plan to visit a different city every month, hear its orchestra and spend some time visiting and thinking about its downtown. Next month I’m planning to visit Cleveland. I’m particularly eager to go to Kansas City and Indianapolis – places to which I’ve not previously been.

The San Francisco Symphony has been widely admired in recent years both for its sound, as well as for its unique programming under its music director of two decades, Michael Tilson Thomas (now, unfortunately, recovering from surgery to remove a brain tumor). Most critical observers agree that the orchestra is the most interesting one, certainly west of Chicago, and perhaps in the country. With MTT’s retirement last year, he was succeeded by Essa Pekka Salonen, the former music director in Los Angeles – and long the object of desire of the New York Philharmonic, of which he has made clear he wants no part. The program that the SFO presented was a knock-out, including Debbusy, Messiaen and Saariaho, following an important stream of French composition from the late 19th through the early 20th Century – a current of compositional thought to which I am particularly drawn. Under Salonen’s baton the orchestra sounded, sharp, bright and tightly disciplined. While it didn’t particularly convey that characteristically mellow, French sound for which the Boston Symphony, for example, was once known, the performances did great justice to the music presented, and at the conclusion of the concert, I was delighted not to have to peel myself out of my chair as a result of the enthusiasm of the brass section as is so often the case at the end of Debussy’s La Mer. Debussy also kicked off the concert with Prelude à L’Après-midi d’un faune, showcasing the distinctly personal playing of the woodwind soloists.

But the concert’s featured events were (Oberlin alums) Jeremy Denk playing Oiseaux Exotique and Claire Chase playing Saariaho’s 2001 flute concerto Aile du Songe. Both were outstanding. Worth remaking on is that the Messiaen dispensed with the ensemble’s string sections and the Saariaho was played without winds other than the soloist, setting up an engaging contrast. Both performances made compelling arguments for each of the works. Denk, playing this rhythmically non-intuitive piece from memory, demanded attention – highlighting the contrasts with orchestral writing, and stressing the exotic nature of the bird calls that form the inspiration of the work. Chase’s performance was theatrical and intense. In both cases the orchestra was a committed and skilled partner, making the most of the coloristic writing of these composers, without blurring their impressionistic edges. The playing in La Mer sounded highly rehearsed and polished, reserving dramatic power for the appropriate places. One might argue, after hearing this concert, that the harmonically complex, French impressionist compositional style has ultimately proved a more productive path for composers than the spiky, audience alienating Second Viennese School – which seems to have proved to be something of a dead end.

This engaging program is one, unfortunately, we would be unlikely to ever hear in New York, and it must be said that about a quarter of the auditorium was unsold. This was the sixth concert in a big auditorium we had attended this fall (two at the Met in New York, one at Carnegie, one at Chicago Lyric and one at St. Ann’s warehouse), and while masking is certainly a suboptimal experience, all of those other shows played to full or nearly full houses and I have lived to tell the tale (so far). Fidelio at SFO also appeared to be fully sold.

We visited San Francisco’s newest public space, Salesforce Park, which is on the fourth-floor roof of the new downtown transit center. The transit center is actually a surprisingly appealing bus station – a more unlikely application of an adjective I can scarcely imagine. The loading platforms are airy and bright – as different from New York City’s Port Authority Bus terminal as one might possibly conjure! The park is six acres (the same size as Bryant Park), and most distinctively features a fabulously wide array of plant species from Mediterranean climates around the globe. The creation of roof soil and irrigation conditions to support this biosphere, particularly mature tree specimens of considerable height, is absolutely remarkable.

The operation of the park by BRV Redevelopment Ventures is nearly flawless. The “B” in BRV is Dan Biederman, my former Bryant Park boss, who has outdone himself, fixing a number of the problems we faced on Sixth Avenue, with the possibilities presented by ground-up new construction – particularly an attractively designed and appropriate performance area, something that Bryant Park lacked from day one. The park incorporates the successful Bryant Park tropes – movable chairs, well maintained restrooms, a complete slate of daily programs, a working water feature, meticulous trash removable and discreet security. The sinuous path around the space is often flanked by shaded benches facing the continuously varied gardens. The maintenance of those complex planting beds has to be a major undertaking. Bravo to Dan, his staff and to the design team for a massively, magisterially successful collaboration.

Certainly, the park can only be accessed by a one-way gondola from the Salesforce Plaza and a reasonably large number of elevator banks (and we thought Bryant Park was set off from the street!), making it somewhat inaccessible. I visited on a quiet Saturday – so I didn’t experience the park with a large crowd. But simply the idea of a quiet Saturday in the park is a luxury no longer afforded by Bryant Park, even on a rainy day. That inaccessibility presents the challenge for the park of becoming only an amenity for workers in the Salesforce Tower (now San Francisco’s tallest). But, unlike New York’s High Line, Salesforce Park is a real park (rather than a tourist attraction) which can be enjoyed in a multitude of ways (rather than being principally the experience of walking from one end to the other). It is a triumph for San Francisco and will likely increase in viability and strength as food and other concessions are developed over time.

San Francisco is a great, livable, vibrant city – and its real estate is expensive as a result. It has some serious problems, particularly its underperforming school system. Our reaction to San Francisco as urbanists shouldn’t be to denigrate or bemoan its success, but to work for the creation of more great places in order to enable more people to enjoy the benefits of living in a vital city.

A Thoughtful Review of “Learning from Bryant Park”

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The Metropole

The Metropole

The Metropole

THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE URBAN HISTORY ASSOCIATION

Manshel, Andrew W. Learning From Bryant Park: Revitalizing Cities, Towns, and Public Spaces. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020.

Reviewed by Katie Uva

On an August night in 1993, I was five years old and sitting in Bryant Park on a blanket on a lush bed of grass with my parents, their friends, and 2,000 fellow New Yorkers. We socialized, ate snacks, and took pictures of ourselves with a guy in a gorilla suit. As the sun went down, we settled in to watch “King Kong” on the big outdoor screen. It was the first year that the park, with support from HBO, screened films on the lawn, an activity that has continued for nearly three decades. It is one of my formative memories of growing up in the city, and I later realized that most of these details—a kid at a large social gathering in Bryant Park, sitting on a luxurious lawn in Midtown at night—would, a few years earlier, have been almost unimaginable. But I was growing up in the midst of a massive transition from the high crime, poorly maintained, economically distressed New York of the seventies to the lower crime, better maintained, more prosperous (though more deeply stratified) city of the late 1990s and 2000s. 

The process and planning philosophy behind these changes is the subject of Andrew W.  Manshel’s Learning from Bryant Park: Revitalizing Cities, Towns, and Public Spaces. Manshel was the Associate Director and Counsel for the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation from 1991-1998, pivotal years in the turnaround of the park and the city. He argues that Bryant Park is one of New York’s great success stories, and that it should serve as a model for other local neighborhoods (in particular he focuses on downtown Jamaica, Queens) as well as communities around the country. 

Bryant Park’s revitalization, the result of changes large and small, is best seen in Manshel’s compelling and detailed description of how the BPRC settled on the park’s now-iconic green French bistro chairs, the trial-and-error journey to the park’s centerpiece, that impeccable lawn, the plantings that create a cheery scene every spring, and the park’s famed public bathrooms, with their flowers and classical music, that have been variously described as “luxurious,” “the Tiffany’s of public restrooms,” and “fit for Brooke Astor.”  

Manshel views Bryant Park as the embodiment of William H. Whyte’s ideas about placemaking: that a space should be designed in response to peoples’ established needs and their observed behavior, and that careful concern for park maintenance and design creates a sense of safety, leading to a decline in crime and antisocial behavior in public spaces. William H. Whyte studied Bryant Park in the late seventies and early eighties, and a nice feature of the book is an appendix including his observations. Whyte’s initial report allows readers to see how his observations and principles guided the eventual changes to the park. Manshel appends a few key points of his own:

  • Maintenance and programming is actually more important than design and construction.
  • Placemaking is an “iterative process” of small steps responsive to public use and feedback.
  • Embracing some commercial uses can be good for the long-term health of parks. 
Lawn maintenance, at Bryant Park. Photo by author, 2019.

When it comes to the larger implications of placemaking for economic development, the book takes a turn for the controversial and even defensive. Manshel, a strong proponent of business improvement districts (BIDs), is dismissive of those who criticize public-private partnerships, conservancies, and BIDs as undemocratic entities that may drive gentrification. Notably, Manshel repeatedly places “gentrification” in quotes as if to question its very existence. He does the same for “progressives” and “community activists,” as if to imply that those who may oppose BIDs and their development plans have ulterior motives or are merely obstructionists.

In his section entitled “Gentrification is Good,” Manshel cites a 2015 Furman Center report to support the idea that gentrification leads to greater integration and the improvement of neighborhood quality of life; the report claims that the majority of those who move into gentrifying neighborhoods are moving into new units and are “not, for the most part, displacing existing residents [emphasis Manshel’s].” These are debatable claims that need more evidence; if Manshel wants to make a convincing case for gentrification he should have earnestly considered concerns about its effects—rising rents, displacement, the loss of affordable retail space, and over-policing. Instead, he sidesteps most of those issues and dismisses the rest as trivial. 

Bryant Park (2007). Casper Moller, Wikimedia Commons, (CC BY 2.0). 

BIDs and other forms of public-private partnerships can be effective in improving maintenance and fueling economic development. That said, as numerous urbanists like Susanna Schaller, Tarry Hum, and Samuel Stein have noted, these changes can also be deeply disruptive to parts of the community, often pitting property owners against renters and leading to displacement. Even if one agrees that Bryant Park was a tremendous success, the claim that its lessons are transferable to other localities needs to be questioned. Strategies that worked in the successful revitalization of a 9.6 acre park located between Grand Central Terminal and Times Square, in an area surrounded by office towers, hotels, and tourist attractions, may not be applicable to residential or mixed-use neighborhoods or even most business districts.

Manshel’s book, much like Dan Doctoroff’s 2017 book Greater than Ever: New York’s Big Comeback, is an engaging study and has a propulsive energy that encourages readers to embrace its author’s strongly asserted point of view. But it is best read with some skepticism and in conversation with other authors and voices. 

Katie Uva is a PhD candidate in history at the CUNY Graduate Center, where her dissertation examines the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs and their impact on New York City. She is an Adjunct Lecturer at Baruch College, an editor at The Gotham Center for New York City History, and worked for several years at The Museum of the City of New York.

JAMAICA RISING

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What’s done and what’s coming.

Development in downtown Jamaica, Queens has exploded. There are dozens of projects under construction, and a few, new completed projects. Having received my second dose of vaccine and being mostly recovered from having dislocated and fractured my right elbow in January while walking the obstreperous Sir Toby Belch, Australian Cattle Dob, I hit the road (the Grand Central Parkway) and took a driving tour of the Downtown. The amount of activity going on is simply amazing – unlike anything I might have anticipated.

            One of the things I learned in working in Bryant Park is that success is difficult to manage and control – what Jim Collins calls “the Flywheel Effect,” the increasing acceleration of a virtuous cycle. This phenomenon is evident in Jamacia. There are hotels being developed in a scattered range of sites – including in the middle of otherwise residential blocks. Subsidized housing developments that attempt to maximize the amount of developable space on their lots are huge. Designs generally tend to the lowest common denominators. 

            The most important and interesting question is “Has the neighborhood improved?” This can be interpreted in a number of ways. Is the quality of life for pre-existing residents better? Have new housing opportunities improved the quality of life for those new residents? Is the impact on all city residents and visitors generally better? In the middle of all this change, a definitive answer is impossible. But to my eye, the immediate answer is that the changes to Jamaica have been more of the same. Street conditions are worse. The perception of a pleasant experience in public spaces is worse. This may improve as construction is completed and more people move into the Downtown. But right now, in March 2021, the streets and sidewalks appear to be chaotic. Most of the retail facades are in worse shape than they were five years ago. Pedestrians are walking to swiftly to get where they are going – there isn’t my lingering in public spaces. Admittedly, my visit was on a grey, drizzly Palm Sunday. But my experience of Jamaica over fifteen years, I think gives me a broad enough basis of comparison under a range of conditions to draw reasonable conclusions. 

First the good news:

  • Retail storefronts appear to have a low vacancy rate. While the retail mix hasn’t changed that much, new similar retailers have filled in where previous tenants have left. Both of the restaurant major failures have been replaced with new brands. 
  • ParkHill City, developed by The Chetrit Group, at the former site of Mary Immaculate Hospital on King Park is a triumph (http://hillwest.com/project/89th-avenue/). Kudos to all concerned. And we, at Greater Jamaica Development Corporation, were afraid of the hospital being converted to a homeless shelter when the property was sold in bankruptcy by the State Dormitory Authority around 2010. The project is market rate and received no government subsidy (in fact the real property taxes on the site when it was no longer exempt as result of hospital ownership were punishing as a result of its long being off the tax rolls). The adaptive reuse of the original hospital structure on the east side of the site is brilliant and beautiful. The landscaping around the project is all imaginative, includes seating and is being well-maintained. 
  • Target has just opened a store in United American Land’s project at 160th Street and Jamacia Avenue, joining Burlington Coat Factory, H&M and Chipotle, in what was formerly a derelict property owned by the Stark Estate. 
  • UAL has also done a beautiful job restoring the façade of the formerly abandoned historic Jamaica Savings Bank building. Signs in the windows say that a Jolly Bee is slated for tenancy in the storefront (unfortunately, UAL needs to pay a bit more attention to the other facades in its assemblage, which don’t look as well tended). 
  • Thousands of desperately needed new affordable units are being created across the downtown in more than a half dozen major projects. More appear to be in the pipeline. 

And the rest:

  • Because we were looking to induce commercial development around the station area, the sites there were over-zoned. The project at Archer and Sutphin overwhelms the site. It is massive and intimidating. The 94th Avenue corridor, east of Sutphin, is a narrow canyon between two oversized developments. The site on the southeast corner of 94th and Sutphin remains vacant. The site was cleared using City funds in the mid 00’s. Most likely it has not been developed because the owner is seeking the maximum return from its hundreds of thousands of buildable square feet – and a project of that scale is neither desirable nor economic. 
  • The design of the major projects is oppressive. The project at Sutphin and Archer looks like a gigantic prison, in part because of the ratio of glazing to brick and in part because of the materials used. The project on 168th Street between Jamaica and Archer Avenues looks like something from a Leni Riefenstahl film from German in the 30’s – huge, square, relentless. That site was owned by the City (it was a decrepit police garage) and was deaccessioned by the Economic Development Corporation. One would like to think a more humane, urbanistic design would have been implemented. But such was not to be. 
  • Hotels are being developed higgly piggly on smallish sites all over the downtown, many in places that require a walk from transportation. Two hotels are at Liberty Avenue and Sutphin Boulevard, an automobile-oriented location, a desolate ten minute walk from the transit center with no nearby amenities. 
  • The largest hotel development, on Archer Avenue between 165th Street and Sutphin, which has been in development for fifteen years and still has not been completed, is undistinguished in design and relates poorly to the street.
  • The hotel site at 94th Street and Sutphin shows no sign of activity. This very expensively assembled, and troubled site was transferred to a developer in 2015.
  • None of the new downtown projects are urbanistic at the street level. They don’t have contiguous ground floor retail and are generally dead to the street. There isn’t any sense of “neighborhood” associated with any of the residential projects, other than at Park Hill City.
  • Placemaking activity appears to have stopped and the results appear to me to be obvious. The horticultural program appears to be dormant (which is worse than not having one). There were cars parked routinely on all of the 165thStreet Mall. Scores of private vehicles of police officers were illegally parked around the 103rd police precinct. The Q44 Select Bus Service infrastructure appears to be abandoned. 
  • The optimistically named and ill-conceived “Shops at Station Plaza,” in the LIRR Sutphin Boulevard underpass seems neglected. It has one storefront that has never been rented. The Dunkin Doughnuts store had a badly broken window. The elaborate multi-colored lighting schemes appears not to be maintained. 

It’s clear that after decades of stagnation, major investment in housing and hotels has finally arrived in Jamaica. With more people living in and visiting downtown, perhaps demand for wider range of retail offerings, including restaurants and bars, and improved conditions in public space will follow. 

PHOTOS FROM MY TOUR FOLLOW:

  • The largest project in the downtown, 700,000 square feet of affordable housing and retail at Sutphin and Archer. Looks to me a little like The Tombs in downtown Manhattan.
The canyon on 94th Avenue looking west. Affordable housing projects on either side of the street.
A 60,000 acre development site, demolished and remediated 15 years ago by NYCEDC.
The 60,000 square foot site at 94th Avenue and Sutphin Boulevard was likely over zoned to a 12 FAR, making development uneconomic.
The result of the incredibly expensive and ill-conceived Shops at Station Plaza in the Sutphin LIRR underpass. Blank windows. There is also an empty storefront.
The site of a small new hotel set among single family homes just south of the LIRR tracks.
The result of the incredibly expensive and ill-conceived Shops at Station Plaza in the Sutphin LIRR underpass. Blank windows. There is also an empty storefront.
Plinths with the ticket machines removed for the Q44 Select Bus Service. Nothing says neglected public space like obsolete street furniture.
A very large hotel project at the foot of 148th Street and Archer Avenue. This project has been in development for 15 years.
A hotel project on the north side of Archer Avenue between 148th and 149th.
The former site of an HRA office building on Sutphin Boulevard. A strategic locating set among fast food, bank branches and fish stores.
Main entrance to ParkHill Village. 400 units of market rate housing.
Adaptive reuse of one of the former Mary Immaculate Hospital buildings for ParkHill City. Lovely landscaping with benches.
168th Street between Jamaica and Archer Avenues on the site of a former derelict NYPD garage.
The new Target store at 160th Street and Jamaica Avenue. We worked for years to try to attract target. Also in the project are H&M, Burlington Coat Factory, Chipotle, and Panda Express.
The landmarked original Jamaica Savings Bank facade, nicely restored. The window signs say soon to be Jolly Bee.
The view of the ParkHill City project from the north looking down 150th Street. It changes radically the skyline of the downtown.

City Journal reviews “Learning from Bryant Park” by Nicole Gelinas

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http://www.city-journal.org/urban-design-and-post-pandemic-city-living

Urban Design and Post-Pandemic City Living | City JournalLearning from Bryant Park: Revitalizing Cities, Towns and Public Spaces, by Andrew M. Manshel (Rutgers University Press, 293 pp. $29.95) Designing Disorder: Experiments and Disruptions in the City, by Pablo Sendra and Richard Sennett (Verso, 154 pp, $24.95) For 20 years now, Bryant Park has been …www.city-journal.org

CityLaw Review of “Learning from Bryant Park” by Professor Ross Sandler

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Learning from Bryant Park, a book by Andrew Manshel

A new book recalls the glory of Bryant Park before the Covid-19 shutdown: the movable chairs, the green grass, magazine racks and ping pong tables, shady paths and, most of all, the large numbers of people enjoying Bryant Park.

Bryant Park as an urban space is a miracle, but not an accidental miracle, as Andrew Manshel recounts in his readable and entertaining book, Learning from Bryant Park: Revitalizing Cities, Town, and Public Places (Rutgers U. Press 2020). Manshel’s book starts with the plan by the Public Library to use Bryant Park for underground storage, and the subsequent realization that Bryant Park itself was the primary project. The names of those who played a role is long and Manshel lets everyone take a bow: Andrew Heiskell, chair of Time Inc. and the Public Library; William Deitel, President of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; William H. (Holly) Whyte, the genius at observing how people behave in public spaces; Gordon Davis, the City Parks Commissioner; Dan Biederman, who led the restoration efforts; and many others who brought their innovative ideas to Bryant Park. Manshel’s book is a friendly read because of the generous credit he gives to the many people who contributed to Bryant Park.

Placemaking is the name for the restoration process, and Manshel’s book is a catalog of strategies. The big idea was to create the perception of safety. The techniques included well-organized commercial and social activities, performers, visible friendly staff, prompt removal of graffiti, regular emptying of trash baskets, clean restrooms, movable chairs, a lush green lawn, and other familiar elements.

Manshel, who was counsel and associate director at Bryant Park for ten years, has advice. Success requires patience. Do maintenance and more maintenance. Choose small experimental projects; they will save money. Be prepared to change course; even the best ideas can crash. Manshel offers cautions like the story of the costly, specially designed, square sidewalk planters that looked great when new, but six months later were chipped and dingy. Better were less expensive round plastic planters that didn’t chip or get dingy.

Manshel took his ideas to Jamaica, Queens, where the lessons were equally revealing on placemaking. His retelling of these efforts will broaden the enjoyment of everyone who loves urban life and is curious about the City’s special places.

Ross Sandler